2017 Investor Roundtable: TSLA Market Action

[Zhelko Dimic]

Made some good money the last 5 days. Sold puts last Friday for this Friday with 212.50 strike price when the stock was barely over 213. Before close today, sold covered calls for 1/13 expiration at 225 when the stock was over 226 (made a killing). I think we will be back below 225 by next Friday. If I'm wrong and those stocks get called away, I'll use the money to sell a bunch more puts and see if I can't get back in on a dip.

I'm not selling covered calls anymore, since 2012/13/14, when FB, my vehicle of choice at the time, kept running me over and catching me on 'impossible strike targets'. I ended rolling out week after week after week, but it doesn't help if SP continues moving up... Sometimes I'd recover, sometimes pay the price, sometimes step out, but this happened so many times that I finally learned lesson. For those that don't understand options well, I still made bunch of money, rode $24->$75 with most of my account, just not as much as I would have, if I did nothing.

I'm saying this because ferocity of TSLA move today reminds me of FB in its best days. Here is to '17 and hope this really is the case. And rdalcanto, be careful! I'm expecting us to touch 235 this week, but no idea where we close. Pure guess, $232, just to get back in the cadence of $10 move up per week

 

[Zhelko Dimic]

Any thoughts on where we go from here? Seems like all sorts of technicals were broken to the upside today.

My guess, we test at least $235-36, as this is local max from few months back, maybe even false breakout, and we fail that test this week, as we're too far from Bollinger band.

Yet, there was so much strength to todays' move, including volume, that I guess we close few bucks above Bollinger band, similar to the week of (weekly chart) for Aug 3 2014. Such close would be around 232, putting us back nicely on track for $10 a week march since early December. This is all just a guess!

Tomorrow, we may see insane spike, followed by cool off few hours later. Spike driven by risk officers forcing buy in on short positions that didn't resolve their margin call. Bunch of shorts may be under water. But then most retail shorts play through puts, where typically you don't have ability to borrow on the margin. And non-retail should know better... So yeah, what I'm saying is 'I don't know'...

 

[Zhelko Dimic]

found this, short video, you need to enable sound:
Jamison Gaddy on Twitter

 

[erthquake]

found this, short video, you need to enable sound:
Jamison Gaddy on Twitter

Why does he use the Brexit drop to define the left side of his key area box? It's a macro event that doesn't relate to Tesla fundamentals at all. Granted, I don't know anything about stock chart analysis, but it all seems like a bunch of hand waving to me.

 

[vgrinshpun]

I'm not selling covered calls anymore, since 2012/13/14, when FB, my vehicle of choice at the time, kept running me over and catching me on 'impossible strike targets'. I ended rolling out week after week after week, but it doesn't help if SP continues moving up... Sometimes I'd recover, sometimes pay the price, sometimes step out, but this happened so many times that I finally learned lesson. For those that don't understand options well, I still made bunch of money, rode $24->$75 with most of my account, just not as much as I would have, if I did nothing.

I'm saying this because ferocity of TSLA move today reminds me of FB in its best days. Here is to '17 and hope this really is the case. And rdalcanto, be careful! I'm expecting us to touch 235 this week, but no idea where we close. Pure guess, $232, just to get back in the cadence of $10 move up per week

The solution is to sell puts using margin, going conservative to leave enough room to run from the falling stock price rolling out short puts, if necessary. One also needs to assume the largest likely range of the drop (say $100) and make sure that quantity of puts sold does not exceed margin at this reduced SP - to ensure that there will be no margin calls possible.

 

[vgrinshpun]

Update on borrowing activity at Fidelity. Note that interest rate went up from 1% to 1.75%.

 

[Nate the Great]

Premarket Tradingview is showing SP 214.70.

This doesn't seem correct.

Nasdaq = 226.25

 

[NOLA_Mike]

Premarket Fidelity is showing SP 214.70

IB showing 226.60

 

[vgrinshpun]

Pace of early morning borrowing today is higher than yesterday:

 

[SBenson]

FWIW, as per MarkIt data short interest went UP by about half million shares.

 

[adiggs]

FWIW, as per MarkIt data short interest went UP by about half million shares.

The logic seems inescapable - if Tesla was a good short at $190 and $200, then it's got to be a screaming deal to short at $220

 

[Nate the Great]

Any thoughts on todays SP action?

This seems to be inline with myusername charting.

 

[Turing]

Any thoughts on todays SP action?

This seems to be inline with myusername charting.

Sector pullback?
Ford -2.5%
GM -1.7%
TM-.4%
tsla-1.6%

 

[geneclean55]

That was a nice little move. Go green TSLA?

 

[MikeC]

That was a nice little move. Go green TSLA?

Any news fueling this little jump?

 

[T3slaTulips]

Any news fueling this little jump?

That's what I came here to see. *looks around* huh, nothing. Why did Tesla bounce back today while the rest of the sector is still giving back on yesterday's exuberance?

 

[MikeC]

Maybe this?

Tesla Motors, Inc. (TSLA) PT Set at $260.00 by FBN Securities

 

[larmor]

How about taking the market to task: how have PTs set for other tech and growth companies held up to actual price, for ex aapl, nflx, fb, goog, to name a few, which had recent two to three large growth.

 

[Curt Renz]

Any news fueling this little jump?

Trump tweeted his displeasure with Toyota’s plan to build a plant in Mexico. But that was an hour before the pop upward in TSLA. There may be other carmaker matters known only to Trump insiders. Who knows? Perhaps the most nearly all-American car will autonomously drive Trump to and from the inauguration ceremony.

 

[Papafox]

These small fluctuations up and down, about 50 cents below the green looks suspiciously like shorts trying to keep TSLA from going green this afternoon. Any other suggestions of why we're meeting resistance at this point are welcome.

PS: I'm rolling some calls forward today and the flirting between green and red has been working in my favor for selling in the green and buying in the red.