Short-Term TSLA Price Movements - 2016

[vgrinshpun]

If you are a short-term trader, this might be one of those days where you buy at the money calls expiring next week right around the close today. Volume is pretty low and max pain is at 247.50 today, so there will likely be an effort to keep the price at 247.50, +/-2.50. I also agree that the TE news will take some time to sink in. It could run up next week once the options expiry limiter is removed.

Grain of salt though, my short-term TSLA trades have been mediocre at best over the past couple weeks.

I actually jumped in for the next week $250 calls, 20 contracts at average buy price of $5.63. Will try to set time delayed call spread. Hope to sell upper leg, $255 - $260 at the same price...

 

[esk8mw]

I actually jumped in for the next week calls, 20 contracts at average buy price of $5.63. Will try to set time delayed call spread. Hope to sell upper leg, $255 - $260 at the same price...

Nice, hopefully you bought them before this recent run! I once again show my short term trading skills - the stock popped as soon as I indicated it may be rangebound today.

 

[vgrinshpun]

Nice, hopefully you bought them before this recent run! I once again show my short term trading skills - the stock popped as soon as I indicated it may be rangebound today.

Bought into the run, on a dip, when SP was about $250.40...

As for stock movements predictions, I do not think anybody, unless with inside knowledge, could have imagined Elon pulling this rabbit out of the hat...

 

[madodel]

So as my shares are just sitting there, someone might be gambling with them?

I should set the same order then, but not at 50% higher - that's too risky, I'm looking to sell around $650

At Fidelity 50% is the maximum they will allow. Not sure I'd want to risk my long position. "The limit price you have entered is too far away from the Bid Price for this security. Please use the following guidelines when entering your limit price: For sell limit orders in which your limit price is above the current Bid Price, your limit price can be no more than 50% away from the Bid Price."

 

[MikeC]

I don't think selling calls against the stock is necessary to protect from your brokerage lending out your shares. Unless you are using margin, they need to put your loaned shares in a separate account and provide you cash collateral (to protect your shares in case your brokerage goes bankrupt), so they wouldn't really be able to lend them out without you knowing.

 

[vgrinshpun]

BTW, one of the pictures posted on the Tesla Energy page, I think, is of Lathrop facility battery packs, looks like they installed 4MWh worth of PowerPacks there.

 

[esk8mw]

At Fidelity 50% is the maximum they will allow. Not sure I'd want to risk my long position. "The limit price you have entered is too far away from the Bid Price for this security. Please use the following guidelines when entering your limit price: For sell limit orders in which your limit price is above the current Bid Price, your limit price can be no more than 50% away from the Bid Price."

I don't think you'd ever have to "worry" about the stock popping 50% at any given time. Even amazing earnings rarely causes a pop over 20%. I'd just set it at 50% and then cancel/set a new 50% limit if the stock pops. If really paranoid, just cancel the order heading into every earnings report.

 

[SW2Fiddler]

Gotta wonder what the demand is at $470/kWh.

So ...most people have forgotten what was said in the 4Q 2015 letter?
"In our first main markets, Australia and Germany, we have seen Tesla Energy inbound sales leads quickly exceeding vehicle sales leads, more than doubling our total potential Tesla customer inquiries."

Go look it up, I'll wait.
I am going back to radio silence on these GF and TE points.
Ssssshhhh!

 

[BriansTesla]

At Fidelity 50% is the maximum they will allow. Not sure I'd want to risk my long position. "The limit price you have entered is too far away from the Bid Price for this security. Please use the following guidelines when entering your limit price: For sell limit orders in which your limit price is above the current Bid Price, your limit price can be no more than 50% away from the Bid Price."

I'm also with Fidelity. You just have to remember to change your limit periodically as the SP goes up.

 

[Jonathan Hewitt]

Looks like the Tesla Energy information is nullifying the Max Pain for today. This may be really bullish for next week once everyone catches up with the news if we get some volume.

 

[BobSk]

Understanding that the powerpack is priced below their nearest competitor, the $470/kwh pricing still seems strange to me. I could've sworn that Musk's statement of $250/kwh (during the conference call) was the customer's price for utility-scale storage (something well above 5.4MWh)? And without a link to back this up, it's just supposition on my part.

However, this does mean the powerpack is more expensive than the powerwall ... which doesn't make sense! Is their website listing retail pricing? And that you'd have to call to get better than that? Or was there a typo and it was meant to be $64k instead of $94k for 2 powerpacks?!

I don't think it's a typo. Tesla sells Powerpack to the whole world. The utility rate is very high in certain areas, in those areas solar + Powerpack makes sense. Also Powerpack is a nice backup to prevent power interruption, some businesses are willing to pay high price for this feature. The market is based on demand and supply, model 3 removed lots of potential supply.

 

[Fallenone]

Also want to make a note that for Model S, upgrading from 70 kWh to 90 kWh costs you $13k, which is $650/kWh. As options, the GM on this one should be pretty high. Let's be conservative and say it's 50%. Then the COGS of Model S battery packs is about $325/kWh.

Due to the higher requirement of performance in the car than the PowerPack, the COGS of PowerPack would be lower than the $325k/Wh number.

The latest (Q4 2015) ER letter said "Even during this initial product launch, Tesla Energy achieved positive gross margin for the quarter." I wouldn't bet the GM is great due to this language. Let's be conservative again and assume 5% on this one (not to say it will stay this low, just for Q4 2015) then we have about COGS $400/kWh for the PowerWall. But since this is for daily cycle, COGS should be higher than other battery products.

Based on the above conservative assumptions, I would say currently Tesla's cost of making various battery packs would be around $300/kWh at most. And this is without GF's help.

 

[Electrifying]

Amazon's AWS was a PowerPack launch partner back in April 2015 for a 4.8 MWh pilot. Google has this Makani Energy Kite aka as Wind Power Drones. Add TE, they can power their data centers for free ?! $470 per KWh is nothing .

 

[hobbes]

Especially bullish as Nasdaq is down almost at 1%, while TSLA up 2% at the moment... (Note to self: read the quarterly reports more thoroughly...)

Looks like the Tesla Energy information is nullifying the Max Pain for today. This may be really bullish for next week once everyone catches up with the news if we get some volume.

 

[vgrinshpun]

In another news, Nissan is trying to take a dig at Tesla. Which is pathetic, since 400K reservations in two weeks did not require any conventional advertising, while Nissan is now spending $$ for advertising trying to steal Tesla's reservations.

Really, Nissan?? That is your response to the competition?? Better fire the whole advertising team and hire some EV engineers instead...

 

[MartinAustin]

@vgrinshpun That's terrible!

 

[BobSk]

In another news, Nissan is trying to take a dig at Tesla. Which is pathetic, since 400K reservations in two weeks did not require any conventional advertising, while Nissan is now spending $$ for advertising trying to steal Tesla's reservations.

Really, Nissan?? That is your response to the competition?? Better fire the whole advertising team and hire some EV engineers instead...

View attachment 173480

Nissan must be having pain after their potential buyers went to reserve model 3.

 

[jhm]

How many billions? 1 billion a year? 10 billion a year?

Well, the market for new gas peaking plants is about 6 GW or $6B per year. Tesla's package price at $1.2M for 1MW with 2 hours of storage is quite competitive with at gas peaker with $1/W capex plus fuel costs. Batteries have faster response time and can take load to help stabilize the grid. Thus the utility get better dynamic control with a watt of Powerpacks that a watt of gas peakers. So I think this is priced right to begin disrupting the market for new peaking capacity.

 

[BobSk]

Now I understand why Elon disclosed the Tesla bus yesterday.

 

[ggr]

I can't remember the source (and you can google as easily as I can) but there was a study by a big energy company that said it was cheaper to add battery storage than build new peaker plants, at anything less than (IIRC) $800/kW. Note that's power delivered, not energy stored. So for $162k you can deliver 100kW from the batteries, or $1 620/kW. If you count energy stored, it comes to half that: $810/kWh. Surprise, those figures are very similar.

I interpreted Elon's $250/kWh to be cost (to Tesla) not price (to customer), and after the Gigafactory was up and running at full capacity and cost savings.