Short-Term TSLA Price Movements - 2015

[aznt1217]

Elon said 30% cost reduction on batteries by 2020. I think he previously said 30% cost reduction in battery cost by 2017 just due to economies of scale. Technological improvement is additional.

I am not sure what is Elon thinking today but instead of fighting the industry with bold statements, it seems he gave in and eventually became defensive. Believe it or not, he cares for the stock price.

It's called speaking off the cuff and covering for regulatory purposes. 30% + cost improvements expected by 2017 with Gigafactory beginning. Notice today's off the cuff comment was ABSOLUTELY certain at least 30% cost improvement. This is extremely conservative and he needs to be conservative with forward looking statements. I think he made bold statements today. He said they didn't move fast enough and still aren't. He also said that even with cheap gas you still need to invest. He absolutely cares about stock price but in the long term not the short term ebbs and flows.

http://www.teslamotors.com/sites/default/files/blog_attachments/gigafactory.pdf

 

[sundaymorning]

plenty of dry powder in case this gets fudded a bunch more before reality sinks in.

Although the market is down I can't complain. These past several days have been nothing but negativity, if these types of guessing games continue till earnings it'll just be time wasted on speculation and nonsense. Now we can move forward, the market has priced in the negativity and miss, this will be followed by reality setting in:

a. X is on time and a reveal should be in the works rather soon.
b. Demand in China may reverse course next quarter as charging confusions are resolved & seating issues addressed.
c. We still have hopes for great 2015 guidance.
d. Millions of cars sold by 2025?! Wow, not only will there be factories in China, Europe and the East Coast, Elon has pretty much
Guaranteed there will be more gigafactories to be built, can you say "insane mode?!"

Overall, today was just a confusing day, starting with the interview.. then after hours, but I'm glad it happened now rather than a month from now, it gives the market time to digest and new money to jump in on the buying opportunity. We gained a months worth of info from this as Elon saved us from having to wait till earnings, I can't complain here. Much of our worries and speculations have been addressed.

 

[AlMc]

plenty of dry powder in case this gets fudded a bunch more before reality sinks in.

Same here. My Jan 23 220 calls are probably vaporized but luckily I bought them 'cheap' hoping for that small chance we got explosive positive news

 

[aznt1217]

Tomorrow will be even more interesting:

01/14/15 | 12:30pm Deutsche Bank Global Auto Industry Conference

 

[maoing]

Can anyone help on this? I know the sell-off volume in AH post 13' Q3 ER is huge. But how's today's AH sell-off volume? It's interesting to find the MM choose the AH to dump the stock with the known news in tradeing hours. In hope of panic triggered by small volume?

Who can post the AH volume today?

 

[hockeythug]

Can anyone help on this? I know the sell-off volume in AH post 13' Q3 ER is huge. But how's today's AH sell-off volume? It's interesting to find the MM choose the AH to dump the stock with the known news in tradeing hours. In hope of panic triggered by small volume?

583,824

Tesla Motors, Inc. (TSLA) After Hours Trading - NASDAQ

 

[SuryaDham]

I see 560K in IB today after hours.

Can anyone help on this? I know the sell-off volume in AH post 13' Q3 ER is huge. But how's today's AH sell-off volume? It's interesting to find the MM choose the AH to dump the stock with the known news in tradeing hours. In hope of panic triggered by small volume?

 

[maoing]

I sounds about 0.56-0.58 million shares traded in AH. It's not a significant number.

 

[pGo]

I sounds about 0.56-0.58 million shares traded in AH. It's not a significant number.

For AH, its a significant number. Tesla traded 4.4m shares in regular trading.

 

[JRP3]

Overall, today was just a confusing day, ...

Confusion = uncertainty = fear = FUD = price drop. That's what I'm expecting tomorrow. If I'm right I buy more, if I'm wrong my existing stock just went up. Winning either way.

 

[dm28997]

All time high short number over 25 million. Days to cover twice as long. Hope to pick some up in the am pre-market.

 

[anticitizen13.7]

Wow... this Elon Q&A session generated a lot of drama. I was following on The Verge's txt feed, and found these items interesting:

Musk says that some standard features on the Model S will be options on the Model 3, but he also wants it to be "way different from any other car on the road, in a way that's really useful, and just doesn't feel like a weirdmobile."

Reassurance that form will follow function.

A factory in Europe, a factory in China, one close to the east coast of the US in the long term, Musk says. Michigan isn't out of the question, but he jokes that the state should ease its dealership franchise policy if it wants to play ball.

This probably doesn't have short-term impact, but it does show the ambition of the Tesla management team. Going from 1 factory to 4 factories (and probably additional Gigafactories) would be an enormous expansion project.

 

[MikeC]

The AH drop is pretty suspicious to me. Usually we only see AH movement like this after an earnings report and we blame it on the bots. In this case, we saw a huge coordinated sell off right when Elon starts talking, in the context of multiple media reports that make it appear that he had just said China sales were weak. I don't think we can blame bots this time.

I wonder if this has anything to do with the JAN 2015 LEAPs expiring this week? I'm thinking some people have been holding these since before the big jumps in 2013 and the market makers did not want to pay out the huge gains. If they knock it below 200 this week, it will wipe out any higher calls and save them significant money. Just a theory.

 

[chickensevil]

All time high short number over 25 million. Days to cover twice as long. Hope to pick some up in the am pre-market.

Tracking short interest - Page 28

Not all time high. We are on the rise, but I think the graphs I cooked up in the short interest thread shows what is likely happening. That is, that they are just buying up more shares to maintain the ~$5.4BN negative gamble against TSLA.

 

[doggusfluffy]

Isn't the layman's explanation for the AH drop that there was a buzz for a possible surprise X reveal which now will not happen?

 

[jhm]

The AH drop is pretty suspicious to me. Usually we only see AH movement like this after an earnings report and we blame it on the bots. In this case, we saw a huge coordinated sell off right when Elon starts talking, in the context of multiple media reports that make it appear that he had just said China sales were weak. I don't think we can blame bots this time.

I wonder if this has anything to do with the JAN 2015 LEAPs expiring this week? I'm thinking some people have been holding these since before the big jumps in 2013 and the market makers did not want to pay out the huge gains. If they knock it below 200 this week, it will wipe out any higher calls and save them significant money. Just a theory.

I see this sort of price attack as a tactic to nullify any positive news that comes out. The point is to create the illusion that the market is negative on any new revelations so that investors will interpret that new in a negative light. This sort of tactic is also coordinated with FUD releases, the decline in China story, to confuse and cast everything potentially positive in a negative light.

Additionally, I believe paid trolls were deployed even to this thread to try to confuse and misdirect the discussion. If you read back through the barage of posts it is pretty easy to pick these players out. They were the ones that were deliberaty trying to recast Musk's words in a negative light or raising irrelevant issues from accounting principles to the proper spacing of charging infrastructure. Such concerns belong in other threads where there has been ample discussion for quite sometime. But the intrusion in this thread seemed to be obvious attempts to derail the discussion.

Fortunately, Chickensevil has posted an excellent summary of Musk's talk on the long ter thread. I think that is a good place to have substantive discussion.

 

[MikeC]

Isn't the layman's explanation for the AH drop that there was a buzz for a possible surprise X reveal which now will not happen?

I don't think so.

1) No one really expected a Model X reveal. Sure, bulls were hoping for a surprise but I think we all knew it was a longshot.

2) The stock has been dropping, so it's not like a bunch of new money came in speculating about a Model X reveal like there was for the D. I sure hope that anticipation of Model X at the 2015 Detroit Auto Show was not what has been keeping TSLA over $200 for the past year.

3) Timing. It all seemed to happen at once when Elon started speaking and a bunch of articles came out about weak China sales. It's not like everyone realized there was no Model X right then.

I see this sort of price attack as a tactic to nullify any positive news that comes out. The point is to create the illusion that the market is negative on any new revelations so that investors will interpret that new in a negative light. This sort of tactic is also coordinated with FUD releases, the decline in China story, to confuse and cast everything potentially positive in a negative light.

Additionally, I believe paid trolls were deployed even to this thread to try to confuse and misdirect the discussion. If you read back through the barage of posts it is pretty easy to pick these players out. They were the ones that were deliberaty trying to recast Musk's words in a negative light or raising irrelevant issues from accounting principles to the proper spacing of charging infrastructure. Such concerns belong in other threads where there has been ample discussion for quite sometime. But the intrusion in this thread seemed to be obvious attempts to derail the discussion.

Fortunately, Chickensevil has posted an excellent summary of Musk's talk on the long ter thread. I think that is a good place to have substantive discussion.

That is a good point about short plants. I did notice a few members spinning everything in a panicked way.

Edit:

Also a good point about preemptive nullification of good news. I think if not for the bizarre China overreaction, we might have gotten a nice bump from the other revelations. China was basically the only negative news today.

 

[FluxCap]

Additionally, I believe paid trolls were deployed even to this thread to try to confuse and misdirect the discussion.

Agreed.

So it also turns out, once again, that I share Elon's outspoken opinion. He appears quite frustrated with Big Auto, Detroit, and the rosy press they get for boring, profitless golf-cart EV's with no real investment behind them in engineering talent, sales channel, long-distance charging infrastructure, capex, or even simple battery tech. So far, from everyone including the Germans, it's all been half-ass bullcrap meant to distract the public and make them think mass-scale production of EV's is just a "thing for the future but not right now."

As I said earlier today:

I mean, I get you guys. But Ghosn would have to literally bet the company on EV's to legitimately compete. He has to build a supercharger network competitor or something that provides for long-range travel, switch battery tech to something with better energy-to-weight characteristics, convince dealers not to downsell them vs. cheap ICE cars, and begin to phase out the gas-burning product line. Fire a lot of people, hire the right engineers, build something from scratch, make the car able to be sold profitably.

Any of these automakers can build an EV. But they can't build a no-fun "compromises car" and sell it at a loss to grow the EV segment successfully.

I'm just tired of the hyperbole. Show me your Gigafactory, show me your multibillion investment in EV production, and show me you can build an EV with gross margins that work. Until then, competition is dead on arrival.

There is no credible competition yet. I want there to be but there is not.

The Model III pre-paid deposit waitlist will be one hundred thousand long or more as soon as Elon allows it to be. Want to own that stock? I do. That's a $1,000 stock this decade.

 

[NigelM]

Isn't the layman's explanation for the AH drop that there was a buzz for a possible surprise X reveal which now will not happen?

There was more talking up of a surprise X reveal on the forums than anywhere else. Just sayin....

 

[anticitizen13.7]

I wouldn't do that but sad thing is few days ago I just realized that this forum has become the nest of "fanboys". You yourself saw how everyone bashing Nissan and Carlos Ghosn yesterday.

For the record, my post yesterday concerning Carlos Ghosn was not meant as a bash against him. I was genuinely puzzled by his claim about Tesla marketing, given that Tesla really doesn't conduct any marketing.

I actually have great respect for Mr. Ghosn because I believe he is serious about BEVs, and because he brought the LEAF to market.