Short-Term TSLA Price Movements - 2016

[bonaire]

So by your definition, the Bolt is not built as a mass market car then since it applies to only a particular use case, not for the everyman/everywoman.

To get elevated for mass consumption, it needs a DCFC infrastructure.

It is more than that. The price per kWh of the DCFC needs to be "inside" that of fuel today. A 13 kWh draw (11 kWh usable or roughly 40 miles) needs to cost a consumer $2.40 or less in the USA. This is do-able but networks like Blink have botched it up but-good. Some of their L2 is .49/kWh and who knows what they will do to the consumer with DCFC.

There are four or five inputs- however, Bolts and Model 3 range at roughly 200 miles is fine for many people. My own family members rarely travel more than a dozen or two miles per day. We are not all in the "pharma-sales" driving model doing 300 miles per driving day visiting dozens of doctors offices. People rack up an average of 40-50 miles per driving day, on average. Some have crazy commutes. Say Orlando to Tamp, Princeton to NYC, Fresno to San Fran, etc. Those people are crazy to begin with but are not representative of the national driving base.

I can see myself driving a 2-car (200 mile BEV) because my experience as a Volt owner since mid-2012 is that yes, you can live with 40 mile range for many days and use the gas on the longer trips. My longest trips are well under 100 miles per day except for 3-4 times a year. I can drive another car, rent one or fly.

The gotcha is "I gotta pay for my own electric fuel". Ok - grid prices are .14 to .15 and so 40 miles costs me about 12.5 kWh or nearly $2.00. Pretty good. Consumers - will they pay $30K to do this or go with a $20k altima and fuel-up on gasoline? They vote with their wallets, generally. And the "Hassles" oh, the hassles of reaching over and plugging in daily - my arms are like Popeye from doing that extra work at home when I plug in during that extra 3-seconds. Consumers don't want change, generally. But they adapt to it when they can make a buck doing it.

Free Supercharging for Life. A fantastic draw for a company. When it goes away, we don't yet know what the per-kWh pricing is for buyers who order after 1/1/17. Why not? Every penny counts and consumers who deposited for the Model 3 who were told the Model 3 would qualify for DCFC on the Supercharger network - how many expected it to be free? How many didn't? Hard to know. But does the pricing change things? If so, what is that price? .10kWh? .20? I suppose we find out 1/2/2017.

 

[ongba]

TSLA SP now below all key simple moving averages (5, 10, 20, 50, 200) on daily, weekly and monthly charts as the slow bleed continues...a quick panic induced flush to the 150s followed by a hammer candle on high volume, would be preferable to this persistent slow drip...

 

[Papafox]

TSLA SP now below all key simple moving averages (5, 10, 20, 50, 200) on daily, weekly and monthly charts as the slow bleed continues...a quick panic induced flush to the 150s followed by a hammer candle on high volume, would be preferable to this persistent slow drip...

Not going to happen. The current TSLA longs are battle-hardened and see value ahead. There's lots of appetite for buying in the low 180s, even though shorts are getting in deeper and deeper these past three weeks. There's no evidence that TSLA has any fundamental problems with their plan at this point. Longs aren't going to sell deep on market noise.

 

[Jayjs20]

It'll be interesting if it breaks below 180. It's been bouncing off 180.00-180.1 all day.

 

[MP3Mike]

Sorry this must all be my fault; I threw my dry powder in to the "fire" and that appears to have caused us to be stuck in the low 180s.

 

[bonaire]

Based on the options chain for today, could ramp at close to 182.xx

 

[Papafox]

Here's what I think is going on with the trading at this moment. Longs and shorts were duking it out all morning long. After a few tries to pull TSLA below 180, the shorts reverted to capping in the 180.50-180.75 area. They're now pushing to take it lower. If this push is defeated they may go back to capping and then try again.

A factor is that this is a Friday afternoon. If too many professional long investors turn their attention away from TSLA early today and volume gets really light, that scenario supports the shorts with driving down the price. OTOH, if we get to the last hour or so of trading and we're still above 180.50, you could see some influence from the market makers. Max pain is at 190. You may also see an upturn in the trading in the last hour, such as we saw on Wednesday, if some shorts decide to close their positions before the weekend and not risk a green Monday.

 

[Value Ev]

Sorry this must all be my fault; I threw my dry powder in to the "fire" and that appears to have caused us to be stuck in the low 180s.

Let us know when you plan to invest more again, or when you are selling.
Thank you kindly.

 

[Value Ev]

A new survey of 1,000 people conducted by the Republican polling firm Public Opinion Strategies illustrates this dynamic. According to the poll, 75 percent of Trump voters support "action to accelerate the deployment and use of clean energy" -- including solar, wind, energy efficiency, and community renewable projects.

This backs up what we already know. Renewables are generally not a partisan issue. Survey after survey demonstrates this fact.
New Survey Shows That Renewable Energy Polls Extremely Well Among Trump Voters

Which is surprising to no one.
Trump voters care about independence from oil producing countries and making America Great Again through investments in the U.S. infrastructure which includes wind, solar, etc.

 

[esk8mw]

Longs at 180: You shall not pass!

 

[LoL Rick]

Longs at 180: You shall not pass!

Careful with that. We may all fall into the abyss!

 

[MitchJi]

View attachment 204394

Here's what I think is going on with the trading at this moment. Longs and shorts were duking it out all morning long. After a few tries to pull TSLA below 180, the shorts reverted to capping in the 180.50-180.75 area. They're now pushing to take it lower. If this push is defeated they may go back to capping and then try again.

The longs are not duking it out with anyone. They are attempting to buy at the lowest possible price. If they believed that the price is going to get lower they would wait.

Unless it's big option sellers trying to push the SP towards max pain. If that's a factor, it doesn't bode well for next week.

 

[winfield100]

The argument needs additional input. upon arrival, plug-in again and drive the city area electrically for days more. Volt owners seem happy, as do Tesla owners. The issue is "what works for most"?

Having driven a Volt for 43,000+ miles, what works, after long trips, is NOT YOUR BACK
it has seats that will torture your spine

 

[sunhelm]

It is more than that. The price per kWh of the DCFC needs to be "inside" that of fuel today. A 13 kWh draw (11 kWh usable or roughly 40 miles) needs to cost a consumer $2.40 or less in the USA. This is do-able but networks like Blink have botched it up but-good. Some of their L2 is .49/kWh and who knows what they will do to the consumer with DCFC.

There are four or five inputs- however, Bolts and Model 3 range at roughly 200 miles is fine for many people. My own family members rarely travel more than a dozen or two miles per day. We are not all in the "pharma-sales" driving model doing 300 miles per driving day visiting dozens of doctors offices. People rack up an average of 40-50 miles per driving day, on average. Some have crazy commutes. Say Orlando to Tamp, Princeton to NYC, Fresno to San Fran, etc. Those people are crazy to begin with but are not representative of the national driving base.

I can see myself driving a 2-car (200 mile BEV) because my experience as a Volt owner since mid-2012 is that yes, you can live with 40 mile range for many days and use the gas on the longer trips. My longest trips are well under 100 miles per day except for 3-4 times a year. I can drive another car, rent one or fly.

The gotcha is "I gotta pay for my own electric fuel". Ok - grid prices are .14 to .15 and so 40 miles costs me about 12.5 kWh or nearly $2.00. Pretty good. Consumers - will they pay $30K to do this or go with a $20k altima and fuel-up on gasoline? They vote with their wallets, generally. And the "Hassles" oh, the hassles of reaching over and plugging in daily - my arms are like Popeye from doing that extra work at home when I plug in during that extra 3-seconds. Consumers don't want change, generally. But they adapt to it when they can make a buck doing it.

Free Supercharging for Life. A fantastic draw for a company. When it goes away, we don't yet know what the per-kWh pricing is for buyers who order after 1/1/17. Why not? Every penny counts and consumers who deposited for the Model 3 who were told the Model 3 would qualify for DCFC on the Supercharger network - how many expected it to be free? How many didn't? Hard to know. But does the pricing change things? If so, what is that price? .10kWh? .20? I suppose we find out 1/2/2017.

Not really sure where you're going with your thoughts here but I think it illustrates that without native support from the car manufacturer, a Bolt owner has to go thru so many decision trees just to determine whether a not-so -usual trip is viable or not whereas a Gene Roddenberry-esque Tesla philosophy is built in the Model 3, to go where no one dared to go in an EV (and return home for dinner that night).

 

[Value Ev]

This is pretty sad - outright falsehood here.

It is not easy being a troll!

I am sorry that you realize that it is hard for you being a troll.

Cherry picking data and saying "only this comparison is valid" when I bring up other comparisons is the ultimate outright falsehood.

Your thesis was a 2x reduction in price is worth 10x in sales when you claim that the Volt should be 10x in sales than the S.

That seems valid to you because you equate the Volt with S, but you are unwilling to make the same comparison between an E class and an S Class.

Try as you might, you can't have it both ways.
And you can have it it neither way with me since I am done with your dishonesty - you are just phoning it in at this point and not even trying.

 

[Papafox]

The longs are not duking it out with anyone. They are attempting to buy at the lowest possible price. If they believed that the price is going to get lower they would wait.

Grant me a little dramatic effect with words here. If you prefer, I will rephrase to say, "All morning long, the buying by longs and selling by shorts has seen the stock price rise and fall but overall it is in a virtual stalemate. That situation is quite possibly going to change in the final hour as the buying vs. the selling falls out of equilibrium at this price." Personally, I prefer "duking it out".

 

[Oil4AsphaultOnly]

I appreciate the lively discussion regarding how reduced capex will be received, but I respectfully disagree that it will be uniformly negatively received.

Tesla hasn't done this before. They may have vastly overestimated what capex would be for bringing M3 to market initially. Remember, the guidance was given under a different CFO a long time ago (before Elon's obsession with manufacturing efficiencies and Jason's obsession with capital efficiency) and has been maintained throughout. GGF used to be considered a gating item for M3, these days Elon says the GGF is not on the critical path - it's just needed for the huge volumes. It would be very easy for them to say "remember when we thought it was 3.5 billion? It's going to be 2.5 billion (numbers made up). Oh, and everything is staying exactly on track."

I don't see how that can be spun negatively. They seem keen on giving updates re: development too. Remember, last time they were testing subsystems? At the next call they might give more credible evidence, i.e., that they have been testing prototypes for x months or whatever. If they are silent on M3 progress (which they've never been) or refuse to comment then I'll be nervous.

Why the sudden focus on how permabears view the move? By definition, anything will be spun negatively:

- Capex meets guidance: Time for a cap raise! Cash burn! Lose money on every car sold!
- Capex above guidance because M3 is shipping earlier than expected: Elon is lying! Cash burn, cap raise, no discipline etc.
- Capex under guidance, M3 guidance maintained: Elon is lying! Car is delayed! Can't meet goals! Everyone is going to buy a Bolt!

I know the stock is down, but I'm not going to let the permanently negative investors frame the way I think about this company.

Are we talking about the same capex guidance? In the Q3 shareholder letter, Tesla (Wheeler), guided for $1B in capex in Q4. Not spending that (or something reasonably close) would be considered a redflag about the CFO's cost projection abilities.

Note, I have every expectation that Tesla will find cost savings where they can, and will spend pretty close to what they guided for in Q4. I'm just taking issue with your expectation that a capex spend under guidance (assuming significant at least $100 million under, otherwise cap raise issue doesn't get addressed) and then viewed as a positive by the market. You can't be off by almost 10% and still be expected to be trusted on faith alone.

 

[ongba]

Not going to happen. The current TSLA longs are battle-hardened and see value ahead. There's lots of appetite for buying in the low 180s, even though shorts are getting in deeper and deeper these past three weeks. There's no evidence that TSLA has any fundamental problems with their plan at this point. Longs aren't going to sell deep on market noise.

I hope you are right (as I am long Jan 18 calls) but I don't know. All the time frames I look at (with the caveat that I don't pay much attention to the intraday charts) show a broken SP, that unless it can quickly recover some key moving averages, IMHO, will continue to head lower.

 

[Papafox]

I hope you are right (as I am long Jan 18 calls) but I don't know. All the time frames I look at (with the caveat that I don't pay much attention to the intraday charts) show a broken SP, that unless it can quickly recover some key moving averages, IMHO, will continue to head lower.

Your point about the technicals is well taken, but another piece of the puzzle is that the shorts are willing to acquire hundreds of millions of dollars worth of TSLA in order to prevent the stock from rising above important technical points and then to push the stock below important technical points. Please consider that part of the equations because you truly have one side going out of its way to distort the picture.Ask yourself if their rate of accumulation is sustainable.

 

[Intl Professor]

Tricky bit is running the wires between the chassis and the doors. Everything else can be redesigned to be done by robots (I can thlnk of two different ways off the top of my head), but running across the hinge is tricky.

What about printing the circuits right after stamping for some of the wiring. I can see the problem with the doors, but what about built-in circuits to match there with only one cable (one plug at each end of the cable) for each door? I'm sure the real engineers here could do this or evaluate the idea just as you have so well. Also, attaching those cables could be done by robots.

S**ugar** there go all the jobs except for artists, maintenance, and social workers, undertakers, etc.

When the great AI/politician/machine in the sky prevails we better have a track record for ethical treatment of machines or we will be deemed dangerous and our machines will destroy us even more directly than they do today. My anti-Luddite thought for the month.

Nature is already onto us. What better response by Mother Earth's immune system than pandemics, population growth, and climate change? The native-Americans were so right to think seven generations ahead. Too bad we don't have more respect for clean water than oil or fertilizer, but I repeat myself. Sorry for the politics.