Short-Term TSLA Price Movements - 2016

[sundaymorning]

I have invested as much money as I am willing to lose without endangering my future -- but I may add more as finances permit. Yes, it is risky, especially with the powers gunning for Tesla, but the upside is also large, and I want to be apart of that potential success.

As an aside, I must say that the meeting with Trump has certainly galvanized the players here. I prefer to bet with EM and optimism, than bet failure and pessimism. Playing short means that when you win, someones dream has failed, how sad.

Longs here are very honest people. But shorts are a different story. They won't mind lying through their teeth to make a quick buck. They spread FUD and misinformation because they have no alternative. If I were short, I would resort to spreading FUD too, out of my own fear of losing.

Tesla isn't as risky as some may think it is. You've seen M3, you've seen the lines.... it's execution from here on out.

 

[Krugerrand]

No, TSLA was GAAP profitable last quarter.

But that's the pie quarter and it apparently didn't happen so we're ignoring it.

 

[Turing]

I am all for other companies entering EV market with compelling products which is REQUIRED to grow the pie. The problem is that there are NONE so far. The irony is eye-watering, to borrow color from AJ: Tesla, that is currently building and selling compelling EVs is bestowed with all sorts of doubts about what might happen, while PROSPECTIVE offerings from "competion" are treated as certainty. This is insane - we need to keep perspective in mind.

Hadn't seen this quote before, pretty dead on. I have no doubt that other autos will eventually make compelling EVs, but so far they seem to be headed to that point at a fairly leisurely pace. Which makes sense from there perspective, they have little incentive to disrupt there own ICE based legacy assets as fast as possible.

 

[Kenriko]

I was going to say the same thing. Folks should be careful about getting too excited, especially if they're using this for investment decisions.

Google, and most likely Apple, have both pivoted to ride-sharing, rather than building their own cars. In fact, Google's partnership with Chrysler is a "tell" that they may go in the "minibus" direction.

Everyone is going after the market that Uber has today, but with full-autonomy. GM has already partnered with Lyft for that purpose.

Tesla, for the moment, is the only one with a public plan to attack this by crowd-sourcing their vehicles, which allows them avoid the immense up-front sunk costs. And Tesla will be the only one capable by 2018 of delivering EVs in the quantity necessary to kickstart this movement. Everyone else will need to launch with ICE vehicles.

I actually think that Google plans to use something like the Fiat 500 platform as a base for their AC.

 

[30seconds]

Let's play out a very concrete timeframe 18 months from now - June 2018.

Going for most likely events, not all of them

Tesla
* model 3 launched w/ production volumes steeply increasing
* GF1 operational w/ industry leading costs
* autopilot 3.0 - level 4 on way to level 5
* solar roof 1.0 launched - may not be very good, but 2.0 prob on way
* utility scale solar + battery project on WW basis
* model Y announced
* top line revenue continuing to grow on 50% y/y basis
* minimal profit as net income spend on expansion
* GF2 announced

GM
* Bolt + Volt gaining volume
* producing more Large SUV and Trucks to take advantage of lower CAFE standards

BMW
* i5 hybrid

Mercedes
* soon, we promise

Ford
* fusion EV that no one knows about
* more SUV and trucks

Fiat
* some sort of coherent EV strategy

VW
* golf-EV
* cool EV ad campaigns
* lots of lawsuits & executive turnover

Porsche
* see above

Audi
* see above

Toyota
* cautiously seen the EV light
* still peddling hydrogen

Hyundai
* wildcard, but different chebol than LG or Samsung


I wrote this mainly to point out that Tesla is operating on a significantly cadence that any competitor, at a different scale of EVs and in a wider playing field.

That's why I think comparing it to legacy automaker for valuation purposes is extremely short sighted.

 

[sub]

I don't really agree. It was 2.5 seconds after the light turned red that the Uber entered the intersection. That's awhile, and it clearly did so because it did not recognize the light (if it wasn't a human driver).

On another note, one advantage Tesla's hardware suite has is that it's not obvious to bystanders that the car is autonomous, so even when mistakes are made (which will happen, it's a learning process and the stated goal isn't perfection yet) they won't be as noticeable to onlookers.

Right, no insignicant error by Tesla will be pounded in the press endlessly with FUD . I don't disagree with you but my comment wasn't based on time after red light, it was in relation to the other cars. Also, assuming the Uber was driving autonomously, we do not know that it would not have detected the pedestrian in the cross walk had the pedestrian been in front of the car.

I don't know about you but I don't enter a crosswalk assuming a car will stop, I wait until it's actually stopped. This isn't said to excuse the first autonomous car steam rolling an unaware pedestrian, it will happen as Darwin predicted.

I'm in no way defending Uber, I have no stake in the company and I've never used the service (none local last I checked)

 

[dennis]

listen... as stupid as you might think all those short on tesla are... we actually understand this. but what we also understand is that if Tesla stopped growing and just decided to target value instead of growth... the stock would be trading at $40... Tesla needs to grow to 1m/yr or more with M3 just to match the current valuation relative to its competitors... and that alone has massive risk... then they added fully autonomous features... why?... my belief is to portray a possible share price beyond current levels... then there's SCTY merger and energy... again... massive risks with many examples of failed companies attempting similar goals.

it's easy to say what you've said... tesla could make a few bucks now if it wanted to... but that story doesn't support these stock price levels and doesn't persuade investors for gains... so quite simply... this is not a useful argument unless TSLA is trading well below $100.

So let's assume Tesla does grow to 1M cars/$55B revenue in 2021. That's a CAGR of >50%, without any TE/SCTY revenue. And you think the market is going to value Tesla at only $30B if they accomplish that? My guess is you aren't a growth company investor because you don't know how to value them.

 

[JBRR]

For those who think dark pool numbers have merit as a signal:
Ratio of buyers to sellers have been sub 40% the previous 7 trading days. Yesterday it was 34%.

The trading in the dark pools would be an alternative theory to why you sometimes see big chunks of shares being sold in one go.
If the trade has already happened in the dark pool - the big volume of shares sold that shows up on the exchange would just be the numbers from Finra getting reported, and not necessarily short sellers trying to push down prices. (Although I am sure that happens too)

The GEX number expresses how many shares the market makers needs to hedge to stay delta neutral on their options. Think of it as a reducer or amplifier on the direction of the stock.

I'm very green interpreting these numbers but it seems interesting to me.

 

[Hogfighter]

Please Please Please people, when responding to someone, be sure to quote them in your post. That way those that have chosen to not participate in certain conversations don't have to figure out what the heck you are talking about.

 

[Tenable]

Some less than flattering Tesla news. Posted for reference, I assume nominal real impact unless owners decide to go all class action the way of some P model owners.

Tesla’s hacked Battery Management System exposes the real usable capacity of its battery packs

 

[CatB]

Some less than flattering Tesla news. Posted for reference, I assume nominal real impact unless owners decide to go all class action the way of some P model owners.

Tesla’s hacked Battery Management System exposes the real usable capacity of its battery packs

See here for more context and commentary: Tesla Motors: PLEASE stop lying about specifications (60 to 75 upgrade)

 

[Crowded Mind]

Please Please Please people, when responding to someone, be sure to quote them in your post. That way those that have chosen to not participate in certain conversations don't have to figure out what the heck you are talking about.

That's not how it works. If someone quotes someone you have ignored, you will see that poster's post, but you will not see the post they have quoted from the user you've ignored. It's silly.

But for real, how are people still responding to, I assume, myusername?

 

[Hogfighter]

That's not how it works. If someone quotes someone you have ignored, you will see that poster's post, but you will not see the post they have quoted from the user you've ignored. It's silly.

But for real, how are people still responding to, I assume, myusername?

That makes sense now. It also makes no sense at all!

 

[Irishjugg]

I'm sure the Trump meeting will overshadow this but another "competitor" unveiled their car

Lucid unveils its electric sedan called ‘Air’: 400 miles of range, 1000 hp, ‘autonomous-ready’ and ‘more than $100,000’

I'm not concerned.

It's a quite an impressive offering. I hope it makes it to market, would probably do extremely well in China. Finally an unveiled electric that is very clearly not compliance garbage!

 

[MitchJi]

That makes sense now. It also makes no sense at all!

What makes no sense is the pages of responses to nonsensical posts by known trolls. How many times do we need to read Tesla or growth stock investing basics repeated?

 

[JBRR]

Hedge Fund Manager Who Spotted Fraud at Enron Calls Tesla 'the anti-Amazon'
Notice the respective seatings of Bezos and Musk. Thought it was somewhat interesting as we can assume a lot of thought has gone into who sits where at this table.

Oh - and here's a breakdown of market value of those seats:
Apple — $616 billion
Alphabet — $555 billion
Microsoft — $489 billion
Amazon — $366 billion
Facebook — $347 billion
Intel — $173 billion
Oracle — $167 billion
IBM — $160 billion
Cisco — $154 billion
Tesla — $32 billion
SpaceX — $15 billion
Total — $3.074 trillion

Interesting jump from 154b to 32b.

This should be a very bullish signal to anyone who is a proponent of finding information in seemingly small details.

 

[Tenable]

What makes no sense is the pages of responses to nonsensical posts by known trolls. How many times do we need to read Tesla or growth stock investing basics repeated?

As my block list has continued to grow, the amount of nonsense has been reduced significantly. Initially, I was loathe to block anyone for fear of missing possibly cogent information. After giving many members a more than fair shake, I feel I'm the better for the blocks. Lately I'm debating blocking some less obvious people. We have bullish members that post things such as "OMG We are going to close above the 200 MA, where is the 200 MA?" These people rarely contribute opinions, models or anything outside of rank enthusiasm. Which I find to be less than helpful. This is all subjective obviously. But the people that get lured into the same arguments with the same trolls, can often be ignored as well.

 

[Irishjugg]

View attachment 205825

Can you give me some context on what you interpret this as predicting or showing? Charts aren't my forte.

Thanks in advance.

 

[winfield100]

I actually think that Google plans to use something like the Fiat 500 platform as a base for their AC.

around 1974, the 36volt "lead sled" ElCar (which was also around it's top speed, 36mph, 2 seater, on flat land, faster downhill) was based on the Fiat 500 platform, so almost 1/2 century later, progress oozes along, almost bought one (it had a DC motor, probably with brushes, as opposed to Tesla with a rotating magnetic field AC Induction motor, btw)

 

[Irishjugg]

We've gone over relative personal experience in the past on this board and it leads to a lot of noise... I think it's probably best just to compare the amount of effort and funding the massive companies that are being referenced in these posts to Tesla and ask... why do you think Tesla is more capable than Google, Apple, Uber, GM, Mercedes, etc.?... try taking Elon out of the equation when you mull over this... he's a brilliant marketer... but that really isn't relevant when the "rubber hits the road".

My answer to this are two fold.

1. Quality of talent hired for the specific purpose. I think few would argue against the fact that Tesla puts enormous energy into attempting to hire the best talent in the world for the specific tasks it chases. The argument would probably find in regard to their results doing this. From my perspective following all of this way too closely for way to long, Tesla not only has much better engineering talent in regards to autonomy and machine learning that the above mentioned competitors, I argue that due in part to the Musk effect they have the highest success rate in getting that talent of the companies mentioned (I know I broke the no Musk rule, buy I think in the way I did so it's fine since in using his celebrity in my answer, not his abilities).

2. As you say, for Tesla this is a major focus, second only to the model 3 in general. You see that as a risk in that it would amplify any failure to produce or be first to the line. I see it as forcing the type of laser focus required to actually solve such a difficult task. I think the fact that it is secondary to the other companies with the exception of Uber as detrimental to their efforts. Ubers problem however is a dearth of talent, they have only recently been hiring heavily for this useful with a small number of exceptions the people they have successfully gotten are "smaller names" than those Tesla have hired.

Minor other reasons I think Tesla's probability of success come down to their agile, improve everything culture and of course their enormous lead in miles driven and miles sensor recorded/ghosted. Having a few years experience working on autopilot in general and having it be the clear market leader in terms of features and performance doesn't hurt either.

Obviously none of this guarantees success but I do think it makes it a few times more likely than not. I would be very surprised if Tesla doesn't win this race and truly flabbergasted if they never successfully solve the problem. If I wasn't already confident in my Tesla investment the above thesis on its own would be enough for me to invest some amount expecting significant return.

Apologies for typos. Using my phone and it's too damn cold to go back and correct after typing this long.

I'm interested in hearing your thoughts on the above as you are excellent at being "anti-blinders" even if I disagree with some of your thoughts.

 

[JBRR]

Can you give me some context on what you interpret this as predicting or showing? Charts aren't my forte.

Thanks in advance.

I want to emphasize that I have no idea what I'm doing, and the source of these metrics might not even be solid.

Assuming the metrics are correct, it would indicate that the agents using the dark pools (typically agents who have wants to move bigger volumes without alerting markets until they are done. Institutions, market makers, etc) Have been net sellers the last 10 ish trading days.
I'm hesitant to draw conclusions though because the reason for the selling could be many. It could be the case that market makers are just rebalancing option positions to stay neutral.

The GEX number shows how many shares the market makers have to buy/sell for each % the market moves. When that number is high and positive they will be selling when market moves up and vice versa. The previous days GEX in TSLA was -100k ish and moved to +30k ish last 2 days.

Delta Neutral