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

[neroden]

When I bought my S90D in early 2016 the associate at the store said that they were on salary and no one got commissions.

Yeah, they kind of screwed that up over the next two years (apparently due to a change in the head of sales -- that guy is now gone too)

 

[AlexS]

Probably Model 3 stamping press have enough capacity for producing also Model Y parts. so they needed just the tools. Anyone know the model of Schuler press for Model 3?

found some info by myself, should be something like that, with 23 strokes per minute.
High-Speed im Presswerk

 

[Webeevdrivers]

I wonder if another demand lever he could pull is a trailer hitch and maybe a 2000 to 3000 pound capacity.

 

[Curt Renz]

Tesla remains ARK Invest's #1 holding. For those concerned about ARK's portfolio rebalancing policy that disallows purchases of a stock that exceeds 10% of an ETF, here is the list of ARK's trades today which includes purchases of Tesla shares.

 

[neroden]

Isn't most of that G&A? i.e. accounting, finance, human resources, facilities administration, public relations, investor relations, data processing, insurance, legal, executive management (From March 21, 2018, when the grant was approved by our stockholders, through December 31, 2018, we recorded stock-based compensation expense of $174.9 million related to the 2018 CEO Performance Award.) severance and litigation expenses, etc.--CEO award is non-cash, but the rest is mostly cash consumption.

An interesting list.

We know Tesla runs lean on accounting and finance. And on HR. And on facilities administration.
We know Tesla runs WAY TOO lean on PR and Investor Relations.
Data processing is mostly automated and probably pretty cheap (given the low quality of their data processing)
Insurance probably does cost a meaningful amount, but it's never that big
Legal... well, I hope they aren't spending much because they're not very good at it
There aren't that many executives...

If Service overhead costs are not in SG&A (and I'm not sure about this), stores are gonna be a huge part of it. I know some of the Supercharger operations budget is allocated to SG&A (as a marketing expense).

 

[Nocturnal]

Don't get me wrong, in places with high charger density the SR is quite workable. And Musk's goal is to accelerate adoption, not give 100% coverage. But IMO the success of the EV in the midwest is about bringing battery prices down to where >300 mile range is the norm rather than trying to increase super charger density.

Definitely. I used up most of my powder today, though I have some left if it goes lower. And low enough I go all in on $TSLA

I agree. I hope SR buyers aren't expecting to be able to do long road trips in cold weather with today's SC density. Even in my P3D when it's 5 degrees out here in the Midwest I have to stop at every SC and get a sizable topoff, typically close to 75% or so.

I hope Tesla at least qualifies these buyers. If we see masses of SR people furious and attempting to sue Tesla that will be bad. For local driving an SR will be just fine for 99% of people of course.

 

[Artful Dodger]

ArtfulDodger, you're the one who tracked down the evidence of the scam, you should please submit it to the SEC.

I have seen indications of misconduct. Proving it requires access to data I don't have, and seems purposfully hidden/delayed/unavailable. Ironically the SEC does have that access, if only they were willing to do their statutory duty.

I can produce some statistics that identifies certain questionable trading days but again "2008 happened", and the only guilty party that went to jail was Martha Stewart.

 

[Artful Dodger]

Volumebot short selling percentage shot up to 67% today:

tsla | Volumebot​

This is very high on an already intense day with 250% the average daily volume, and suggests that most of today's selling were shorts who reacted to Chanos's Twitter signal earlier today.

Buyers were likely TSLA institutional investors.

My non-advice: take the "Chanos discount and sale" while it lasts?

Butt Ihor said there's no naked short selling of TSLA! /S

 

[neroden]

Based on my understanding of Karpathy's SW 2.0 talk, they retrain the entire NN on every check in of new test cases, labeled data, and features added. So there is no removing of mislearning, rather the old NN is completely discarded and redone.

That's extremely helpful information.

 

[EVMeister]

Butt Ihor said there's no naked short selling of TSLA! /S

I hope that ingenious pun was intended.

 

[neroden]

I have seen indications of misconduct. Proving it requires access to data I don't have, and seems purposfully hidden/delayed/unavailable. Ironically the SEC does have that access, if only they were willing to do their statutory duty.

I can produce some statistics that identifies certain questionable trading days but again "2008 happened", and the only guilty party that went to jail was Martha Stewart.

Yeah, submit it anyway. We want a record that people notified the SEC of this stuff.

 

[Zaxxon]

Interesting. As I've mentioned on here before, my family's 'other' car is a Volvo PHEV. I'm a member of the 'Voice of Volvo' customer panel, and receive periodic surveys from Volvo regarding future products, potential feature investments, etc. I just received a survey regarding the Polestar 2. In the survey Volvo explicitly mentions that the car will have a 275-mile range and that it's positioned as a Tesla Model 3 competitor:

Unfortunately this particular survey seems to be focused simply on evaluating mind share, and did not include the opportunity to give further detail as to *why* one might or might not consider it. But, in any event, it's always fun when your competition advertises to their customers that they should be considering your product.

 

[humbaba]

I have seen indications of misconduct. Proving it requires access to data I don't have, and seems purposfully hidden/delayed/unavailable. Ironically the SEC does have that access, if only they were willing to do their statutory duty.

I can produce some statistics that identifies certain questionable trading days but again "2008 happened", and the only guilty party that went to jail was Martha Stewart.

where's the "Crying" rating?

 

[Remus]

It's an embedded JavaScript last updated March 1 (the SR reveal), it's not continuously updated.

My guess the number will be updated later this week, once the first flood of SR orders is in and they can sort out reservation holders.

I am so ashamed of myself as a programmer for sweating about this yet failed to figure it out by myself!

Given Tesla's software practice or the lack thereof, I wouldn't be surprised the programmer who pushed this didn't update that part at all on March 1st

 

[SpaceCash]

Lol. I wasn't even selling anything that unlikely (I turned my calls into 8 Mar spreads; the highest I sold at was $330 ).

If you're gonna gamble might as well do it in such a way that you can gloat afterwards if you hit it big. Nobody really remembers your losses

 

[neroden]

I still don’t understand the price breakdown unless you invent
A bearish narrative to justify it.

Q1 loss is understood, one time charges too, the rest
Is a bearish concoction and fear.

The market can be very, very irrational in the short term -- which is actually where investore make money.

This is why one typical set of advice for investors is to invest long term, have iron stomachs, and use very little leverage.

I still have some short puts. The earliest expires in May and is profitable if TSLA is over $255. That's my only leverage.

 

[neroden]

I *think* you’re referring more to incorrect data polluting the dataset, not actually retraining a network.

No, I'm referring to incorrect *testing feedback* -- i.e. training the car to do something which is illegal or undesirable, because the people who did the training didn't know how to drive, and thought the car should behave that way. Some of the stuff they've already implemented *falls in this category*, such as the "follow the car in front" scheme. Making the car speed or making it follow too close or making it pass with too little free space would be other examples of this sort of thing (though those I expect Tesla would avoid).

 

[VValleyEV]

If they can keep the price targets and the manufacturing schedule without any ramp up "hell" then there's nothing for Rivian to worry about: both the #1 and the #2 EV pickup truck is going to sell like hotcakes, taking market share from F-250 and Dodge Ram sales, not each other.

I keep thinking the Tesla Pickup will use the Semi platform. Should make it straightforward to make a really monstrous pickup that will compete with the biggest ICE pickups, and shorter time to market. This jives with the teasers from Elon about size and towing capacity.

 

[Hock1]

Butt Ihor said there's no naked short selling of TSLA! /S

He might actually be able to determine, within an order of magnitude, the extent of traditional, located-and-borrowed short sales, but as far as the MM (Market Manipulators) short sales---no way! A great percentage of those sales today, initiated as short, were the same unborrowed, non-existent shares sold and bought, over and over again at lower and lower prices, in order to facilitate the covering of longer term shorts.

 

[neroden]

tl;dr: I don't know why they do it. But the estimated delivery indicator is utter fiction (Elon time?)

This is correct. It's been utter fiction for Tesla's entire existence. Maybe they should just switch to "Estimated delivery: soon" and "Estimated delivery: later" and "Estimated delivery: eventually"