Discussion on Investor thread configuration

[Wenche]

Excellent post as usual, and I agree with everything you said but one thing (explained later). Quoted whole megapost so that it is at the top of this page for those who missed it.

I am glad to see that we both have similar price targets for next year $350 vs. $400. I think that the difference comes from our production estimates. The numbers you are using seem very reasonable and well within reach for Tesla. My production numbers are slightly higher, since I think that Tesla will continue to over-deliver in the future and grow a little quicker than most people expect. They have been doing this in the past couple of quarters and think they will pull it off in the future. Hence the difference in PT's. I also noticed from the AAPL PDF that the forum guys there usually had a lot higher PT's than AAPL was actually able to achieve. We are so far ahead on Tesla information, that we have to be cognizant that it might take Wall St. a little longer to catch up on stock price. That is one of the reasons I recommend to be cautious on options. There might be a blowout or it could be a slow and steady rise, which will crush your OTM options. It is not as clear cut as it was during Q1 or even Q2. I think there might be a blowout, but not as positive as last time. It will all depend on gross margin number.

The one place I disagree with you is on Chinese tariff impact on demand. I know that this may sound ridiculous, but from the research I have done on China, I actually believe that the higher selling prices due to tariffs will create more demand in China and not less. I think that Tesla will sell a lot more cars at $200k in China than at $100k. A higher price tag makes the car more exclusive and the ultra rich do not want to be driving the same car that the not as ultra rich can afford to drive. Therefore, if Tesla can introduce a dual motor Model S that does 0-60 in 3.2s that costs over $200k it will sell like hotcakes. I have read articles that say the Mercedes S class starts at $151k in China, but on the CN website it starts above $1.2m RMB or around $200k. I think that Mercedes actually increased the price of its S class to stimulate sales.

Can any of our Chinese members confirm this behavioral pattern of the ultra rich?

As far as my article goes, I will definitely post but might have to make some minor changes. I feel like I did not leave enough room for everyone to interpret the conversation on their own. I will try to make it more neutral, so that people can decide on their own and be influenced by my exuberance for Tesla. I just don't have time right now, since I am working on a new website with Norse.

Great posts with quality content :smile:

I understand that some of you other posters, have not recognized that there is a new tread for Short Term Social Chat. Please use the new tread for Short term Social chats, feelings and guesses, and post only in this tread if you have a quality post of value of others, no funny comments, and no posts of todays trade. Please post that into the right tread. This tread is supposed to bring quality information about short term, and if disrupted, quality posts will drawn in posts, and the quality posters will disappear. If you like to just comment, please copy the post and continue in the Social tread.
I am sorry if I defend someone, but I think it is crucial to keep the post in this tread of high value. As I understand Curt Renz, among other, has not posted here for a long time. I really think the reason is because of a lot of none valuable posts pushing the quality post several pages behind. Please use the Sort term Social chat for small talk :smile:

 

[InTheShadows]

OT post:

Since it seems like the new vision for this thread is mega post only. And most of us are In the habit of looking here for (and sharing) less than mega post quality content. Perhaps it should be renamed short term strategies or analysis. And the chit chat thread should inherit this name or leave this one the way it is as a wild child and create a new one based on the names (or similar idea) listed above.

It seems to me this thread has replaced the original investors thread before we had the investors sub topic 9 months ago for the same reasons.

@Moderators: please move this to where you see fit, I'm just trying to help solve the problems associated with this thread.

 

[Citizen-T]

Great posts with quality content :smile:

I understand that some of you other posters, have not recognized that there is a new tread for Short Term Social Chat. Please use the new tread for Short term Social chats, feelings and guesses, and post only in this tread if you have a quality post of value of others, no funny comments, and no posts of todays trade. Please post that into the right tread. This tread is supposed to bring quality information about short term, and if disrupted, quality posts will drawn in posts, and the quality posters will disappear. If you like to just comment, please copy the post and continue in the Social tread.
I am sorry if I defend someone, but I think it is crucial to keep the post in this tread of high value. As I understand Curt Renz, among other, has not posted here for a long time. I really think the reason is because of a lot of none valuable posts pushing the quality post several pages behind. Please use the Sort term Social chat for small talk :smile:

I don't like this. Deciding what is valuable is very subjective. People keep invoking Curt's comment a while ago, but Curt was complaining about the options discussions going on here, that's all. Also he is just one voice, and no offense intended, but one that hasn't actually been around here very long.

Any piece of investment news or analysis that is important always gets its own thread. That is how this community has always bubbled up the most important information and broken off conversations that take on a life of their own. It doesn't make sense to me to separate the analysis of short term stock movements from the discussion of that analysis when the piece isn't large enough to stand on its own in its own thread.

Personally, I find it a much bigger turn off to see this community judge the value of what members are contributing like this. It sounds smug and leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Some of us have made a lot of good calls and a whole lot of money in TSLA; but let's not get too full of ourselves. Let's remember that we did that with an open and welcoming community, not by anointing prophets and exiling everyone else.

Looking back on the history of this thread you'll see that we had days where we cheered together; days where we took turns taunting the shorts; we've had far too many days like today where we shared in one another's fear and failure, and even some where we nearly panicked. Through it all we've always come here to this thread to share in our triumphs or to seek comfort, advice, and maybe even some shoulders to cry on.

As always, I'll respect the decisions our moderators make, but as someone who's been around from the days when there was only one investment thread and entire days could go by without a single post, I just have to say that this doesn't feel like it maintains the spirit which has (at least in my mind) made this community unmatched in the world when it comes to profiting on the short term moves in TSLA.

In short, I respectfully disagree with the direction some are trying to push this thread.

P. S. The news out of Germany is a big deal and if it gets picked up it will move the stock. Perfect timing.

 

[bonnie]

At the risk of this post being rated a non-quality post, +1 Citizen-T!

 

[AlMc]

+2 Citizen-T: This is a post that a relative newbie, like me, could not make. Thank you

 

[fjm9898]

+1 Citizen T on the sentiment that this is an open community and it would remain that way. I am by no means an expert but if i make a post then i would like the people i look up to here to point out my flaws or help guide me.

I understand the need for information to be seen vs 3 straight pages of "Wooo whoo" but if is the case we should make a new thread for just that kind of information since this thread 90% cheering and chatter. It would be very hard to force everyone to drop this thread and start fresh.

If it was something we really needed then maybe a new thread "Short Term analysis" would be best?

 

[ckessel]

Curt had mentioned splitting out options and short term, which I didn't think was good idea given the nature of options.

Others have noted the posts have gotten cluttered with non-value (uh, like this I guess) or outright incorrect posts. Things like "Elon needs to tweet ASAP!" Critiques of those comments, to me, were spot on. I'm not sure what can be done about that though. Every forum, as it gets larger, gets a lot of noise. We've got the reputation system I guess as a carrot/stick.

 

[brianstorms]

I thought for sure that Short Term Social Chat thread was a joke. Now it appears folks were serious.

I enjoy all the posts in here, and prefer a mixture of long and short posts, from epic serious analysis to one-liner banter. It's a community. We're talking. This is a good thing. Breaking up the conversation breaks up the community. Not a good direction to go.

 

[DaveT]

I'm not sure if I'm seeing the problem or solution clearly but I'll share my two cents.

Prior to September I don't recall feeling overwhelmed with the number of posts on the ST movement thread. It was a great place to see the latest news that was affecting the stock and to hear people's reactions and insights.

I think as TSLA gained more exposure, so did this forum and also the ST movement thread. This apparently has attracted more people posting more. Starting several weeks ago it became kind of overwhelming reading through the thread because I would need to go through sometimes 15-20 pages (or more) in a day just to get a sense of the latest news. It also felt pointless sometimes to post a reply that took some time to write because it would be buried right away.

Another issue is I think the culture of the thread might have changed over the past few months. It now reminds me more of StockTwits in the sense that the thread has a lot of people chiming in quick thoughts and trades. StockTwits also faces a noise problem and they try to solve it by the "follow" (ie., Twitter) model where you follow people and make your own stream. But that's tough because you might miss out on some news that another person you're not following shares. That's why with StockTwits the groups around each stock are still popular (and with more noise around the popular stocks). To me I rarely visit Stocktwits because of the noise problem. I prefer TMC because of the more thoughtful posts. But over the past couple months, the ST thread has become like a mini Stocktwits for TSLA with all the noise that a Stocktwits-like culture promotes. (I personally wonder if the ST movement thread has attracted StockTwits users and they've brought what they've seen/do in Stocktwits over to the ST movement thread.)

As a software designer, I also wonder the role of this forum software in limiting our options and contributing to some of the problems people have shared (ie., difficult to keep up with pace of posts). Typical forum software has it's limitations (and strengths). Personally, I've been wanting to engage more deeply in real-time with the folks here (ie., text or video chat), forming deeper relationships, and contributing/receiving more.

I agree with Citizen-T that we openness and sharing are at the center of this community, and it seems to go against those values to discourage open posting. But I also agree with sleepyhead that the increased noise (vs signal) is likely discouraging some key posters that also provide a great deal of value to the community (ie., too much noise over signal can be very frustrating and time consuming).

Looking at it from another angle, perhaps I've contributed to confusion by posting long posts in the ST movement thread when maybe I should have posted them elsewhere (ie., separate thread or some other thread). I chose to post my longer posts in the ST movement thread because it felt like a special thread to me that was the most vibrant and most relevant to the content I wanted to share.

Anyway, again I don't have a solution. But before a solution, I think it's more important to try to understand the problem (if there is one) because once we see the problem clearly the solution will likely be quite obvious.

 

[Sunnyday]

I don't like this. Deciding what is valuable is very subjective. People keep invoking Curt's comment a while ago, but Curt was complaining about the options discussions going on here, that's all. Also he is just one voice, and no offense intended, but one that hasn't actually been around here very long.

Any piece of investment news or analysis that is important always gets its own thread. That is how this community has always bubbled up the most important information and broken off conversations that take on a life of their own. It doesn't make sense to me to separate the analysis of short term stock movements from the discussion of that analysis when the piece isn't large enough to stand on its own in its own thread.

Personally, I find it a much bigger turn off to see this community judge the value of what members are contributing like this. It sounds smug and leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Some of us have made a lot of good calls and a whole lot of money in TSLA; but let's not get too full of ourselves. Let's remember that we did that with an open and welcoming community, not by anointing prophets and exiling everyone else.

Looking back on the history of this thread you'll see that we had days where we cheered together; days where we took turns taunting the shorts; we've had far too many days like today where we shared in one another's fear and failure, and even some where we nearly panicked. Through it all we've always come here to this thread to share in our triumphs or to seek comfort, advice, and maybe even some shoulders to cry on.

As always, I'll respect the decisions our moderators make, but as someone who's been around from the days when there was only one investment thread and entire days could go by without a single post, I just have to say that this doesn't feel like it maintains the spirit which has (at least in my mind) made this community unmatched in the world when it comes to profiting on the short term moves in TSLA.

In short, I respectfully disagree with the direction some are trying to push this thread.

P. S. The news out of Germany is a big deal and if it gets picked up it will move the stock. Perfect timing.

+1 Since this is the short term thread, I welcome posts on options, options strategies, going long, going short, news, speculation. I even welcome feelings. If someone's feeling confident or less confident or uncertain, that's all interesting sentiment to me, especially when someone shifts. Psychology matters. Even though I'm a long term investor and rarely trade, the folks who have their eyes on the short term are often the ones who dig up the nuggets that drive the long term.

 

[100thMonkey]

I don't like this. Deciding what is valuable is very subjective. People keep invoking Curt's comment a while ago, but Curt was complaining about the options discussions going on here, that's all. Also he is just one voice, and no offense intended, but one that hasn't actually been around here very long.

Any piece of investment news or analysis that is important always gets its own thread. That is how this community has always bubbled up the most important information and broken off conversations that take on a life of their own. It doesn't make sense to me to separate the analysis of short term stock movements from the discussion of that analysis when the piece isn't large enough to stand on its own in its own thread.

Personally, I find it a much bigger turn off to see this community judge the value of what members are contributing like this. It sounds smug and leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Some of us have made a lot of good calls and a whole lot of money in TSLA; but let's not get too full of ourselves. Let's remember that we did that with an open and welcoming community, not by anointing prophets and exiling everyone else.

Looking back on the history of this thread you'll see that we had days where we cheered together; days where we took turns taunting the shorts; we've had far too many days like today where we shared in one another's fear and failure, and even some where we nearly panicked. Through it all we've always come here to this thread to share in our triumphs or to seek comfort, advice, and maybe even some shoulders to cry on.

As always, I'll respect the decisions our moderators make, but as someone who's been around from the days when there was only one investment thread and entire days could go by without a single post, I just have to say that this doesn't feel like it maintains the spirit which has (at least in my mind) made this community unmatched in the world when it comes to profiting on the short term moves in TSLA.

In short, I respectfully disagree with the direction some are trying to push this thread.

P. S. The news out of Germany is a big deal and if it gets picked up it will move the stock. Perfect timing.

+1 my two cents is that now that "the whole world is watching", it's to be expected that the noise to signal ratio is going to go down somewhat with more off hand comments and newbie fears/enthusiasm. keeping the thread on topic is important and the job ultimately of moderators, but trying to judge the worthiness of a post based on quality of content is a loosing battle, IMHO. I've watched this cycle play out in other types of forums before, trying too hard to control quality of content and favor some posts/posters stifles participation and tends to kill a topic. the best thing anyone can do, IMHO, is try to model a level of participation that one believes reflects integrity and hope it inspires more of the same in others.

 

[DaveT]

As a software designer, I also wonder the role of this forum software in limiting our options and contributing to some of the problems people have shared (ie., difficult to keep up with pace of posts). Typical forum software has it's limitations (and strengths).

I was just talking about this with my wife tonight and she shares the sentiment that the ST movement thread is overwhelming in # posts and difficult to follow in recent weeks. She shared this idea:
- add "vote up" buttons to each reply
- users can "vote up" replies that contain important news items, comments, etc.
- users can select their view of replies to be "ALL" or "IMPORTANT". "ALL" shows all replies (like how it shows currently). "IMPORTANT" shows just the replies that have been voted up.
- if a user wants a quick view of the "important" replies in the ST movement thread they can select the "important view." If they have more time and want to read all the replies, then they can select "ALL" view.

This way, we can let people post whatever they want. But we can also crowdsource the filtering of the replies to save time for those who can't read every single reply and just want to read the more important ones.

 

[FANGO]

Citizen-T, I'm with you and Theshadows on this one. And bonnie, and everyone else.

Ever since that other thread started, I feel like half the posts in this thread are complaints about how things don't belong in this thread. Something which definitely doesn't belong in this thread is a post which contributes nothing more than a complaint about how another post doesn't belong in this thread.

If this thread isn't for prices people are buying/thinking of buying at, what is? That's the very essence of short term price movements. How is this even in question?



________


To get back on topic, I would love this Germany news to move the stock, but oddly I sort of don't think it will. I feel like for some reason this won't get traction. The smart money, i.e. us, will use it to our advantage, but I think it will take some time for everyone else to pick up on it. Then when it gets reiterated in the earnings call, that's when the market will pick up on the lack of battery supply constraints, realistic timeline for Gen III, etc.

That said I still think it's going up tomorrow (as it did 2 points at the end of the day) and put a bunch of money in it to fit that belief. Would have put in more if I weren't at the razor edge of my buying power already.

 

[brianman]

Some of us have made a lot of good calls and a whole lot of money in TSLA

And some good puts too.

- - - Updated - - -

As a software designer, I also wonder the role of this forum software in limiting our options and contributing to some of the problems people have shared (ie., difficult to keep up with pace of posts). Typical forum software has it's limitations (and strengths). Personally, I've been wanting to engage more deeply in real-time with the folks here (ie., text or video chat), forming deeper relationships, and contributing/receiving more.

I think the thread title is too generic. As titled it's destined to be 1000s of pages.

Two paths as I see it:
1. Rely on mod/mods to tease out individual topics after most of the dust has settled (which is the model we're apparently using mostly these days).
2. Somehow restrict content additions to broadly titled threads like this one. Perhaps socially (with mod followup) or technically (via forum software settings) limit posts on this thread to ones that introduce timely topics via a link to a new thread.

An example:

Approach 1
1. Elon speaks in Antartica about whatever and uses the word Tesla at least once.
2. People discuss the topic of Elon's Antartica speech.
3. People discuss the appetizers at the speech.
4. People discuss the impact on the stock.
5. People discuss the impact of 1,2,3,4 on the thread.
6. People chastise each other for doing the wrong thing in this thread.
7. Mods tease out 1,2,3,4,5,6 into other threads.

Approach 2
1. Elon speaks in Antartica about whatever and uses the word Tesla at least once.
2. Ten people post a link to a new thread titled "Elon speaks in Antartica on 2013/10/22" in this thread.
3. Discussion directly, indirectly, and barely related to the speech and event continues in the ten threads from #2.
4. Mods merge the ten threads from #2 into one thread.

I'm not sure which is better, but I think those are the two most straightforward choices.

 

[Norse]

Lets get done with this now. Could we have a "Daily news and megaposts" thread? Then everone can see the important things and we could use this one to chat about it and for everything else?

 

[sleepyhead]

I'm not sure if I'm seeing the problem or solution clearly but I'll share my two cents.

Prior to September I don't recall feeling overwhelmed with the number of posts on the ST movement thread. It was a great place to see the latest news that was affecting the stock and to hear people's reactions and insights.

I think as TSLA gained more exposure, so did this forum and also the ST movement thread. This apparently has attracted more people posting more. Starting several weeks ago it became kind of overwhelming reading through the thread because I would need to go through sometimes 15-20 pages (or more) in a day just to get a sense of the latest news. It also felt pointless sometimes to post a reply that took some time to write because it would be buried right away.

Another issue is I think the culture of the thread might have changed over the past few months. It now reminds me more of StockTwits in the sense that the thread has a lot of people chiming in quick thoughts and trades. StockTwits also faces a noise problem and they try to solve it by the "follow" (ie., Twitter) model where you follow people and make your own stream. But that's tough because you might miss out on some news that another person you're not following shares. That's why with StockTwits the groups around each stock are still popular (and with more noise around the popular stocks). To me I rarely visit Stocktwits because of the noise problem. I prefer TMC because of the more thoughtful posts. But over the past couple months, the ST thread has become like a mini Stocktwits for TSLA with all the noise that a Stocktwits-like culture promotes. (I personally wonder if the ST movement thread has attracted StockTwits users and they've brought what they've seen/do in Stocktwits over to the ST movement thread.)

As a software designer, I also wonder the role of this forum software in limiting our options and contributing to some of the problems people have shared (ie., difficult to keep up with pace of posts). Typical forum software has it's limitations (and strengths). Personally, I've been wanting to engage more deeply in real-time with the folks here (ie., text or video chat), forming deeper relationships, and contributing/receiving more.

I agree with Citizen-T that we openness and sharing are at the center of this community, and it seems to go against those values to discourage open posting. But I also agree with sleepyhead that the increased noise (vs signal) is likely discouraging some key posters that also provide a great deal of value to the community (ie., too much noise over signal can be very frustrating and time consuming).

Looking at it from another angle, perhaps I've contributed to confusion by posting long posts in the ST movement thread when maybe I should have posted them elsewhere (ie., separate thread or some other thread). I chose to post my longer posts in the ST movement thread because it felt like a special thread to me that was the most vibrant and most relevant to the content I wanted to share.

Anyway, again I don't have a solution. But before a solution, I think it's more important to try to understand the problem (if there is one) because once we see the problem clearly the solution will likely be quite obvious.

I was just talking about this with my wife tonight and she shares the sentiment that the ST movement thread is overwhelming in # posts and difficult to follow in recent weeks. She shared this idea:
- add "vote up" buttons to each reply
- users can "vote up" replies that contain important news items, comments, etc.
- users can select their view of replies to be "ALL" or "IMPORTANT". "ALL" shows all replies (like how it shows currently). "IMPORTANT" shows just the replies that have been voted up.
- if a user wants a quick view of the "important" replies in the ST movement thread they can select the "important view." If they have more time and want to read all the replies, then they can select "ALL" view.

This way, we can let people post whatever they want. But we can also crowdsource the filtering of the replies to save time for those who can't read every single reply and just want to read the more important ones.

I agree with you DaveT, but your posts are already lost in this thread and nobody is going to read them. I like the idea of voting up posts, and to give the readers and option to either see all, or see most popular posts first; and easy back and forth button would be nice. I can see issues with using such a system as well.

I think that there is no good solution. I liked the idea of starting a short term social chat thread, but it seems like nobody else likes it. We could start a new short term analysis thread, but then we are going to be making duplicate posts and that thread as well as this one.

A lot of members here are fighting to find a way to keep a thread with high quality short term discussions, but then again a lot of members are against it and want to keep the free flow of information going.

We are fighting a losing battle DaveT, and there is not enough will power to do this. Wenche just suggested people use the social chat thread and got blasted by a handful of posters immediately.

In the end we are going to lose this fight. As Tesla becomes more popular and TSLA goes even higher up in price, there will be more and more people joining this forum; which is the goal of every forum. Then we will be going through 100 pages of posts in this thread daily.

IMO this is what will happen: In the beginning everybody will be making money as TSLA goes up. Everybody will start playing options as they see other are making big returns. In the beginning it will work great, and encourage newbies to take on additional risk. All of the quality posters will stop participating in this forum as much, leaving lower quality analysis. Eventually the market will turn and TSLA will enter an extended period of decline. A lot of money will be lost and many will even get wiped out, and nobody is going to see it coming due to the irrational exuberance that is slowly kicking in. This is inevitable in my opinion.

The only real solution would be to make this forum private or a paid forum, but you know that will never happen.

I have already given up posting in this thread (as much as I used to) as have many others.

 

[Clemsons2k]

While I'm very new here and probably one of the people the self proclaimed important posters are refering to, I think that if theres to be a thread dedicated to mega-posts and the like that it should be seperate of this thread. Its already cluttered up with a lot of information and I think it works the way it is right now. It would be much easier to start a "high quality" thread rather than try to salvage this one.

Lets all just not forget that everyone was an amateur at one point or another, so try not to be so condescending towards us

 

[sleepyhead]

While I'm very new here and probably one of the people the self proclaimed important posters are refering to, I think that if theres to be a thread dedicated to mega-posts and the like that it should be seperate of this thread. Its already cluttered up with a lot of information and I think it works the way it is right now. It would be much easier to start a "high quality" thread rather than try to salvage this one.

Lets all just not forget that everyone was an amateur at one point or another, so try not to be so condescending towards us

No one is being condescending. We all understand that there is a need to chat about TSLA in real time, but at the same time are trying to find a solution to keep some of the quality posters to come back to post their ideas.

It is more a discussion, but it is hard to point out what we are referring to without actually using any examples.

 

[Citizen-T]

I understand that there is a signal versus noise problem. I just don't like the solution, or at least the attitude with which some are approaching it. I think we can come up with something better.

 

[Clemsons2k]

No one is being condescending. We all understand that there is a need to chat about TSLA in real time, but at the same time are trying to find a solution to keep some of the quality posters to come back to post their ideas.

It is more a discussion, but it is hard to point out what we are referring to without actually using any examples.

I understand you all's point. This thread does jump up in post count rather quickly. Important information may get lost or drowned out. But I know that I read every post and I can tell whats important and whats not by reading the information contained in each post.