General Discussion: 2018 Investor Roundtable

[Boomer19]

FYI - Professor Scott Galloway from NYU Stern (usual purveyor of great information) posted this hit piece-esque video on Tesla earlier today:

It includes, among other things, an executive departure list compiled by Jim Chanos, a comparison of the Q1 earnings call to the infamous Enron call, and the well-refuted claim that Teslas that run on coal emit more carbon than ICE.

There's no reason to suspect ulterior motives, he and his team seem to simply have fallen victim to the Tesla misinformation machine. I wrote him an email (as did quite a few others, I suspect) refuting some of his points and he, to my pleasant surprise, replied within minutes saying they messed up on this one and that they'd post a follow up.

One battle at a time

wow, nice post man

 

[Boomer19]

Scenario: I own Jan 2020 calls strike 700.

Question: If buyout - to take private - came in for $800/share — would I sell the option immediately or take possession of the shares immediately and net the delta (minus cost of of options) or would I risk losing the delta if the privatization occurred prior to me taking action?

Sorry to ask this; Thanks

well immediately the stock would go to ~800, and if it was a done deal but the effective date was at some point infuture it would trade around that number until the offe payout ($ exchange). in meantime you could sell your options for ~100 premium or exercise then and sell the stock at ~800. or hold options at which point at offer payout, occ (options clearing corp) would cash settle the options based upon strike, in your case you’d net the $100 diff

 

[Boomer19]

This is an annualized rate, correct? Isit stable, or what is the average you get for a year? I was thinking if it makes any sense to bother or not. @KnowLittle

pretty sure it’s over the life of the loan, not just an annual rate - but i’m not expert at this topic. i can try to find out for you.

 

[KnowLittle]

This is an annualized rate, correct? Isit stable, or what is the average you get for a year? I was thinking if it makes any sense to bother or not. @KnowLittle

It varies a great deal, but it is 'free' money and adds up. I switched to IB for their loan program during the Solar City merger when the lending rates were much higher (maybe coming back?) & IB had cheaper trades than where I was at (etrade).

(It is annualized -- calc'd per day (weekends count))

 

[Boomer19]

It varies a great deal, but it is 'free' money and adds up. I switched to IB for their loan program during the Solar City merger when the lending rates were much higher (maybe coming back?) & IB had cheaper trades than where I was at (etrade).

(It is annualized -- calc'd per day (weekends count))

thanks!

 

[Curt Renz]

Video of Elon meeting with Mayor Emanuel today for the official announcement of The Boring Company underground high-speed transit system planned to run between downtown Chicago and O'Hare Airport. The self-driving pods would be made by Tesla.

 

[BioSehnsucht]

Informative, but disappointing.

'Tobler bought a roof of around 2,000 square foot, with 40 percent of installed tiles solar. That costs around $50,000 once the federal solar Investment Tax Credit is factored in, and it produces around 9.85 kilowatts of power — which Tesla told Tobler was “the biggest system we have available.”

'“My understanding is that with the Tesla solar roof, we can’t get a system bigger than this anyway,” Tobler says.

'If you were dreaming of blowing all your cash on a super-powerful solar roof, you’ll have to think again. Not that it would have been a particularly wise investment.'

I am very disappointed, since I was dreaming of blowing a huge wad of cash on a super-powerful solar roof. I guess I'll just have to get conventional solar panels instead.

Surely Tesla should want the "As much solar as possible, money is no object" market? Hopefully they'll unveil the Solar Roof equivalent of the Roadster 2.0 soon...

It's not uncommon to see residential installations limited by local utilities to something in the neighborhood of 10kW peak (+- a few kw depending on the location). It's probably a little bit of greed (trying to avoid paying you for all your excess power), a little bit of need of trying to avoid having to upgrade the grid etc - though generally even a 20kw system wouldn't put really any strain on the grid most places. Might also be some safety concerns about having that much power running around your roof etc. I don't know why, but at least it's been my experience that 10kw is around the max utilities want to permit.

 

[Mike Smith]

Entire Boring announcement:

 

[oneday]

I love the quote from the mayor. “It’s easy to be a critic or a cynic, but what jobs do those produce.”

 

[sdtslafan]

Very basic question from someone who doesn't know much about technicals..

Each day this massive rally continues, does it make it more likely or less likely that the stock will rise the next day?

 

[Curt Renz]

Very basic question from someone who doesn't know much about technicals..

Each day this massive rally continues, does it make it more likely or less likely that the stock will rise the next day?

The Wall Street saying is that "the trend is your friend". With nothing else to go by, there can be some truth to that. I devote a couple of chapters to it in my book. Of course it works until it doesn't.

 

[Curt Renz]

I can’t wait to ride one of those high-speed Tesla pods in the Boring tunnel between downtown Chicago and O’Hare. It may make up for the closing fifty years ago of Chicago's Riverview Park and its Bobs roller coaster.

 

[Oil4AsphaultOnly]

"As of May 7, 2018, Musk reportedly owned 33.6 million shares of Tesla"

The Top Tesla Shareholders

That is less than 20%. Plus a few more he recently purchased.

Oof. Totally forgot about the dilution!

 

[lklundin]

The Wall Street saying is that "the trend is your friend". With nothing else to go by, there can be some truth to that. I devote a couple of chapters to it in my book. Of course it works until it doesn't.

The strength of any given scientific theory lies in its ability to accurately predict the outcome of a given, relevant experiment.

A very strong theory is for example the collection of physical laws governing electronics (Ohm's law etc.), that can predict the performance of an electronic circuit basically down to the accuracy of the measument.

Somewhat further down one finds short and medium range weather forecasts, that are often but not always correct (due to inherent limitations stemming from e.g. the chaotic nature of the birth of tropical storms).

Much further down and close to complete nonsense such as astrology, one finds the predictions of stock prices based on technical stock analysis (which is different from merely describing past performance such as volatility).

Just like the age-old idea that the movement of heavenly bodies (not counting tidal forces) influences Earthly events, there is a basically endless set of rules, of which one always can explain the past performance of a stock price. But when it comes to reliably predicting a future stock price from a technical analysis, qualifiers as 'tend', 'expect', 'typically' and 'likely' are all over the place. And over any useful span of time and set of stocks, no one can point to any significant, reliable stock price predictions based on technical analysis.

While astrology really has no connection to Earthly events, the technical analysis can appear at least superficially relevant for future stock prices.

The reason why the predictive strength of technical analysis is limited to the point of being useless, is that any mechanism that could cause a stock price to move in a given direction is canceled out by changes in supply and demand, when the market tries to cash in on that mechanism causing an equally sized movement in the opposite direction.

And just like horoscopes, stock price predictions based on technical analysis can still be entertaining reading.

Let the flame war ensue...

 

[UnknownSoldier]

Very basic question from someone who doesn't know much about technicals..

Each day this massive rally continues, does it make it more likely or less likely that the stock will rise the next day?

"It works until it doesn't" is the true mantra of Wall Street.

So a rising share price is indicative of the share price continuing to rise until the day it isn't.

I'm just holding on for dear life here, if you're buying into this surge you're a braver man/woman/alien invader than I am.

 

[Yggdrasill]

My view on electric Tesla competitors, with expected first deliveries, volume and closest Tesla model:

2018, Jaguar i-Pace, ~20k/year, Model Y
2019, Audi e-tron, ~30k/year, Model X
2019, Mercedes EQC, ~30k/year (?), Model Y
2020, Audi e-tron Sportback, ~30k/year, Model S
2020, (Volvo) Polestar 2, ~20k/year, Model 3
2020, BMW iX3, ~50k/year (?), Model Y
2020, Porsche Taycan, ~20k/year, Model S

It adds up to about 210k vehicles per year - less than what Tesla will produce this year. Especially the Model 3 has very little competition on the horizon.

Just to add market share in the different segments in 2020:

Model S, 50k/year vs others, 50k/year: 50% market share
Model X, 50k/year vs others, 30k/year: 63.5% market share
Model 3, 480k/year vs others, 20k/year: 96% market share
Model Y, 250k/year (?) vs others, 100k/year: 71.4% market share

 

[neroden]

So I don't normally worry about executive departures, because it just means Tesla has hired someone else to do that job.

But... Fred at Electrek lists a *lot* of Service executives who have left or been fired in recent years, and the thing is, I can't seem to find a Tesla Service executive who's still *there*. Who's running Service? It does no good to have no leader of the department -- Musk certainly isn't handling it himself, he's got too much else going on.

Tesla’s VP of worldwide service leaves the automaker

If someone can figure out who's the head of service now, it would be helpful.

 

[mongo]

So I don't normally worry about executive departures, because it just means Tesla has hired someone else to do that job.

But... Fred at Electrek lists a *lot* of Service executives who have left or been fired in recent years, and the thing is, I can't seem to find a Tesla Service executive who's still *there*. Who's running Service? It does no good to have no leader of the department -- Musk certainly isn't handling it himself, he's got too much else going on.

Tesla’s VP of worldwide service leaves the automaker

If someone can figure out who's the head of service now, it would be helpful.

Perhaps they went with decentralized authority, so that service center managers can get things done directly (within some corporate guidance)?

Likely oversimplified view:
What benefit does Fremont based management of SvC provide? They don't work on the cars. Number and, location of centers needs to be handled, but that in infrastructure. Jon was a great POC for problems, but that was jumping to the VP because the people on the ground were not getting it done (for whatever reason).

 

[jelloslug]

Very basic question from someone who doesn't know much about technicals..

Each day this massive rally continues, does it make it more likely or less likely that the stock will rise the next day?

Maybe

 

[Yggdrasill]

Maybe

I would actually say "yes" to that question.