Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable

[Todd Burch]

This happened at my local airport this morning.

Not a Tesla.

Four dead after car crashes at Norfolk International Airport

 

[Fact Checking]

Please send him over, the Inuit needs their harpoon practice.

Or just send Trump over to the Greenland ice shelf and let him walk back to the airport over the ice sheet that isn't melting due to fake global warming:

Or let him take a refreshing swim in the calm summer melt waters of the Greenland glaciers which are ignoring fake global warming:

Alexander Verbeek on Twitter
​

(Both videos from this summer.)

 

[Electroman]

sav on Twitter

Portland police shoving their way through a group of peaceful young protesters to get to the only black teens in sight #ClimateStrike​

This rush to judgement watching a video clipping of just the last few seconds of the skirmish and arrest is unfair to the police. We don't know what transpired before that caused the police to react.

 

[SW2Fiddler]

Usually manipulations are camouflaged by happening simultaneously with another event, such as FUD or a small dip in the NASDAQ.

Much like when four new TMC accounts appear in the same hour, two are very frothy ultra-trolls and two are friendly-sounding? I pay attention to the nice ones, as the FrothyBois get banned pretty quick.

So my brother just told me he pulled the trigger on a M3.

He should get it in a week.

On Reddit one gets flame-broiled for calling Tesla’s Model 3 an “M3,” I think out of respect for all the fine polite folks who drive the BMW M3 (IDK, I have literally never seen one of those irl) so I will ask in clarification:
“That’s a TM3, right, not a BM3?”

 

[Artful Dodger]

While removing all oil consumption is the proper goal, making tar sands uneconomic would remove an incredible amount of emissions too.

Yeah, what is the 'carbon budget' for keeping the US Navy's 6th Fleet on standby in the Eastern Med to guarantee a despotic regime keeps that lower carbon oil flowing? How much oil does USCENTCOM burn?

Hint: its free to burn extra carbon under current International agreements.

There is NO clean oil. Rearranging the bunkers on the Titanic won't change where that ship is headed: straight to the bottom, where it will rest in the graveyard of history.

Good riddance.

Cheers!

 

[EVNow]

This rush to judgement watching a video clipping of just the last few seconds of the skirmish and arrest is unfair to the police. We don't know what transpired before that caused the police to react.

Ofcourse we all know its only black teens who cause trouble, right ?

hint : Same police force that guarded neo-Nazis (with their backs turned to heavily armed neo-Nazis and facing unarmed Antifa).

 

[ReflexFunds]

I've highlighted new information:

LG Chem has begun to mass produce batteries for Tesla’s Model 3 electric vehicles from its Nanjing plant in China, according to industry sources Sept. 18.

The US-based EV maker will be using LG Chem’ 21700 type batteries using NCM811 that boast a nickel proportion of 80% or more. The LG company previously supplied the NCM811 to electric buses. This is the first time to supply an automobile, the sources said.

Until now, Tesla has been supplied by Japan’s Panasonic, which uses NCA, which is another type of high nickel cathode material.

LG Chem convinced Tesla to switch to NCM811 batteries based on the longer driving distances per charge. It also hinted that it may be able to begin mass producing NCMA batteries, which is even higher in nickel, beginning in 2022 to apply to EVs.

The Model 3, which now receiving pre-orders in China, can run 480km on a single charge for the standard model. The cars sold in Korea are slightly heavier and have a single charge driving distance of 353km.

Upon requests from Tesla, LG Chem is now preparing to expand its battery lines. Already, it has doubled the production volume from its Nanjing plant from last year. Nanjing is where LG said in January this year that it would invest up to 1.2 trillion won to expand the facilities.

According to market research firm SNE Research, LG Chem is expected to churn out up to 1 billion cylindrical battery cells per year from Nanjing. In 2017, the firm was producing 630 million such cells.​

Does 480 km (298 miles) vs. 353 km (219 miles) range mean that LG Chem's new NCM811 based cells have 36% higher energy density?

I think Tesla/Panasonic/Sumitomo's current NCA cathode chemistry is Nickel 93% Cobalt 5% and Aluminium 2%.
This is higher Nickel content than NCM811 and almost certainly higher energy density for the same dimensions.

I would imagine Tesla went with NCM811 because this is the best LG and its cathode powder supply chain (likely Umicore), could deliver. Tesla likely also got a very good price given lots of Chinese EV programs have failed to take off/been delayed leaving a lot of cell capacity in China in the short term.

I would guess Tesla will need more LG cells in a China SR+ battery pack relative to the Panasonic GF1 cells in SR+ in the US, likely requiring slight changes to the China module/pack design.

Given the very low quality of journalism on the range, I'm skeptical of all the information here, but it does seem fairly likely Tesla is going with NCM811 for the initial LG cell supplied China Model 3s.
I expect this is only a temporary measure before Tesla builds cells in-house.

 

[Artful Dodger]

To be fair, they are required to return the land to its original state at the end of operations.

Google "Alberta reclamation securities fund shortfall".

This is the same issue which keeps old, played out wells in "production", so that the lease holder doesn't ever trigger the reclaimation time limit counter.

Very common to sell a lease producing 1 bbl/day to a 3rd party who never produces anything.

The lawyers have gamed the system. Indeed, they created the system.

 

[dc_h]

You probably should have listened, because she said that this was not the Fed reacting to Trump. Rather it's the Fed reacting to unusual activity in the overnight lending market which she claims is unprecedented and concerning. The New York Fed spends $53 billion to rescue the overnight lending market - CNN

Fair enough. So much people said, I ran out of patience. Then replied OT screed.

 

[canoemore]

Until we get all of our resources from space, we're going to be mining the Earth, and everyone's consumption bears responsibility for the need to do that. I'm sitting here in jeans with copper rivets, typing on a computer full of copper wiring - I bear responsibility for copper production. I'm on a couch with an alumium frame sitting next to alumium-framed windows - I bear responsibility for alumium production. Etc. So the concept of "ecologically responsible mining" - e.g. containing and remediating toxins and restoring the landscape afterwards - is something that should be supported, rather than being generally hostile to all mining.

And the way we stop it is with electrification. We don't want some other terrible source of oil to replace it. We just want it all stopped.

In a world of zero-marginal cost energy could the waste stream from Boring tunnels be processed to extract useful elements at trace concentrations? I suppose that would probably never be economical, but suspect that others here would have better intuition about it than me one way or the other.

 

[Beltsbear]

View attachment 457425 https://www.nhtsa.gov/vehicle/2018/TESLA/MODEL%2525203/4%252520DR/AWD

Anyone else seeing this lol.

Dodge Ram Owner from Twitter must have hacked it.

 

[pyromatter]

 

[Unpilot]

Yeah

Much like when four new TMC accounts appear in the same hour, two are very frothy ultra-trolls and two are friendly-sounding? I pay attention to the nice ones, as the FrothyBois get banned pretty quick.




On Reddit one gets flame-broiled for calling Tesla’s Model 3 an “M3,” I think out of respect for all the fine polite folks who drive the BMW M3 (IDK, I have literally never seen one of those irl) so I will ask in clarification:
“That’s a TM3, right, not a BM3?”

Yeah a Tesla.

 

[Christine69420]

News | WAVY.com

Our European visitors are important to us.
This site is currently unavailable to visitors from the European Economic Area​

Not too important though...

On Reddit one gets flame-broiled for calling Tesla’s Model 3 an “M3,” I think out of respect for all the fine polite folks who drive the BMW M3 (IDK, I have literally never seen one of those irl) so I will ask in clarification:
“That’s a TM3, right, not a BM3?”

It all depends on context. On a Tesla forum M3 probably isn't a Bimmer. And MS probably not an illness. And MX probably not a multiplexer?

 

[KarenRei]

TSLAQ Fraud of the Day: Dennis Clark.

Here Dennis being interviewed for a Tesla hitpiece earlier this year by Washington Post reporter Faiz Siddiqui:

What can we say about Dennis? Well, according to the guy himself, he's a real American hero! Fought in Afghanistan, lost an arm and a leg, got back, started drone company and made a ton of money, owns a coffee farm in Kona, a private jet, and is a major car collector. Let's forget that sometimes his stories rather contradict each other (such as claiming to only own 2 or 3 cars at one point); that's tangential. His TSLAQ backstory is that after owning multiple Teslas, he got tired of them breaking down, even betting his employees to pay them a certain amount of money for each day one of them was in the shop - ultimately having to pay six million dollars because "a promise is a promise". Strangely, there's no pictures on his accounts to backup any of his claims (including him ever having owned a Tesla), despite having posted tons of pictures. He posted a picture of a Taycan reservation, but you can get those for free.

A variety of people have found his story suspect over time, but been afraid to call him out over it. Who wants to call out a double amputee war hero as a fraud? Even after he reneged on a promise to buy a Model X for Earl of Frunkpuppy (who wants to start a charity to help veterans), people held off. The other day, however, this thread happened:

Skabooshka For Prison on Twitter

The "prosthetic arm" stuff really went too far

This got people to start looking through his pictures. Funny thing... (a couple examples)

Called out on this, he responded that sometimes he posts old pictures, from before he lost limbs during the Afghanistan war. Funny thing, how long ago was the Polestar 2 launch?

Also, about his coffee farm pics...

That farm is, of course, not owned by Dennis Clark. That's Greenwell Farms:

Owned by, of course, the Greenwell family, and run by Thomas Greenwell. That photo was taken from this green shelter:

That shelter is part of the tour of Greenwell Farms, where tourists are taught about how coffee is made.

He says he does multiple 1,5h swims per week in Kona Bay (during his endless boasting about his athletic prowess... something which pictures of him hardly reveal!). Problem is:

TriTurboTexan on Twitter

The waters off of Kona are extremely hazardous; there are tons of warnings for people not to enter the water:

The original Ironman competition is held there, but it's specifically designed to be hard - it's not a place for a double-amputee, let alone someone as visibly out of shape as Dennis.

People kept piling on:

On and on it went. As everyone who had hesitated from calling him out earlier started pouring in, eventually he gave up and deleted his account:

Congratulations, Dennis - you're our TSLAQ Fraud of the Day (as well as having severe Munchausen syndrome)! Oh, and Washington Post? Check your freaking sources better next time. :Þ

 

[Causalien]

MODs- Why can't there be a way for logged-in users to select all the top-end, relevant, informative posts like this and de-select all the political, African vs. European swallow, S and X upgrade guesses and advertising discussions, leaving only the useful investing stuff we like this when we review our forums?

Many thanks to @Causalien and others who answered this so well for us.

(Edited to remove my accidental stupid double reply)

Maybe a post tag will work. Field that must be filled and readers can use to filter posts. So things can be grouped into investing, politics, technology, complaints, Real Life Stories etc. etc. But ya, the grouping needs to be determined by the mods, if it were left to us, there'd be thousands of different groupings.

 

[KarenRei]

Google "Alberta reclamation securities fund shortfall".

I did, and I find something from 2010 (e.g. obsolete), and nothing more recent. Anything in particular I should be looking at?

This is the same issue which keeps old, played out wells in "production", so that the lease holder doesn't ever trigger the reclaimation time limit counter.

That seems to contradict the structure of the fund, which demands more and more deposits the closer you get to exhausting the reserves. It's also not difficult to find pictures of land in various states of restoration from older mines. If you own a mine, and it's nearly exhausted, your financial incentives are to close it so you no longer have to maintain deposits for it.

But if you have some recent article suggesting otherwise, I'd be interested in reading it.

 

[Causalien]

It goes like this: A market maker wants the price to be much lower. They submit short sales of say 250,000 shares using a waterfall approach: They will execute against all of the order books, gobbling up all the highest 250,000 shares of standing buy limit orders, but doing it over a period of a minute or two. The market makers generally also have insight into most of these buy limit orders, so they can estimate just how big a drop they will cause. Say it causes a $6 dollar drop in about two minutes. Now this huge drop has the potential to spook retail market participants, many of whom will be scrambling to figure out what news do big insiders have that they don't? Some of them will decide to sell too. Over the next several hours (or several days sometimes - market makers are allowed to have FTDs for many days too!) they buy back these naked shorts with many small ~500 share orders at the "new" lower prices they caused with their artificial mini-crash.

The buying back does have an upward effect on price, but it is smaller because it is drawn out over a long period of time. If the market maker sees actual strong buying interest before they have bought back their shares, then they can cap it with limit sell (naked short again) orders such that large buying volume does not raise the price much. If they do that, it will increase the size of their short so it's likely they will also extend the time over which they cover. The point is that this is done to control market psychology - that this stock is being dumped by big players, so now is not the time to buy and maybe it is the time to sell. Coordinating it with some bogus news, downgrade or such just adds to the psychological force.

The SEC rules allow them to do this for the supposed reason of providing orderly markets. I'm sure the MM would say that they are "adding liquidity" to the market, but there is no need for them to say anything because the SEC does not care what they do.

To add on to this.

In normal free markets, you will get people who sees this and trade in reverse of the market makers to exploit it. Since the speed at which this is done is not possible for humans, the MM must employ robots. There were many small groups that exploited this in the past several years and they all ended up in jail for writing a program that recognizes the pattern these bots have when performing such operation (like timing intervals of orders) and betting against it. From my point of view, what these people do is absolutely not illegal. It's like reading the tape but at nanosecond speed.

So the message is out there, that betting against the Market Makers gets you jailed. And this is why, the strategy still works. When your vampire squid can no longer make money sucking blood, it gets the politicians to outlaw its competitors.

 

[Fact Checking]

Interesting, he calls the new foundations between the factory and the 220KV substation the "battery workshop".

Does anyone know on what basis he is calling it that?

 

[Fact Checking]

You probably should have listened, because she said that this was not the Fed reacting to Trump. Rather it's the Fed reacting to unusual activity in the overnight lending market which she claims is unprecedented and concerning. The New York Fed spends $53 billion to rescue the overnight lending market - CNN

It's probably benign:

The Fed Has Not Covered Itself in Glory: Fed Funds Mess Edition | naked capitalism​

The theory is that this is happening because the Fed started paying interest on reserves instead of directly injecting liquidity to control the rates.

The "emergency" measures the Fed is applying now is how the Fed controlled rates for decades.

There's also possibly some arbitrage abuse by foreign central banks using the unlimited dollar lending facility.

I.e. this is probably not the sign of some systemic lack of lender trust (such as a big bank facing a bank run), but incompetence of the Fed not fully understanding the consequences of the unwinding of QE and not properly managing the levels of reserves. If that's the case then the Fed will eventually sort it out by the end of this quarter.

Not advice.