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University of Michigan consumer confidence index hits all time low, lower than GFC and Carter…

I think the most likely outcome at this point is that we will have a small recession, and unemployment could rise to ~6%. What this economy really needs is productivity growth. The big reason inflation is high is because labor costs are growing ~5% per year but workers are producing less per hour.

It’s probably in the process of peaking here, but other areas it isn’t… the ECB is so far behind the curve I wouldn’t be surprised if inflation soars well into the double digits there. Part of the thing that is likely going to reduce inflation though is recession…

China seems to want to commit national suicide over COVID zero.

BOOO!

Then you factor in transmission losses and it gets closer to 20%

Germany’s wind and solar electricity production per capita is only like 20% above the US and growing at a slower rate, and because Germany chose to shut down all their nuclear power plants, once those are shut down later this year their total clean generation will basically be unchanged since...

Ladies and gentlemen, the dumbest government in the western world: When shutting down your remaining nuclear plants and instead funding Putin or restarting coal plants just wasn’t going far enough…

In one of the slides there is a dually Cybertruck…

NPR has declined so much in quality over the last ~5y it’s honestly amazing.

Saturday morning thought exercise comparing today’s oil prices to the oil prices in 2008: To take into account income growth, I am going to price a barrel of oil in terms of percentage of GDP per capita in 2008 and 2022 and see how it has changed. Here is the 2008 list, oil barrel as a...

Wind and solar in the US now have an LCOE below the fuel cost for natural gas. Thermal plants’ efficiencies are measured in heat rate, which is the amount of btus it takes to produce one KWh. There are 3412 btus in one KWh, so if you divide that by the heat rate you find thermodynamic...

Battery storage was already competitive with gas when gas was much cheaper, I can only imagine it’s way better now. NG is at $8/mmbtu in the US (where gas is cheaper) converts roughly to 5¢/KWh just for the fuel even in a high efficiency (~6000 heat rate) combined cycle plant, and around 8¢ for...

Dollar is also a lot stronger than it was in 2008 when oil was $145/barrel, also there was a few dollar premium in US oil, that has reversed since then. In other currencies it’s a good deal above the 2008 high. Rough examples of 2008 vs now: 🇺🇸 $145 → $118 🇪🇺 €92 → €113 🇯🇵 ¥15,500 → ¥15,500 🇬🇧...

60k salaried would be like $10b in labor costs… way to high. 24k is probably pretty close.

Yep, then total headcount will be at ATH about 2-3 months later.

This is it, right here.

All of the Japanese OEM are horrendously behind on EVs.

Honda and Mazda… 😳

BP statistical review of world energy

Here is just wind and solar production per capita: 2,836 🇩🇰 Denmark 2,815 🇸🇪 Sweden 2,326 🇮🇪 Ireland 2,150 🇩🇪 Germany 1,843 🇳🇴 Norway 1,815 🇦🇺 Australia 1,572 🇧🇪 Belgium 1,544 🇪🇸 Spain 1,502 🇫🇮 Finland 1,420 🇺🇸 United States 1,388 🇵🇹 Portugal 1,353 🇬🇷 Greece 1,337 🇳🇱 Netherlands 1,310 🇬🇧 United...

Factoid/tidbit of the day: Clean electricity production per capita, KWh (nuke+hydro+geo+wind+solar) 50,448 🇮🇸 Iceland 28,051 🇳🇴 Norway 15,104 🇸🇪 Sweden 13,798 🇨🇦 Canada 8,608 🇫🇮 Finland 7,223 🇨🇭 Switzerland 6,956 🇫🇷 France 5,610 🇸🇮 Slovenia 5,429 🇦🇹 Austria 5,379 🇳🇿 New Zealand 4,825 🇺🇸 United...

Productivity at some government institutions that allowed WFH is especially bad because the employees there are so hard to fire… I bet half of them do less than one hour of actual real work a day now. If you have to deal with these places it’s pretty evident compared to 2019.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that much of the west is having negative productivity growth at the same time WFH increased dramatically. In that vein, much of the current labor shortages are really just second order effects from the office class being much less productive.

The most important factor for selecting locations is how much they produce at the minimum (January), and in that case the map shifts a bit east to NM and western Texas. Texas will be at the center of the future North American industrial corridor, which will be a swath that extends from...

They probably wouldn’t even need to offer a raise, as moving from the Bay Area to TX is like a ~50% pay raise just from taxes and CoL…

Tesla is outperforming over the last year, underperforming over the last 6 months, and roughly the same the last 3 months

Any idea when we can expect the Shanghai P/D data now that it’s June? That alone is probably going to tell us more than anything else what Q2 P/D is going to look like.

WRT WFH, vertical integration and co-location of production and design is much of Tesla’s (and SpaceX’s) secret sauce that allows Tesla to innovate so quickly. Engineers and production workers working among each other allows rapid problem solving and product improvements.

Amazon will probably barely make any money this year, if they’re lucky they’ll bounce back to ~$20b in profits next year… which is less than what Tesla will probably make, and Tesla will only leave them in the rear view mirror from there on.

US Steel’s revenue in 1917 was about 0.6% of world GDP and Standard Oil and GM were about 0.5% each of world GDP in 1929… the only other entity that I can think of that may have beaten GM’s 1% share in 1955 is perhaps the British East India Company…? Getting to $4T in revenue by 2040 is...

They should build trusses over the parking lots and cover those too.

So as far as I can tell, the record for a company’s revenue as a share of global GDP is GM in the 1950s, at a little over 1% of world GDP. Today, Walmart and Amazon are around 0.5%… will Tesla beat this some day? Doing this by 2040 would probably require around $4 trillion in revenue. Elon is...

Y E S ! ! 😎

It’s really cheap batteries that are going to be the great enabler. For instance, a 10k cycle life LFP with an installed cost of $250/kwh has a storage cost of around 2.5¢ per kWh!

That was a percentage of new car buyers considering buying an EV, and all of the areas surveyed essentially have a larger number considering buying one than the market can supply at this time. This number also continues to grow larger as time goes on. EVs are still a bit more expensive than gas...

Inflation is eroding into purchasing power, real incomes are declining (5% wage growth with 8% inflation = 3% real decline) and people are dipping into savings or borrowing to cover the difference. If/when that stops then much of those job openings are no longer needed.

Well, recessions are disinflationary… lemons, lemonade, etc.

😬 Cramer is the ultimate contra-indicator!! At this point, I think the probability of recession is 75%+ Tesla will probably recover a lot sooner, but it’ll probably take the market as a whole until like 2025 to surpass its 2021 peak.

Market returning to its regularly scheduled plunge… oil at $120+… JFC

Thanks for typing out a thoughtful and concise response instead of being a lazy bum like me… 🤓

Uh, a bank maybe blowing up is gonna make some serious macro headwinds…

This doesn’t sound great…

Shanghai may production data will greatly reduce the error bars for Q2 forecasting.

I have to imagine the eventual record holder will be the Optimus training system.

I’m liking how the “Tesla” spelled out in solar panels is getting more and more visible

Smells squeezy yo

Enterprise value is how much it would cost for you to completely own the company. Debt is added because it is a claim on future income priced by the market. Bonds are mostly priced based on the likelihood the issuer will pay it back, and lose value as the market believes its ability to repay...

other car companies also have much more debt, so the value of their enterprise is biased towards bonds vs equity, while Tesla has zero debt and a growing pile of cash. (Enterprise value is a better indicator than market cap, IMHO)

The unfortunate truth is that the real world utility of many non-STEM degrees these days is becoming zero to negative. Thanks to nonsense like “safe spaces” a lot of people leave university with turbocharged neuroticism, less able to handle criticism or solve the problems the life will give you...