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

[Prunesquallor]

It will be really interesting to see what Ark stuffs in ARKX. Unless they are very liberal with their definition of “space exploration”, I can’t think of any companies that I see as near-term disruptive other than SpaceX and Starlink.

Perhaps large-scale in-space additive manufacturing, maybe low earth orbit tourism (but that would have to be closely tied to SpaceX).

 

[JRP3]

Chamath basically saying major nickel resource has been flooded and will delay supply by a year and battery costs are gonna jump.

Thoughts?

I think he's completely overstated the supply impact, especially when he says it will "basically cause the price of a Tesla to double". Nickel pricing has dropped 30% from a month ago.

 

[JustMe]

It will be really interesting to see what Ark stuffs in ARKX. Unless they are very liberal with their definition of “space exploration”, I can’t think of any companies that I see as near-term disruptive other than SpaceX and Starlink.

Perhaps large-scale in-space additive manufacturing, maybe low earth orbit tourism (but that would have to be closely tied to SpaceX).

Could be supportive/disruptive technology like 3D printing, ISRU, micro satellites, radiation tolerant electronics etc.

 

[asburgers]

Troy clears up the 2nd shift confusion in a follow up tweet. It appears that they tried to jump the gun a bit (demand pull??).
This may add to more FUD. Something doesn't add up with all these news.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1375816054430179331

 

[asburgers]

I think he's completely overstated the supply impact, especially when he says it will "basically cause the price of a Tesla to double". Nickel pricing has dropped 30% from a month ago.

Chamath quoted Nornickel's Norilsk mines in Russia as being flooded. It caused a partial shut down of that region. The company stated about two weeks ago that one of the two affected mines will begin ramp up in mid Apr with the other one re-opening in June. I think it's a bit of hyperbole that can be resolved with a quick search.

 

[UncaNed]

Thankfully, EOQ, so no ships on da canal, but imagine the spasms if it had been otherwise...

But are any critical Tesla components trapped in a lengthening queue waiting for the canal to open? It only takes one obscure but important little item to hold up production.

 

[Krugerrand]

Frankly that is slightly overstated. For the record the part of my career spent on this subject was a largely futile process to bring one rating agency ( won't say which one) into the present day. The processes and overall system were designed to meet the needs of nearly a century ago and have been resistant to change. Part for he reason si that the regulatory process for most institutional investors is itself antiquated and resistant to change. In my effort to explain all this and state the relevant implications I do NOT attempt to defend the system as is. Anybody who lived through Penn Central, Enron, LTCM, AIG, the mortgage industry meltdown and subsequent near-failure of hundreds of the world's major banks cannot in good conscience suggest that the risk management systems anywhere in finance are even remotely adequate.

So please do not ever suggest that I have "seen good in the sector". Understanding it and it's market consequences is not in any way analogous to a defense. Please, please understand that.

Two specific statistical concepts explain why nearly all the financial industry is so inadequate in managing risk. Those are 'multi collinearity' and 'boundary conditions'. Those two concepts are commonly ignored in financial industry analytics, including by Nobel Prize winners with disastrous consequences.

Finally, the method of compensation for rating agencies itself guarantees poor results since it is issuer-based. Will prolific issuers have better ratings than do infrequent ones? Is Ford paying more than Tesla?

So once again please do not ever suggest I defend the system. On three separate occasions I worked with regulators to try to establish better control. I was paid, but nothing was done. Why? Just check who has been US Secretary of the Treasury when these various disasters have happened. [self regulation does not work]. Then check which industries make the most political contributions and to whom. After that examine the exact wording of financial services legislation; much of that is nearly identical to lobbyist submissions.

That said, the market reactions to all this are also driven in large part by market-makers. I have made numerous posts about the consequences of that. So has @AudubonB and others. The industry itself is built explicitly to reward market-makers for volatility. Many people here think about FUD. That is futile. Remember that the changes to the SEC and other 'enforcement' entities were largely dismantled during the last few years eliminating nearly all the protections that once existed, specifically including the 'uptick rule', 'naked shorts' and several related rules. There are indeed some rules, but market makers can easily avoid almost all of them, and SEC enforcement has tended to ignore the most influential players (that is my opinion, some might dispute it's accuracy). The SEC budget has slightly risen in the last five years so there is a prima facie suggestion that there are adequate resources, itself disingenuous in my personal opinion.

If I responded too verbosely I apologize. I do not take kindly suggestions that I might have been superficial and biased in favor of those who paid me. No doubt, that is a 'rating agency style defense", so I say it before you can.

Thanks for clarifying that you weren’t defending it when it seemed obvious to me you were when you wrote a lengthy correction and thought for more than a second my original post was anything other than humorous flippant sarcasm, that you’ll note everyone else understood by their ratings.

We done now?

 

[Nocturnal]

Your idea raises a really important question for me, one which would have to be answered before the discussion could proceed any further.

Would Adam Jonas be redeemed?

I know, that's the biggest downside of the idea I can think of.

 

[Krugerrand]

Their financials obviously suck. They are burning cash.

The first mover advantage and moat they are creating by being so far ahead technologically is priceless.

Just ask the ESA and what their plans are to respond to the SpaceX competition.

At least as junky as a broken toaster but not as junky as a broken umbrella.

 

[EVWatcher]

It will be really interesting to see what Ark stuffs in ARKX. Unless they are very liberal with their definition of “space exploration”, I can’t think of any companies that I see as near-term disruptive other than SpaceX and Starlink.

Perhaps large-scale in-space additive manufacturing, maybe low earth orbit tourism (but that would have to be closely tied to SpaceX).

bigelow aerospace seems like its got some cool stuff, but their moat seems mostly based on patents they bought off NASA on the cheap.

 

[ggies07]

**** Buffett. This is ridiculous. Solar/wind + battery storage is the way to go.

Buffett's Plan To Fix Texas Energy Grid Includes 10 New Peaker Plants Owned By Buffett - CleanTechnica

Here's the essence of the plan: Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway would spend more than $8 billion to construct 10 1-megawatt natural gas-powered peaker plants in Texas in exchange for a guaranteed rate of return.

cleantechnica.com

 

[Krugerrand]

View attachment 648419
What can we make from this?

Nothing other than he’s guessing what’s going on inside the factory like the rest of us.

 

[Curt Renz]

Chicago Tribune - yesterday: Murder - Failed Tesla Carjacking

Excerpt:

Charged with murder were ... The two also were charged with attempted carjacking in an attack during the police pursuit that ended in their capture after they couldn’t start a Tesla car they were trying to make off with, Hanania said.

 

[jerry33]

**** Buffett. This is ridiculous. Solar/wind + battery storage is the way to go.

Buffett's Plan To Fix Texas Energy Grid Includes 10 New Peaker Plants Owned By Buffett - CleanTechnica

Here's the essence of the plan: Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway would spend more than $8 billion to construct 10 1-megawatt natural gas-powered peaker plants in Texas in exchange for a guaranteed rate of return.

cleantechnica.com

This is unlikely to happen because it takes too long to get approval for NG and the cost is too high compared to renewables. He'd probably have to pay the Legislators the first ten years profits to get it through.

 

[Curt Renz]

Chicago Tribune - yesterday: Rivian Sued by Illinois Dealers for Direct Selling

Excerpts:

Illinois auto dealers are suing the state and electric truck startup Rivian for cutting out the middleman and selling vehicles directly to consumers...

...In May 2019, the auto dealers, the Secretary of State and Tesla entered into an administrative consent order agreeing that Tesla could have no more than 13 dealer licenses in Illinois.

The deal was limited only to those locations and “included an assurance that the Illinois Secretary of State would not issue licenses authorizing direct sales to any additional manufacturers,” Sander said in an email Friday to the Tribune.

In July 2020, the Illinois attorney general’s office issued “an informal opinion” stating that the motor vehicle law does not expressly require new manufacturers to establish franchise dealerships to sell their vehicles, opening the door for Rivian and Lucid to launch their own direct-to-consumer sales networks, the lawsuit alleges.

 

[kanweg]

Chicago Tribune - yesterday: Murder - Failed Tesla Carjacking

Excerpt:

Charged with murder were ... The two also were charged with attempted carjacking in an attack during the police pursuit that ended in their capture after they couldn’t start a Tesla car they were trying to make off with, Hanania said.

Upcoming feature of the Tesla app: Lock doors and use FSD to drive to police station/jail/nearest police car.

 

[printf42]

Good points - I mostly agree with most of them.

One thing though is hard to quantify: The wide-spread belief that self-driving is a) possible at all and b) the arrival is imminent - within a very few years.

There is a cultural/psychological component that may be culturally related, maybe depends how strong your grounding in science and technology is. (Maybe also depends on how much science fiction you have read.)

People got used to Deep Blue beating Kasparov in chess, but it was fairly big then.
For a long time after, the game of Go was the next frontier, until suddenly that was not only conquered, but vanquished.

Go is *big* in the china cultural sphere - Koreans openly wept when their world champion Lee Se-dol was roundly beaten in 2016 by 4 games to 1.
Lee was optimistic, nay cocky before the game, thinking that he could hold a master class in go and teach these these arrogant (mostly) Americans programmers a lesson in humility.

He himself afterwords said that the go-program had a 'feel or deep intuition for playing go' that utterly stunned him. Given that, it is a testament to his mental strength that he recovered form this great shock, and actually won a subsequent game by playing perhaps the best game of his life.

Many people's minds were blown then.
Lee retired in 2019, saying that no matter how good he could still become he could never beat the new 'entity'.
Former Go champion beaten by DeepMind retires after declaring AI invincible

So, for option F) i would add this:
A large number of totally ordinary people waking up to the fact that the arrival of Self Driving might be pivotal moment, to be compared with other big technological leaps like steam engines, the assembly line, computing or the internet. And invest according to their newfound realization.

I think it will be an iPhone moment.

Great points to bring up about deep learning development.

Recent leap frog advances are mostly based on unsupervised learning, as soon as a problem can be tackled in an unsupervised way, AI can quickly evolv to superhuman level.

That’s why I think Tesla’s new way of automatic video labeling is a big deal. With that, perception training data would become practically unlimited with Tesla’s 1M+ fleet on the ground.

For motion planning, I’m not at all worried, because the rules are really simple. “One car come, one car go, two car pong pong, both lose”. With enough computing power, that should be a solved problem.

TL;DR:
Deep learning step change advances often surprises people, including industry insiders. I expect FSD V9 to be one of those instances.

 

[kanweg]

This is unlikely to happen because it takes too long to get approval for NG and the cost is too high compared to renewables. He'd probably have to pay the Legislators the first ten years profits to get it through.

That will be costly, as Tony Seba clearly (but in a bit boring manner) explains

Here is one on solar and batteries that I haven’t watched yet.

 

[UncaNed]

My Tesla-Delta is currently about 3x compared to having all-in TSLA-Stock .. Options ftw!
And never underestimate Gamma & Vega. Currently have a gamma of $5 for every $ TSLA moves. And $3k Vega if IV pops on delivery numbers in 2 weeks..

We will see who will win when all is said & done

People always talk about their own private islands .. don't think so constrained .. Why have an island if you can have a whole base inside an asteroid?

I seriously wish everyone of you good luck

A useful metric, thanks for bringing this to our attention.

So to arrive at this number, I take my total all-TSLA brokerage account balance divided by the TSLA share price, giving me the number of all-shares account equivalent (one of my favorite account value numbers in itself!) which equals my theoretical all-shares-only account Delta (shares, by definition, always being Delta =$1)? And if my number is 2x vs. your 3x, it might be because I buy later expiring LEAPS than your CALL options? And if that is correct, my portfolio might be a little less risky than your 3x portfolio, others things being the same?

Somebody please tell me if my train of thought needs a little fixing, thanks in advance.

 

[j6Lpi429@3j]

Go is *big* in the china cultural sphere - Koreans openly wept when their world champion Lee Se-dol was roundly beaten in 2016 by 4 games to 1.
Lee was optimistic, nay cocky before the game, thinking that he could hold a master class in go and teach these these arrogant (mostly) Americans programmers a lesson in humility.

Sorry to be picky, but actually mostly BRITISH programmers . I know this because demis used to be my boss and dave silver my line manager when I worked at elixir