Fund manager Paul Wick says he braced for a hit to his bearish position in Tesla Inc. when Chief Executive Elon Musk on May 4 lashed out at short sellers in the auto maker, warning they were about to suffer the “burn of the century.”

He got it. Tesla shares jumped nearly 4% that day, leading some short sellers—investors who bet on price declines by borrowing shares, hoping to buy them back at a lower price and pocket the difference—to trim their positions, though Mr. Wick said he held tight.

Mr. Musk has been engaged for some time in a digital cat-and-mouse fight with negative investors on his company’s stock, and so far he is often winning. His extraordinary use of Twitter to battle short sellers has often been followed by a jump in Tesla’s stock price, hurting shorts in the process.

On Thursday, short sellers suffered a $1.7 billion loss, according to S3 Partners, after Tesla’s results cheered investors, boosting the company’s shares.

Kamran Mumtaz, a Tesla spokesman, responded to questions about this article by sending an emoji with a smiling face and waving hands and declined to elaborate on what it meant or to comment further. Mr. Musk didn’t respond to a request for comment.