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  1. RationalOptimist

    Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable

    Look, it's a classic network effect. If you control the network, and make money from each additional node on that network, you have a beautiful platform business. Ultimately platform effects are the reason Apple, Microsoft and Meta have such high valuations. It's also why so many companies...
  2. RationalOptimist

    Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable

    Wild that the Drudge Report is leading with the after hours reaction to Investor Day. DRUDGE REPORT 2023®. Obsession with any possible Musk woe is so deeply embedded it's almost comical.
  3. RationalOptimist

    Elon & Twitter

    There's a strange paradox in the panic over Twitter. The people saying oh, the site is going to crash now because of no people forget that the one thing we CAN be pretty confident of with Elon is his engineering chops. Sure there will be glitches... but this as an area he has the talent to fix...
  4. RationalOptimist

    Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable

    Nothing really new here, but it was good to see Twitter-crazed Elon sounding relatively relaxed and cheerful. He's held in incredibly high regard in Indonesia and across Asia.
  5. RationalOptimist

    Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable

    If you put yourself in the shoes of a Tesla competitor watching this.... I suspect pretty depressing. It was a brilliant stroke to let many members present. Sends a signal of the incredible depth of talent.
  6. RationalOptimist

    Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable

    Underwhelming start, but getting more impressive by the minute....
  7. RationalOptimist

    Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable

    Thanks for your help here. Do you happen to know if options are also covered?
  8. RationalOptimist

    Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable

    For me the key to getting excited about FSD is the moment when you sense that the architecture is fully in place for machine learning to do its thing. Once that happens, there would be exponential progress... ever more rapid updates with ever more impressive changes. It feels to me that we may...
  9. RationalOptimist

    Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable

    I come out of that still further convinced that Tesla will indeed be earth's most valuable company in the foreseeable future. They have So Many Things not priced in yet. And even just on automobile cashflow they cd prob get there. It's beautiful to be part of this journey.
  10. RationalOptimist

    Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable

    He sounded pretty clear he's assuming he'll have to buy Twitter. Maybe there will be a slight discount. Maybe not. Not great for distraction from Tesla... Suspect Twitter will be up again tomorrow. fwiw, I think he'll turn it into a monstrously valuable company. But it won't be easy, and it...
  11. RationalOptimist

    Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable

    Not sure I've ever seen Elon this relaxed. This is his happy place. If he could always live here, it would be soooooo nice! It's a deserved victory lap after one of the most astonishing corporate ascents in history.
  12. RationalOptimist

    Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable

    This is an astounding post. Have you published this elsewhere? At first skim, I think you are profoundly right in much of what you write here.
  13. RationalOptimist

    Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable

    "Their goal...". Who is this they of which you speak? The market is a cacophony of different voices. It's rarely possible, except for incredibly illiquid stocks, for a cabal of players to agree a strategy and cynically execute it. I don't think conspiratorial mindset helps, honestly. What does...
  14. RationalOptimist

    Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable

    Anyone else surprised to see premarket green?!
  15. RationalOptimist

    Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable

    Crazy editing, but funny. And, alas, contains truth.
  16. RationalOptimist

    Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable

    Great post. Thank you, Cliff. This is pretty much how I see it too.
  17. RationalOptimist

    Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable

    I like this argument, and v much hope it's true. What is clear is that Elon and Tesla view one of their absolute core competitive edges as the ability to reinvent manufacturing. "What is the process which can churn out magical products at scale at a 30%+ margin?" Fundamental to the...
  18. RationalOptimist

    Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable

    Ah, yes, thanks. I found the source for anyone else interested. In September 2014, in an interview with Fox Business, he said: “I feel confident that we will be able to achieve at least half a million cars a year by 2020.” And yes, produced fractionally more than that, and delivered...
  19. RationalOptimist

    Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable

    We all know that Elon is often over-optimistic on timelines. But I'm curious to track down the best examples of predictions he got right. For example, does anyone have chapter and verse of his earliest predictions for Tesla vehicle sales over the long term? Anything else that was surprisingly...
  20. RationalOptimist

    Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable

    This is a pretty unpleasant NYT attempted hit piece on FSD and Autopilot. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/06/technology/tesla-autopilot-elon-musk.html I think it could use a few enlightened comments.
  21. RationalOptimist

    Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable

    This is a beautiful summary of Tesla's advantage. It has created self-reinforcing SYSTEMS. Terrifying to compete against at this point. I suspect it's biggest competitor in 20 years time will not be any of the auto incumbents, but rather another company that is designed from the ground up for...
  22. RationalOptimist

    Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable

    The thought that Tesla might acquire Boston Dynamics misses the fact that Tesla's AI architecture is completely different from BD. The latter is essentially algorithmic. it's not based on the deep-learning neural net approach Tesla has. BD have taught their dogs to do amazing specific tricks in...
  23. RationalOptimist

    Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable

    for someone as smart as Elon, it's amazing how often he repeats himself. I think I've heard the tale about difficulty of manufacturing scale up > a dozen times.... ;-)
  24. RationalOptimist

    Temporary Thread for Itchy-fingered Investors

    Personal suggestion. Give the mods a break. Really hard to fairly moderate a forum such as this when the stakes are high and there's always a trade-off between 'everything goes' and 'keep things clean and focused'. Personally, grateful this forum exists and persists. They must be doing...
  25. RationalOptimist

    Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable

    The best explanation of the last month is that a group of hedge funds and related investors front-ran the SP500 inclusion. They knew the massive demand for shares wd be there and began buying aggressively in the weeks preceding. It's that (+ accompanying squeeze) that accounted for the massive...
  26. RationalOptimist

    Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable

    It's a great program... High time for the public at large to refocus on climate. If the pandemic has taught us anything, it's that when scientists tell you there's a serious threat coming, you really do need to pay attention, and ACT. Climate threat = pandemic x 1000. I'll be spending next...
  27. RationalOptimist

    Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable

    Building self-driving cars is really hard. From The Information today. "After five years and an investment of around $2.5 billion, Uber’s effort to build a self-driving car has produced this: a car that can’t drive more than half a mile without encountering a problem. “The car doesn’t drive...
  28. RationalOptimist

    Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable

    Congrats. If you're thinking you want to hedge just a little but don't want the tax hit, you could consider selling some longer-term calls with similar strike prices... Whatever cash you get from that is effectively locked in profit. eg. for every 10 call options you bought, consider selling 2-5.
  29. RationalOptimist

    Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable

    I think this is incredibly risky strategy. A big drop -- and there could easily be a big drop for lots of reasons beyond "Musk rushed to hospital w covid19 symptoms" -- could wipe out 30 x the money you make from the sale.
  30. RationalOptimist

    Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable

    There's a lot of wisdom in this.. especially fourth bullet. 2 months of serious lockdown followed by mass-testing-accompanied gradual return is the only way to beat this thing ahead of vaccine arriving. 6 months is optimistic for that, but not impossible. I'm not sure about your last point...
  31. RationalOptimist

    Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable

    Has there been discussion yet about this? Strikes me as amazing... All the big auto companies have been challenged to respond to Covid. I'm predicting Tesla will end up being regarded as by far most effective. Huge goodwill value in that... and perhaps a reversal of some frustration w Elon's...
  32. RationalOptimist

    Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable

    I think that's only part of it. The other key part is the shorter time between order date and delivery. If Tesla can get the delivery time short enough, every single order generates CASHFLOW. If they can't, every single order requires capital. When a company's growing as fast as Tesla this is...
  33. RationalOptimist

    Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable

    Selling puts incredibly dangerous in this environment in my opinion. 1) you're leaving on the table all the upside. 2) even if it works you're getting hit w short-term sales tax. 3) Most importantly, you're exposing yourself to massive loss, a large multiple of your gain. Do the Math on what...
  34. RationalOptimist

    Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable

    Buy a near future call option with strike price at $700-ish. And have an open order to sell it at 10x the price you bought it for. Highly likely you lose your money... but chance of 10x gain. It's called gambling. Much safer: don't mess with options, and just have an open sell order for...
  35. RationalOptimist

    Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable

    Wow... an analyst who actually gets it: Tesla price target raised to $612 from $385 at Oppenheimer thefly.com/... Oppenheimer analyst Colin Rusch raised his price target for Tesla to $612 from $385 and keeps an Outperform rating on the name. The stock closed Friday down $3.19 to $478.15...
  36. RationalOptimist

    LIDAR (out of main)

    well put...
  37. RationalOptimist

    Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable

    I would guess more likely a response to the truly unbelievable SpaceX launch last night. The flawless first step of a business that could easily bring in $billions/year is in danger of a) restoring some of Musk's halo effect and b) completely taking away the risk of Musk margin calls, etc...
  38. RationalOptimist

    Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable

    One thing smart about announcing this: it avoids the risk of current Chinese demand for high perf model 3s falling off a cliff. There's no reason to wait.
  39. RationalOptimist

    General Discussion: 2018 Investor Roundtable

    Is no one watching the spacex livestream? unbelievably inspiring. i think it will be great for elon's rep.
  40. RationalOptimist

    TSLA Market Action: 2018 Investor Roundtable

    He def needs to recharge somehow... BUT, overall I was actually encouraged by the interview. There are lots of instances of his outside the box brilliance. He's transparent, and honest, and admitted mistakes on Twitter. To many he will have come over as super-likable-for-a-genius. It's...
  41. RationalOptimist

    TSLA Market Action: 2018 Investor Roundtable

    There is a middle possibility here, surely. I wd think it highly possible that Musk has received verbal assurances from three or four potential funders that they would each commit up to, say, $10bn of stock at $420 provided board seat. He may have used his own judgement to calculate that that...
  42. RationalOptimist

    TSLA Market Action: 2018 Investor Roundtable

    Is there any precedent for a company going private to offer existing option holders with strike dates later than the transaction, the chance to continue to hold their options, the same way that share holders can continue to own shares? I would love that to happen in this case. Right now as my...
  43. RationalOptimist

    TSLA Market Action: 2018 Investor Roundtable

    I think it was "several hundred"
  44. RationalOptimist

    TSLA Market Action: 2018 Investor Roundtable

    JB is killing it on this call. Good to have Elon bringing him in more....
  45. RationalOptimist

    General Discussion: 2018 Investor Roundtable

    Earlier in the night, he posted this. Elon Musk on Twitter My main worry: he's not sleeping. But he does seem deadly determined that he will prove shorts wrong.
  46. RationalOptimist

    General Discussion: 2018 Investor Roundtable

    Elon fighting back. Elon Musk on Twitter
  47. RationalOptimist

    TSLA Market Action: 2018 Investor Roundtable

    How did you do that? I thought options don't trade outside hours.
  48. RationalOptimist

    General Discussion: 2018 Investor Roundtable

    To me, the most significant development this past week is nothing to do with model 3 production rates. It's that we finally have clear evidence that Tesla's deep-learning approach to autonomous driving is working. There are unimaginably large benefits to being the first to market with level 4...