Short-Term TSLA Price Movements - 2013

[drinkerofkoolaid]

I'd be willing to bet that a bunch of new shorts jumped on board when Tesla was at the bottom of the channel and that at least 20 million shares are still sold short. Additionally, I agree with the point MarkH makes about about Tesla owners holding Tesla stock. I'd be shocked if less than 15 percent of the float is held by either prospective Tesla owners, people who own a Tesla, or people who are long Elon Musk. None of the big holders have overweight positions in Tesla. Anyone who thinks Tesla should be valued based on 2014 earning, or that this is the top is making a big mistake. Let's go!

 

[hoang51]

Nasdaq official closing price is $161.87, not $161.839 as previously stated. Oh so closeeeee. Who bought/sold at $161.87????? Gyped the big funds of one day less.

 

[TSLAopt]

I'd be willing to bet that a bunch of new shorts jumped on board when Tesla was at the bottom of the channel and that at least 20 million shares are still sold short. Additionally, I agree with the point MarkH makes about about Tesla owners holding Tesla stock. I'd be shocked if less than 15 percent of the float is held by either prospective Tesla owners, people who own a Tesla, or people who are long Elon Musk. None of the big holders have overweight positions in Tesla. Anyone who thinks Tesla should be valued based on 2014 earning, or that this is the top is making a big mistake. Let's go!

Just a reminder to all that we get new updated short stats released on Monday by Nasdaq at the close based on the amount of shares shorted as of the end of trading today on Monday Aug 12th (for settlement Aug 15th). I would say the last two days will have changed that number downwards by a couple million shares at least with some short covering here, but my guess is this number would be pretty accurate otherwise.

 

[kevin99]

Short-Term TSLA Price Movements

No doubt that CNBC Video help the 2 days rally. I think what people love to see is the work ethics of Elon. Not only he's Technically brilliant And business savvy, He also show hard working by having a desk in the factory.

What investors wouldn't love a CEO like Elon? As one comment in a YouTube video, a young guy is willing to "take a bullet for him".

This is the side of the Elon we take for granted. But it is the first time it comes public.

 

[gene]

Any stock analysts price in the emotional value of a stock? If they price only by rational value then even $40 was questionable as recent as April.

Tesla is game-changing, it is a revolution in transport happening in front of our eyes, it is the future, clear as day, to more and more each passing hour.

Every 500 new buyers each week, well they just dropped at least 70K on a car, and if they can do that they got a few bucks in their portfolio to play with, they see how Tesla (car and company) operates, they put that dough in the stock. 500 per week. And many regular folks right here in the USA don't know what Tesla is, still. 500 per week, and all their friends and neighbors, spreading the word. With current paltry awareness in EU and AP, for now.


High School kids are begging their parents to open trading accounts so they can just purchase a few shares, because they want to be in on this. College kids have Elon Musk posters on their walls next to Einstein. Regardless of anyone's opinion of whether deserved or not, this is happening.

A few players hold a large percentage of the shares. Alot of others are buying and holding for the long term no matter the nosebleed valuations.

They want to see this happen. They want to see America be #1 in automobiles again, which it hasn't been for most of our lifetimes. It's like fanning the flame, setting more and more kindling around around the spark because they don't want to see it extinguished.

How many boxy Volvo's were sold from the 80's onward solely because of the safety reputation? Tesla owns that demo now, and the Model S is a beauty.

Young, old, male, female, rich, poor, there is NO demographic that doesn't want this car, and the ideas behind it.

The stock is not really a stock, it is more like a Kickstarter campaign to get us off of fossil fuels and onto renewables. Each stock certificate should come with a button that says "I'm with Elon!"

We quadrupled our modest investment in the four months since April when we bought in. I wanted to sell at 120. My wife refused. She wants to ride it all the way - not to riches, mind you, but to success. We're with Elon.

Nicely said. I agree.

 

[anticitizen13.7]

all this cold feet talk as me worried. my friend just sold his 200 shares today that he has held since the 30s. if all of us long term bulls start bailing like this, then yes the stock is going to just start getting more weak. i will admit i sold a few of my small potion calls today, but i am still holding on to my largest tsla holding. if we do get a pull back into the 150s i will be sure to buy those small calls back.

i made a similar play on facebook stock today as well.

If you're investing for the long haul, don't worry. I realize that the derivatives game does make the short term moves more important, but the actual shares you hold should do well regardless of the daily ups and downs.

 

[GJMcManus]

Long term you have to focus more on 6 month and year graphs.. As long as they are still generally going up, your good.. Long term investors can't look at 1 and 5 day graphs, you will get nauseous looking at the roller coaster..

 

[nursebee]

I love the short term price movements but am holding and have NO STOPS.

 

[Norse]

I really do not care if its to high. Other People have realised what we on this forum knows, and they want in on it! Nothing can stop this machine!

Musk got 100 000 more followers the last month or something, I bet alot of them have gotten the Stock.

 

[dmckinstry]

I love the short term price movements but am holding and have NO STOPS.

I have no stops, but do have limits. However, I keep adjusting them upward.

 

[Jhall118]

If you are long, then I agree that you shouldn't sell. You also are in the wrong thread

However, there is plenty of good reasons to be taking profits now if your position is more short-sighted. By all rational means the stock is overvalued. There WILL be delays and hiccups along the way. It will be a roller coaster to getting to Gen 3. Any bad news is going to be exaggerated in the stock price. Remember the bubble after earnings when everyone wishes they would have sold before it retreated and established a base? I see no news that is going to send the stock any higher anytime soon, so I am going to take some profits to buy on the dips before next quarter report.

A few people said that breaking through 160 would be a catalyst to launch to 170... but that didn't exactly happen. I know I am reading tea leaves here, but I see a repeat of last time.

Let's be realistic. The current valuation is already assuming stellar model S, X, and gen 3 production and margins.

 

[blakegallagher]

If you are long, then I agree that you shouldn't sell. You also are in the wrong thread

However, there is plenty of good reasons to be taking profits now if your position is more short-sighted. By all rational means the stock is overvalued. There WILL be delays and hiccups along the way. It will be a roller coaster to getting to Gen 3. Any bad news is going to be exaggerated in the stock price. Remember the bubble after earnings when everyone wishes they would have sold before it retreated and established a base? I see no news that is going to send the stock any higher anytime soon, so I am going to take some profits to buy on the dips before next quarter report.

A few people said that breaking through 160 would be a catalyst to launch to 170... but that didn't exactly happen. I know I am reading tea leaves here, but I see a repeat of last time.

Let's be realistic. The current valuation is already assuming stellar model S, X, and gen 3 production and margins.

I agree with all but the last sentence of your quote. I have sold my margin and sold enough of my options to have a healthy cash position in anticipation of a pullback. I have a sale order for 1/2 of my non core leaps that would of executed around 163 today. I will love it if we blow through 170 next week but will welcome a dip as a buying opportunity.

 

[Jhall118]

So, lets hypothetically say that next earnings report we see some sort of supply chain problem, and they have to adjust guidance to 21000 produced for the year.

This would virtually mean nothing to the big picture, but I think the stock price would swing below 160 on such news. To go above 180ish or even into the 200's I feel like we need something big, like a new battery factory, a big licensing deal, or something beyond the usual gen 3 news.

To put it another way, if I had 20 Billion dollars, I don't know if I would buy Tesla at this moment. There is just a lot that could happen in the next 5 years.

 

[austinEV]

I haven't written a long DaveT or sleepyhead style manifesto yet, and I find that I am inspired to do so this week.

I know this is the place for fretting about if Tesla is getting "toppy", but really, if you think the stock is overvalued adjust your position to match your personal beliefs. Yes, its objectively "overvalued" as any growth stock is, full stop.


Market cap:
Tesla: 19.7B
Linked In: 22.6B

Yeah GM has a market cap of 48B, but they also have 17B in debt (Ford has over 100B!) And enormous overhead, pension obligations and tiny profit margins. These companies are teetering, and their market cap is correspondingly low. When an enormous automaker like GM has just twice the market cap of an also-ran social media company, it means they are strangely cheap, not that TSLA is overvalued. I admit I had been struggling with "bubble" thoughts as well this summer. But now I am getting over it, ironically at a higher market cap. The truth is I wouldn't buy GM if you gave me a 50% off sale (and made me hold it) because I have zero confidence they will weather the next 10 years of global competition, even without upstart EV weirdos like TM complicating things.

Yes, future success is priced in to the stock. That is the function of a stock market, to weigh companies' value. Moderate to high probability of future success is real value, no need to feel guilty about it. If I believe that they can sell hundreds of thousands of Model E's in a few short years, at industry leading profit margins, I should have no problem valuing the stock highly now.

Here is my take on the argument from the "overvalued" crowd: A company should be valued on the products and sales it is making RIGHT NOW, and we should politely wait and see if sales and profits increase. When they do, we can all buy the stock together and it will rise it its new proper price. I for one plan to cut the line and buy early. Lots of other people are as well, and that is allowed.

I think the rise this week was due (credit to the person who posted it) to news in China about the store opening. It *could* be the mention of China causing people in the US and Europe to buy or buy more. I find it more likely that a bunch of Chinese people heard about it for the first time and bought in. Just because we TMC geeks know Elon Musk's interview schedule (and dating rumors!) doesn't mean everyone else does. 99.7% of the world has never even heard of TM. It seems that it has an unusually high uptake rate on people discovering it, learning about it, "getting it" and buying a 100 shares. And 0.1% of those people buy 50k of shares hoping it doubles to 100k so they can get a car. You cannot underestimate the unusual loyalty that can create in a stockholder.

In short 20B market cap worried me a few months ago. Now I think 40B is totally fine. And, markets have logic of their own, and might well overvalue something. So, I wouldn't be shocked if you told me that at the end of 2015 TM was worth 70B, in frothy anticipation of the Model E. (yes, in that scenario battery constraints have been resolved. I actually have confidence in the invisible hand creating supply to match the demand without miracles) Is 70B too high for a company making just Model S and Model X? Yep. Is it better to have been clever and sold at 160? No.

There will come a price between now and 200 that will make me so nervous that I will have all sorts of cash and hedges. It is certainly not 160.

PS: I do trade on short term technicals. I called the downswing last week and had some puts that cut my losses in half. That is not the same thing as thinking the stock is overvalued.

 

[Lessmog]

Hi. I call myself Lessmog. I am a middle-aged European man. I noticed Tesla in February and bought some stock in April intending to keep it log, then bought some more.

I'm very happy with the stock development so far and confident it will keep rising long-term.

I'm also very happy to now be a member of this Club, where I have been lurking for a number of months. Impressive insights have been won, which have added to my little stash.

So I watched Nasdaq intensely this week (as every week ;-) ) and was very disconcerted when TSLA closed at just below the 161.88 that Curt and other sharp commenters have marked as an important number, having to do with execution of the big loan in May and therefor a price powerful investors are very interested in maintaining for most of the rest of Q3. Others may have the opposite investment to save.

It struck me that right at closing Friday TSLA was just below that magic number with fairly few trades (a few hundred shares) in the last seconds, but at 16.00.02 there were dozens of trades (I'd say well over 50, but I was too upset to count them) at 161.87 -- all from 1 to 4 to several thousand (the max I recall was 129k) -- must have been hundreds of thousands in the same second! Also, it confuses me that closing was reported as 161.839.

If I may proceed with two bold guesses here?

1. Perhaps that magic number is actually 161.87 due to rounding error? ISTR that it is some % of some actual price on a certain day, and it might be quit easy to miss by a penny.

2. Perhaps Nasdaq's system clock ran a little fast, maybe as a result of the mega glitch on Thursday?

If my guesses are correct, we have seen the first day of 20 fulfilling the condition for releasing those $600M -- and that might make a pretty solid floor for some time.

Am I totally out at sea here? (Testing to post a dump of AH yesterday)

 

[DavidRM]

Lessmog

The NASDAQ Official Close Price was $161.87. If you go to


TSLA stock quote - Tesla Motors, Inc. stock price - NASDAQ.com


you will see it listed. It is called the NOCP. Moving the cursor over the URL on the line reveals an explanation of the meaning, which in part says


“The NOCP replaces the NSDAQ market-specific closing price that was based on the last reported NASDAQ trade. Subject to review by NASDAQ Marketwatch, the NOCP will equal the normalized price of the last trade to NASDAQ’S proprietary trade system Automatic Confirmation Transaction ServiceSM (ACTSM) with a last sale eligible sale condition modifier as of 4:00:02 p.m., US Eastern Time. “Normalizing” the NOCP means it will be adjusted to the nearest prevailing inside quote whenever the last sale was reported away from the inside market.”

So the value at 16:00:02 was the relevant value.

 

[bonaire]

AustinEV. You do know that the latest runup is sponsored by Goldman Sachs and not company financials, results, pre orders or consumer polling or demand. What you wrote at the top of this page is very much like many other EV hopefuls of the lastcouple years who thought consumers would jump on board the EV bandwagon. gm thought they would be selling 45k volts in the usa and 60k around the world annually by now. nissan thought they would outsell that with the Leaf. It is yet to occur. People are getting it but not en masse as we all speculate. I watched the EV evolution since 2007. I even wanted to get a Fisker Atlantic when they were eventually made. We know how that turned out. What magic exists today that didn't occur in the last two years other than a stellar rise in TSLA pps? Musk is also blushing from the valuation. Interestingly, nobody in the company or board of directors are selling at these levels. I believe this is a requirement of the GS pump. We are being manipulated. If the average reader had read this in the 10-Q, the 161 valuation was way off in the future. They have now created a bubble stock with this 161.88 attempt. And, with word out now about it, it may not hold. Who wants to be beholden to GS's wishes?

Tesla will thrive. Thats fine. Will it replace all other car companies? Those who say that are irrational. Does it deserve the current valuation? As Musk says, no. Does it deserve 70, 90, 110? Sure. When they produce an unaided (GAAP) profit. Right now, we have a bubble. It's casino time and whether red or black comes up, it all depends on how well GS controls it and how much they pay in to manipulate all of us into believing that this valuation is warranted. Heh. Warrants. That's what it is all about. They will put Musk through the wringer now and will go find someone else to do it to (for) soon. If they choose to exercise this action, then be prepared for what happens down the road. We get what we deserve.

 

[InTheShadows]

Bonaire, have you gone to test drive a Model S? After a test drive you might be inclined to sing a different song.

 

[Zythryn]

... What magic exists today that didn't occur in the last two years other than a stellar rise in TSLA pps? ...

No magic at all. Tesla engineered and designed an EV from the ground up. They took a strategy no one else did with a BEV and one only GM sort of took with the extended range car.

Tesla made estimates and had a small miss early on, and has met or exceeded their estimates.
Repaid their government loan in full to get rid of that albatross.
Made a very attractive car which is selling itself.
Surpassed the safety rating of virtually every car on the road.

You can attribute the stock price to conspiracies if you want, but I think there is a lot more to it.

 

[bonaire]

Doing the details review, we know that DoE loan was repaid with other peoples' money. Now, the debt is extended in a different manner and the prepayment fee was written up as "non-GAAP" revenue. Heavier interest liability now exists and will be carried forward in order to get the Government monkey off their backs. Both GM and Tesla were assisted by the federal and state governments and the IRS - however, GM still has a huge black eye while Tesla is marketing this payback as a good thing. It's still debt.

Goldman Sachs has the reigns, let's go for a ride.