General Discussion: 2018 Investor Roundtable

[Unpilot]

I'm answering in the General Thread since we're getting close to market open.

Not enough information to answer, IMO.

For example, for me, no. While I was working my earnings meant my tax bracket was high. Had I taken IRA money and moved it to a Roth IRA I would've paid high taxes. I retired early (well before I can draw Social Security) and now am in total control of my income by investments. Therefore, now I can withdraw what makes sense to keep me in a much lower tax bracket. This year my purchase of a Model 3 and subsequent 7500 EV tax credit means I took one IRA and converted it to Roth IRA since I can take advantage of lower tax bracket + the tax credit. Also, keeping my income low gets me lower health insurance premiums off the MarketPlace.

In other words, many things involved and to consider when making this type of move.

Mike

Thanks!

 

[brian45011]

It appears they CAN! https://www.optionseducation.org/re.../page-assets/corporaterepurchase-11-2001.aspx

The safe harbor is for the corporation to disclose such trades in accordance with Rule 10b-5:

The SEC takes the position that Rule 10b-5 also applies to a firm buying its own shares.58

58 See Mark J. Loewenstein & William K.S. Wang, The Corporation as Insider Trader, 30 DEL. J. CORP. L. 45, 70-72 (2005).
​

https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=7689&context=penn_law_review

Tesla's policy (like nearly every other corporation's) clearly includes derivatives (options):

Stock Transactions

Insider Trading Policy, Share Pledging and Rule 10b5-1 Trading Plans

Tesla has an insider trading policy that prohibits all of our directors, officers and employees from, among other things, engaging in short sales, hedging of stock ownership positions, and transactions involving derivative securities relating to Tesla’s common stock.

The Board has a policy that limits pledging of Company stock by our directors and executive officers. Pursuant to this policy, directors and executive officers may pledge their Company stock (exclusive of options, warrants, restricted stock units or other rights to purchase stock) as collateral for loans and investments, provided that the maximum aggregate loan or investment amount collateralized by such pledged stock does not exceed twenty-five percent (25%) of the total value of the pledged stock. Tesla management monitors compliance with this policy by reviewing and, if necessary, reporting to the Board or its committees the extent to which any officer or director has pledged shares of Company stock. Our Board believes this share pledging policy to be in the best interests of the Company and our stockholders by providing directors and executive officers flexibility in financial planning without having to rely on large cash compensation or the sale of Company shares, thus keeping their interests well aligned with those of our stockholders, while also mitigating risk exposure to the Company.
​

tsla-def14a_20180606.htm

 

[brian45011]

Yup, it's legal. Before the DOT.BOMB bust (circa 1999), Microsoft was making about 10% of it's profits through trading Options on its own shares.

Even if accurate, two decades is a regulatory eon

 

[Intl Professor]

Since it's weekend and things are kinda slow, this tickled my brain a bit and I would like to see the response of your bigger brains here.

A New Quantum Paradox Flags Errors in Our View of Reality

We spend a lot of time here criticizing markets as irrational, especially regarding Tesla's stock price. What if there is question of even more fundamental problems about reality? After reading this I wonder if the requirement to avoid solipsism is really required. Is it possible after death we just wake up and realize life is just a good/bad dream? I know, Philip Dick and Socrates were there already. Also, there is some hope for the many worlds hypothesis—perhaps that is just a flipped version of solipsism.

 

[RiverCard]

I'm having trouble figuring out what you're arguing FOR @RiverCard. Conservation in human activities rather than sanctimonious contrived "environmentalism."

My best interpretation is that you see no difference between burning wood and burning fossil fuels - that they are equally to blame for the increase in carbon in the atmosphere and they are equal problems that need resolution. Is that it?

Yes, it was in response to "I agree about personal actions, having lived most of my life totally fossil fuel free, even to the point of cooking with firewood, on sailboats." Burning a processed "clean" fuel like propane or butane to cook in the open would be preferable since it not only is likely more efficient because of relative heat values but also nearly eliminates the discharge of soot/particulates.

As I said before, I agree with you that chemically CO2 is CO2 (modern or ancient). The problem isn't that CO2 is CO2, or that CO2 is bad. CO2 isn't bad, any more than H2O is bad. The problem is that the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is on the high side (measured against geologic history), and more importantly, the increase in the CO2 concentration has happened on a time scale measurable in human terms instead of geologic terms. And its still increasing. That increase is primarily coming from the mining of long buried hydrocarbons and burning them, rather than cutting down forests and burning those.

It's not helpful either that large swaths of rain and other forests have been increasing leveled since it curtails the forests' absorption of atmospheric CO2 and release of O2. The felled trees are no longer generally used as fuel (although many are just burned to dispose of them) but the land is cleared for pastures, raising crops, and human residential developments. Humans and the mammals they consume act in reverse of photosynthesis--consuming O2 while inhaling and exhaling breath with a 100x higher CO2 concentration than in the air breathed in. There are trade-offs in all human activities, and population growth is increasingly stressing Nature; nonetheless, prudent use of natural resources has progressively provided abundant efficient, inexpensive energy while improving the health and comfort of most in developed nations.


H2O at too high of a concentration is also bad for humans.

No argument. Water vapor is much more prevalent than CO2 in the atmosphere, is a stronger GHG, and a major influence on weather/climate.

Regarding soot / particulates, that too is an issue. But its a change of topic / change of argument relative to carbon emissions. I am in full agreement that the soot from burning stuff, whether wood / biomass, or fossil fuels, is also an issue. As best I can tell, and without this different topic getting too big, the details of those issues vary depending on what you're burning. Burning wood creates soot / particulate problems that are different from burning coal, that are different from burning natural gas, that are different from burning other various grades of crude oil. Is it the soot / particulates from burning stuff that is really what you're arguing about?

If I could, I would delete my initial comment and all subsequent responses since the topic has gone off the rails and its un-related to the value of Tesla as an investment.

 

[Unpilot]

Since it's weekend and things are kinda slow, this tickled my brain a bit and I would like to see the response of your bigger brains here.

A New Quantum Paradox Flags Errors in Our View of Reality

We spend a lot of time here criticizing markets as irrational, especially regarding Tesla's stock price. What if there is question of even more fundamental problems about reality? After reading this I wonder if the requirement to avoid solipsism is really required. Is it possible after death we just wake up and realize life is just a good/bad dream? I know, Philip Dick and Socrates were there already. Also, there is some hope for the many worlds hypothesis—perhaps that is just a flipped version of solipsism.

Um...yeah..I think...maybe...or both?

 

[winfield100]

Since it's weekend and things are kinda slow, this tickled my brain a bit and I would like to see the response of your bigger brains here.

A New Quantum Paradox Flags Errors in Our View of Reality

We spend a lot of time here criticizing markets as irrational, especially regarding Tesla's stock price. What if there is question of even more fundamental problems about reality? After reading this I wonder if the requirement to avoid solipsism is really required. Is it possible after death we just wake up and realize life is just a good/bad dream? I know, Philip Dick and Socrates were there already. Also, there is some hope for the many worlds hypothesis—perhaps that is just a flipped version of solipsism.

PKD "the world jones made", "the golden man", sliding doors

 

[ZsoZso]

Since it's weekend and things are kinda slow, this tickled my brain a bit and I would like to see the response of your bigger brains here.

A New Quantum Paradox Flags Errors in Our View of Reality

We spend a lot of time here criticizing markets as irrational, especially regarding Tesla's stock price. What if there is question of even more fundamental problems about reality? After reading this I wonder if the requirement to avoid solipsism is really required. Is it possible after death we just wake up and realize life is just a good/bad dream? I know, Philip Dick and Socrates were there already. Also, there is some hope for the many worlds hypothesis—perhaps that is just a flipped version of solipsism.

I'll just stick with the wisdom of my T-shirt:

 

[JRP3]

Is it possible after death we just wake up and realize life is just a good/bad dream?

Sounds like wishful thinking and an inability to accept the limitations of one's own existence.

 

[Intl Professor]

I'll just stick with the wisdom of my T-shirt:

I can't open the image and the suspense is killing me!

 

[ZsoZso]

I can't open the image and the suspense is killing me!

It says:

Science is real
(except for quantum physics, that *sugar* is witchcraft)

 

[Artful Dodger]

Is it possible after death we just wake up and realize life is just a good/bad dream? I know, Philip Dick and Socrates were there already. Also, there is some hope for the many worlds hypothesis—perhaps that is just a flipped version of solipsism.

Aha! Classic example in quantum mechanics of the "Somebody Else's Problem Field"

 

[Intl Professor]

I'm old enough to easily forget things I once said and now am too dim-witted to untangle what I meant before. I used to say, for example, "reality is just an hallucination which is socially acceptable," or was it "consciousness is an hallucination which is socially acceptable?" Then I read a sociologist on the social construction of reality which was helpful and comforting to know that others with more talent had explored the field.

I've been worried about observer involvement in social studies since the sixties when writing my master's thesis touched on the self-fulfilling and abnegating prophecies, advocating an uncertainty principle in social studies. A profound article by Bernard d'Espagnat

https://static.scientificamerican.com/sciam/assets/media/pdf/197911_0158.pdf

with some authority has this head note: "The doctrine that the world is made up of objects whose existence is independent of human consciousness turns out to be in conflict with quantum mechanics and with facts established by experiment" [italics in original.] The prophecies are just extreme examples.

Fold in here what some string theorists believe: the eleventh dimension is provided by the many worlds hypothesis which I assert is cumulative solipsism. So we are back to Keynes' depiction of the stock market, just like a high school popularity contest. Insofar as there is rationality it is always ex post, and sometimes only in the long run, or successfully marketed as rational. That's why I like a fundamental analysis of Tesla, yet it is hard for others to accept. It is becoming harder and harder to down the product or deny its gross margin, demand, and sales. That consensus reality is becoming clearer and justifies higher price for the stock.

 

[Intl Professor]

Sounds like wishful thinking and an inability to accept the limitations of one's own existence.

Probably so.

Following on Buddha's assertion, "all I know is based on personal experience," the after life is probably like the pre-life, a void. A Shirley MacLaine I am not.

 

[jhm]

Since it's weekend and things are kinda slow, this tickled my brain a bit and I would like to see the response of your bigger brains here.

A New Quantum Paradox Flags Errors in Our View of Reality

We spend a lot of time here criticizing markets as irrational, especially regarding Tesla's stock price. What if there is question of even more fundamental problems about reality? After reading this I wonder if the requirement to avoid solipsism is really required. Is it possible after death we just wake up and realize life is just a good/bad dream? I know, Philip Dick and Socrates were there already. Also, there is some hope for the many worlds hypothesis—perhaps that is just a flipped version of solipsism.

I often forget measurements I've made and try to reconstruct them from what's left to observe. So I could easily be Alice, Bob and their friends all in one person.

 

[jhm]

Tesla, thy price is $360.

(Oh, sorry, wrong thread.)

 

[winfield100]

Tesla, thy price is $360.

(Oh, sorry, wrong thread.)

so, what is the collapse of the quantum wave function of the TSLA price?
This observer, me, wants it to collapse _higher_

 

[defc0n]

so, what is the collapse of the quantum wave function of the TSLA price?
This observer, me, wants it to collapse _higher_

The Bohmian in me says that the TSLA price is already predetermined without randomness.

 

[Curt Renz]

Reuters through Nasdaq - this morning: Tesla readies second US dollar auto ABS deal

 

[Dreadnought]

Reuters through Nasdaq - this morning: Tesla readies second US dollar auto ABS deal

"NEW YORK, Dec 10 (IFR) - Tesla is looking to sell its second ever US dollar auto asset-backed bond deal, a US$837.39m trade that will be rated by Moody's, according to a lead bank.
...
Citigroup and Deutsche Bank are managing the sale of the securitization, which is expected to be rated Aaa to Ba3 across the tranches by Moody's."

Is this enough of a nudge for Moody's to update their overall Tesla credit rating?