Short-Term TSLA Price Movements - 2016

[MitchJi]

Also, not hearing anything about Tesla energy this quarter at all probably means it did not contribute to any earnings beside the initial orders of research projects by utilities. Oil and gas being where it is, utilities have most likely delayed the implementations to take advantage of the cheap commodities.

But batteries, at Tesla's prices, increase utilities profits, by a big margin!

They announced that they planned to start production of Tesla energy products, in Q1 2016. So it is possible that they have a few weeks of production and sales.

What I wanted to convey earlier is that we can keep an eye on the MX forum to see if problems are decreasing and if production levels are increasing, between now and the Feb ER/CC. For good or bad that will impact the short-term SP. I think we should try to track QC problems (I'm going to start a thread there to try to do that).

It's here:
Please help track QC problems - post build date and list of issues please

 

[Julian Cox]

I disagree with Elon staying on as ceo for both.

From my point of view, he should come to TSLA full time and bring it to fruitionwhile leaving SpaceX to its lieutenants. Yes, make it into a family business. Make sure the family is powerful enough because of TSLA that he can use profit from TSLA to further advqnce SpaceX agenda.So many regulatory problems can be solved by having voters (manufacturing emoloyees) paying taxes and legally bribing the politicians. If Elon is as powerful as the Saudi kings today, the Electric push wouldn't be this tumulous.

Excuse my rant, I am just recently disillusioned about the free market after seeing the Saudis are able to do what they did and distort the market for 6 months longer than my projection. I now suspect they will go the whole way and oversupply for 4 more years. This is the power that I believe we need for the electric push.

OK that is going too far. It is one thing to be unable to appreciate an exponential growth curve but another thing to doubt that Elon can. "tumulous" Tumultuous I guess. Don't be silly. The vested interests that hope Tesla will never amount to much are sitting ducks. What Elon did to ULA will happen the ICE industry and without ICE what are the Saudis gonna do for customers?

Take heart. Tesla's Autonomous Model 3, inbound, has a cost per mile that is absolutely as impossible to compete with using Oil and ICE as it is impossible to compete with a F9R using an Atlas 5. Regards the cost of the vehicle, infinite cost reduction. $0.00 budget for vehicle production after fuel savings. Remember how ULA seemed invincible until suddenly it could not even bid to compete. This.

 

[Subhuman]

For those that don't looked around TMC much Gigafactory #2 potentially in South Africa

Gigafactory #2?

 

[ecarfan]

That seems implausible at this early stage in the development of Tesla. Too remote from the major markets for batteries.

 

[Subhuman]

That seems implausible at this early stage in the development of Tesla. Too remote from the major markets for batteries.

However it does lend some credence since Musk is South African and possibly wanting to create some good in his home country. Additonally there is huge humanitarian potential with powerpacks all throughout Africa.

 

[madodel]

The Model 3 won't be irritating in terms of delays. It will be 'irritating' maybe in terms of cash for production equipment but I don't think we have to worry about that. I think that will be self-justified on the back of Model 3 reservations.

And after accomplishing something as complex and impossible as the X, the Ξ should be easy and traditional. The bears will continue to bank on delays and difficulties because they can never admit that Tesla is learning, growing and improving. The Model Ξ may be the ultimate short squeeze.

 

[pGo]

For those that don't looked around TMC much Gigafactory #2 potentially in South Africa

Gigafactory #2?

No solid info in the article. Vaporware until it is confirmed by Tesla.

 

[RationalOptimist]

How come no one's commenting on the awesome new SOFTWARE UPDATE? Auto-parking your Tesla standing outside the vehicle using just the key fob is a wild and thrilling experience. Bring on the future, friends! Excited to try the new improved autopilot too........

 

[Zaxxon]

How come no one's commenting on the awesome new SOFTWARE UPDATE? Auto-parking your Tesla standing outside the vehicle using just the key fob is a wild and thrilling experience. Bring on the future, friends! Excited to try the new improved autopilot too........

We are, on this very page even.

 

[RationalOptimist]

We are, on this very page even.

Ah... (glancing many posts back)... there it is. Speaking personally, I think this one's a jaw dropper. And the relentless improvement of autopilot is truly exciting. May not move the stock Monday, but another example of why people love this company. Love ---> evangelism ---> sales ---> stock boost.

 

[Scott Ales]

I will openly admit that I cannot even begin to understand what moves TSLA either way. It seems like the most unusual or other times exactly what you would expect. Just have to live with what ever comes I suppose.

What I can comment on is how excited I am personally to receive the 7.1 update!

It is possible that it's going to help just for the simple fact of publicity.

 

[Buddyroe]

But batteries, at Tesla's prices, increase utilities profits, by a big margin!

They announced that they planned to start production of Tesla energy products, in Q1 2016. So it is possible that they have a few weeks of production and sales.

It's here:
Please help track QC problems - post build date and list of issues please

I'm pretty sure there is already a thread that is tracking MX QC issues.

Tracking MX Issues

 

[dakh]

I disagree. I think something's changed in the last year to year and a half for Elon in regards to Tesla. I've heard him mention a couple times of going the way of making it a 'family' business ala Ford. I've also heard him slightly change his dialogue; he used to say he'd remain CEO only through to seeing Model 3 hit mass market and then relinquish that role but still remain 'vested' in Tesla. He doesn't talk quite like that anymore. I think he'll be sticking around longer. Just a hunch.

One reason would be the self-driving fleet opportunity that probably wasn't as much on the map a few years ago. If I were expecting to have to drag out the making of Tesla into GM sized auto company I'd probably be thinking about retiring half way in, but self-driving twist and the business opportunity it presents would keep me very much interested and motivated to stay in the game.

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This is the core of the program that will incrementally take Tesla's commercial production cell energy density from 260Wh/Kg to 380Wh/Kg in the 2018 time-frame resulting in 5% or so annual range extensions in parallel with cost reductions. While the bears sing themselves to sleep with dreams of competition Tesla is pulling away from the competition exponentially because of this. This is fundamentally what will overturn the energy and transportation economy from transporting chemical energy in fossil fuels to storing electrons and this what Tesla is all about: Cost Per KWh and storage energy density.

First off thank you for your excellent analysis. I do want to point out that advances in battery density won't likely be exclusive to Tesla, although there seems to be a good chance they're going to be slightly ahead of the curve here as well. The more energy density can be packed into these cells, the less advantage Tesla has -- if the cells are available from someone else. It's exponentially easier to make a good EV with more dense/cheap batteries, and the sheer quantity of these cells to make a 200+ mile EV will shrink proportionally so again the lead (cell production scarcity) will proportionally diminish. This isn't really short term movements thread material but at some point we're going to have to get into trying to predict exactly how the "advantage curve" is going to look like. Pretty clear the gap is still increasing at this point, but it'll inevitably start shrinking. My WAG is maybe 3-5 more years of increase.

 

[anticitizen13.7]

I will openly admit that I cannot even begin to understand what moves TSLA either way. It seems like the most unusual or other times exactly what you would expect. Just have to live with what ever comes I suppose.

What I can comment on is how excited I am personally to receive the 7.1 update!

It is possible that it's going to help just for the simple fact of publicity.

The short term movements are random noise around a reversion to the mean of the current plateau (right now about 230/share). There is acknowledgement generally that Tesla has accomplished something, but market participants still aren't sure where this is all going. Uncertainty drives volatility.

I analogize this in quantum physics terms. Stuff is predictable on a large scale, but gets fuzzy and crazy the smaller and smaller we look. TSLA on a large time scale shows plateau and then movement up to a new plateau. On a small scale it looks like there are random/wild swings.

 

[jesselivenomore]

Short term movement this week has been driven by macro markets, period. I don't get what the big mystery is. The S&P just had the WORST first week to start off the year in the last 100 years. TSLA is going to be affected by that, just a tad.

 

[Julian Cox]

....at some point we're going to have to get into trying to predict exactly how the "advantage curve" is going to look like. Pretty clear the gap is still increasing at this point, but it'll inevitably start shrinking. My WAG is maybe 3-5 more years of increase.

3-5 years of accelerating first mover advantage in a $trillion industry spanning both the economic tipping point that makes ICE vehicles relatively uneconomical to build and the advent of full autonomy (plus a 10+ year head-start on the balance of system - cars, charging network, service network, OTA network, dealer-free vertically integrated business model). Think on that.

 

[Causalien]

So I tried to do the analysis I wanted to do on MmMmM (Maxiumum market Maker money Making). Several things I noticed. The "OnDemand" feature I used to rely on to do historic options chain analysis is now so slow with many more restrictions that I couldn't do much (compared to what I used to get when I first joined TOS). This led me to conclude that currently, there is a huge information asymmetry between retails and the institutions and we are probably actively being taken advantage of. Yes, information is "Free and open" for everyone, but the people lower on the totem pole gets fed slower or, often times, so slow that no meaningful analysis can be made.

So out of the few pieces of informations I was able to get, I was able to conclude that most of the options for Jan 2016 were created within the last 3 months. So right after the previous earnings call. $206 was the lowest point around that area and I suspect most of the puts are sold for that price.

There is also an overhang of 17000 contract of $200 put. This, I believe, will mark the absolute floor of the lower end of misery for January. However, could not get the data I needed to analyze when, how and which side the bet was on. Suffice to say that 11000 of these options were created before October and has been a huge influence.

 

[dc_h]

With China's EV market growing to 300 to 500,000 cars this year, battery advances are going to accelerate for all EV and battery producers. It will improve Tesla's advance on ICE vehicles, but will increase their competition within the EV market. China market seems likely to grow very fast (+50% annual) for consumer compliance--consumers being able to get a license plate and being able to drive every day will drive EV growth very rapidly. The growth of the EV market will drive efficiency of all EV producers, but also put further pressure on oil\gas prices. Elon's focus on making EV cars better then ICE cars, not asking consumers to sacrifice will be critical if oil prices stay under $40 for the next few years.

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Will be interesting to hear more about GF 2. Electricity is not reliable in most of Africa, Latin America and Asia. Battery solutions not only reduce electric costs, they provide reliability needed for advanced economies. Increasing electrical reliability will improve telecommunications and economic development in general. Reliable energy in many developing economies could increase annual growth rates by 50% or more and provide competitive advantages to utilities and consumers. Building a new GF focused on energy should be profitable for Tesla and very beneficial regionally in Africa. Not sure if GF 2 would be short term favorable, or evidence of tftf back to capital markets for dilution negative.

 

[StephenM]

Yes, the 2016 BMW 7-series will park itself | Autoweek

Great feature, the nose-in auto park, but the BMW 7-series has had it for a while already?

 

[MitchJi]

Not sure if GF 2 would be short term favorable, or evidence of tftf back to capital markets for dilution negative.

I think TSLA is looking for a country that will chip in a big percent of the cost.