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

[2daMoon]

Marx my words?

To counter, I offer my tried and true fall back position,

People, are a problem.

 

[TN Mtn Man]

It may be possible with the current bleeding edge technology to create a robot, which could fetch materials from a warehouse. But what would that robot cost? My WAG is that at least 100 kUSD. Why would you rather not pay someone $ 10/hour to do that?

In the US market, you're not going to find warehouse workers for $10 an hour, most places it's about ~20. But that's just direct labor costs, it doesn't count benefits/burden. Health insurance at $500 or more per month. Paid vacation and holidays. Unemployment insurance. OSHA compliance. L&I insurance. That $20 an hour employee is costing a business a minimum of $60k a year, and that's without overhead. Now, robots don't take breaks, don't get back aches, don't have a fight with the spouse and come in in a bad mood. They don't get in fights with their fellow robots. They don't run to HR or file sexual harassments lawsuits. A human worker, working one shift and a 40 hour week works somewhere around 2000 hours a year, not counting breaks. A robot should work a minimum of 2 shifts, or more per day. Probably more like 20 hours a day with time off for charging and any "downtime". Plus of course they work weekends. So lets say 140 hours a week. 52 weeks a year (no holidays or vacations). 7280 "working" hours a year. Vs 2000 per employee. So the equivalent of 3 1/2 employees-not even talking the potential for much higher productivity. Cost isn't going to be that big an issue. $250,000 wouldn't be unreasonable, but I think they will be considerably less as production ramps.

This doesn't even look at perhaps the bigger issue. We have a major labor shortage-companies can't hire or retain employees, particularly if the job is remotely difficult or demanding. Robots don't quit and go find another company to work for ever few months.

 

[Unpilot]

Made me realize that I don't know this: what is the minimum number of humans to start a viable human civilization? I imagine there would be consanguinity issues with just two humans.

 

[Drax7]

As I said a few pages back, there was such a giant increase in inventories in Q4 that a recession is very likely now because of simple math.

Inventory of cars and homes are at record lows, those are major contributors
that are not in excess supply.

 

[Drax7]

From a logical/decision making/"intelligence" standpoint, autonomous driving has to be about the most challenging exercise possible. First you deal with the seemingly infinite number of ways highway designers/traffic planners manage to make intersections, signage, controls, lane selection different, seemingly to defy logic. Who hasn't gotten into a strange city and wondered just what the heck they were thinking coming on some oddball intersection. Where is the "signage"? Over the street? Side of the road? Or painted on the street, where it's worn, or covered with dirt, or just has vehicles over it? Now throw in the infinite amount of challenges of humans doing their best, controlling their vehicles appropriately. Dealing with heavy traffic is bad enough for us humans, let alone a computer. Now throw in the infinite number of ways human drivers, pedestrians and bicycles can do something stupid, unexpected or illegal. I'm not an AI guy, but the effort to "teach" a computer how to handle all those variables and decisions has to be mind-blowing.

Flip side, the "output" from an AI system to control the car is dirt simple. Steer, throttle, brake. Maybe throw in turn signals and horn. All easy to handle.

Flip side, the humanoid robot is the opposite. Decisions and tasks can be pretty basic. Go to this shelf, find this part, pick it up and carry it to the boxing area, stick it in a box. No big deal. But the number of outputs, to match the dexterity of a human, to deal with tactile inputs, is pretty amazing. Things we take for granted, like handling a tape dispenser to seal a box or unwrap bubble wrap from a roll, require a great deal of "feel" and dexterity. Just using your example of taking the dog for a walk-picture the challenges of grabbing the dogs collar, finding the "loop" and attaching a leash. All without hurting the dog.

Exciting times, hope I live long enough to see some of this come to pass!

On the other hand, anybody with billions of driving miles under the belt, having made
billions of decisions, is unlikely to be surprised by much.

 

[PeterJA]

Thursday's volume in TSLA was 49.0M shares (with 2.2M in the bloddy pre-Market). That's well above the TSLA 10 Day Average Volume of 32.6M shares.

In fact, based on YTD volume stats, Thursday's trading was 2.0 Standard Deviations above average. That was more than enough to kick the ball rolling downhill, especially with asymetric market assess for Retail during the pre-Market.

This was a bear raid, pure and simple, conducted by Wall St. thugs who were on the wrong side of the trade, knew that in advance, planned for it, and fleeced naive retail investors in the event (Options, Stop Losses, Margin Calls...) "Thanks for playing. Ready Player 2." Paging @Unpilot

The following 2018 article is from the Warton Business school where Elon attended: (8-min audio podcast included)

'Bear Raid' Stock Manipulation: How and When It Works, and Who Benefits

When Bear Stearns collapsed in March, some insiders argued it was wrong to blame the firm's risky bets on mortgaged-backed securities. They had another culprit: malevolent traders working together in the upside-down world of short sales -- making money by knocking down Bear's stock. There has...

knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu

You also made this comment:



TSLA was hardly up in the pre-Market (big players intent was signalled early to all). The brief upswing 15-min before the Market opens is a common way for large investors to get out of the way w/o a loss, but notice the SP tanks well before ANY retail investor who is restricted to trading off-hours could sell. Here's the Realtime Pre-Market chart from NASDAQ

View attachment 762116

Very good first comment BTW. Welcome to TMC, and looking forward to your contributions in the future!

Cheers to the Longs!

So enquiring (and gambling) minds wanna know: What will TSLA do next week?

The answer may depend on what caused last week's stock behavior. I've seen two competing explanations for the price plunge after earnings:

1) According to Gary Black and others, institutional portfolio managers are short-term thinkers who need hard numbers to plug into their spreadsheets. All of Elon's talk about FSD and Optimus scared them, because they can't assign a valuation to those pie-in-the-sky future products. They want to see Tesla focused on auto production.

2) According to @Artful Dodger and others, the stock plunge was a pre-planned bear raid by stock manipulators to profit from naive call buyers. Everyone knew the ER would beat estimates, and the manipulators knew naive investors had bet on the stock going up. So they crashed the price and profited from shorting and expiration of the calls they had sold.

So who is right? Or is it both? I lean toward #2 for the following reasons:

Managers of big money may be short-term focused and ignorant about engineering, but I doubt they are dumb. They have seen the track record of Elon's companies in delivering innovative products and services, from the best cars in the world to rockets that land on barges. They know that Tesla's demand is off the charts, and new products are not needed soon for Tesla's growth, and they heard Zach and Elon say the growth will be "comfortably" over 50 percent per year. Only a fool would bet against Elon's juggernaut now. I doubt they are all fools.

And maybe the portfolio managers knew a bear raid was coming, or helped it, and held off from buying because they expected to get in lower after the bear raid.

So how do we determine which explanation is correct? If #2 is correct, I'd expect the PMs to wait until they think the raid is over, playing chicken with each other, then start buying with a vengeance, shooting up the stock price. And I would expect the same pattern to occur after every ER this year, since each one is likely to beat published street estimates.

I won't get fooled again.

 

[ZachF]

Inventory of cars and homes are at record lows, those are major contributors
that are not in excess supply.

It’s not speculative on my part, it’s in the GDP data. Inventory buildup accounted for 4.8% of the 6.7% GDP growth.

Inventories are building because producers are hoarding intermediate products because of supply chain issues, and consumers are cutting real spending because inflation is outpacing wages.

If you take out this inventory build the real economy is growing at under 2% for the second half of the year.

Inventories net out to zero, so that build that greatly added to growth in 2021 is going to subtract from it in 2022 as supply chain issues wind down.

 

[nativewolf]

You might wait, but not everyone can/ will/ cares.

Next year's/month's/week's Tesla is always better than today's, yet people still buy today's .
Teslas are arguably better than many other cars sold today, yet people are buying those other cars.
Tesla has a 3ish month backlog on everything, demand is not an issue.
Are 4680 structural pack Y's better? Sure.
Outside of a direct A-B drive off, would a purchaser even notice? Doubtful, especially if coming from a non-Tesla. (Range figures excluded)

Sure there is plenty of demand and Tesla Osborune is not going to hit sales as the chip limiting factor is worse than the battery limiting factor. Next year...next year is going to be an issue if the chip situation clears up as they say. At that point a savvy buyer that can wait and will wait ...will wait til it is a 4680. I don't think this impacts teslas sales this year or maybe even next. It depends on them solving the 4680 issues whatever they are.

 

[nativewolf]

Luckily for Tesla, there are enough people not willing to wait for 4680. Like everybody getting a company car. And most first time Tesla buyers have barely enough info about driving an EV that they are not aware of the 4680 arrival. And Tesla will definitely make sure that anybody wanting 4680 will pay a premium for it until there is enough 4680 supply. EV’s are expensive enough that demand can be easily steered by pricing.

Yep, luckily for Tesla. Good to have incompetent competitors that start 10 years too late. However they've started now. That's clear.

 

[TheTalkingMule]

Sure there is plenty of demand and Tesla Osborune is not going to hit sales as the chip limiting factor is worse than the battery limiting factor. Next year...next year is going to be an issue if the chip situation clears up as they say. At that point a savvy buyer that can wait and will wait ...will wait til it is a 4680. I don't think this impacts teslas sales this year or maybe even next. It depends on them solving the 4680 issues whatever they are.

99% of consumers have, and will never have, and clue what 4680 is. This is a "TMC problem".

 

[Silent Ludicrosy]

Sure there is plenty of demand and Tesla Osborune is not going to hit sales as the chip limiting factor is worse than the battery limiting factor. Next year...next year is going to be an issue if the chip situation clears up as they say. At that point a savvy buyer that can wait and will wait ...will wait til it is a 4680. I don't think this impacts teslas sales this year or maybe even next. It depends on them solving the 4680 issues whatever they are.

I’m sure Hertz will take all the 2170 cars if no one wants them.

 

[nativewolf]

Not only do they not have enough 4680 cells to run Germany properly but they didn't even file the complete set of paperwork til December. Just last month. Why do posters on this board keep thinking this is some conspiracy of the German govt? Tesla knew it was going to be a slow slog. Everyone knew it. So if Tesla wanted to get going sooner maybe they should have submitted the final paperwork back when they were having a party. THEY DIDN"T FILE THE PAPERWORK. This means TESLA IS NOT READY.

Tesla just does not have whatever supply constraint is worse at the moment, 4680, chips what have you. So there is no reason to push things. Remember that based on the production numbers given during the call that both Austin and Shanghai are hardly required to produce for Tesla to hit the 1.6 million unit production number. Why rush opening the factory and having a full team sitting around to make a tiny fraction of possible production? Tesla does not have many 4680 cells. They don't have any extra chip supply. They have a sufficient amount of 2170 81xxx and other cells to produce the 1.5 or so. Lets put all the Berlin conspiracy & inanity to bed. It is not impacting the investment thesis. The Germany govt is not the supply constraint. It's chips and 4680.

i meant Austin and Berlin are not required. Sigh...need more coffee

 

[Ipe]

Right. The thought has probably not escaped Musk that once a bot can make a bot, then an entire civilization can be started on any celestial body with the right raw materials, merely by transporting there two fertile humans and one bot.

Better leave the humans out of your civilization . Remember Caïn and Abel?

 

[nativewolf]

I’m sure Hertz will take all the 2170 cars if no one wants them.

Oh I am sure they'll sell every car. Frankly most people have little understanding of EVs or batteries. That knowledge will take some time to work through society. I think the Osborne effect is more critical for OEMs where people are delaying buying any car.

 

[Unpilot]

I won't get fooled again.

Me either....lesson painfully learned.

 

[phantasms]

99% of consumers have, and will never have, and clue what 4680 is. This is a "TMC problem".

100% agree.

About a 3rd of my entire network of friends who I see in real life is either about to order a Tesla, has one on order, or took delivery in the past six months. Out of all of them only one came to me and said “so when are the 4680 Model Ys hitting the market”? He worked at Bell Labs Back in the day.

 

[UkNorthampton]

Yes, his calculation is wrong, except for Tesla, but the formula itself is interesting.

Taking Ford as an example he has $155B of debt outside of Ford Credit it is more like $24B.

His point about the value of assets, including IMO leased cars is solid. Some of those car loans may be leases. meaning the car makers has to sell the car at the end of the lease. Some portion of the loan has to be for plant and equipment, including new loans they will need to build EV production.

Another thing that happens in an economic downturn is, some customers can't repay loans, which raises the question of whether the car itself is the only loan security.

Legacy will find it harder and harder to find buyers of new debt, especially if the collateral are fast-depreciating ICE cars with little resale value where finance commitments might be reneged on, and ICE cars handed back in huge numbers. Will the OEMs be tempted to hold the debt themselves? Oil-company proxies, banks?

I think legacy ICE collapse will be fast when it comes. They do not have the cells for switching to EVs.



On another note, it is clear to me that Tesla is miles ahead as design is always done by motivated, clever, skilled people free of interference. Legacy, by exception only. I think the original Toyota Prius team was good, independent-minded - but here's a Ford example. I think most legacies (including Ford & Toyota) will struggle hugely and effectively fail in their EV transitions.

First few seconds of video says Mach-E not designed in normal Ford committee way, instead done by a small team of dedicated, passionate people. Info from drunken night out with design team rather than youtuber's meeting with Bill Ford.

Risk to Ford that this limited innovation is stymied by corporate empire builders and beancounters.

Bonus - around 14 minutes for no-warning tyre slips and steering wheel wobble

 

[nativewolf]

99% of consumers have, and will never have, and clue what 4680 is. This is a "TMC problem".

Taking out of context a bit, the point of his posts was that ICEs OEMs are being Osborned. Consumers are waiting and would like EVs but OEMs makers need to keep selling ICE to fund EV transition. That's the takeaway. My comment on even Tesla being susceptible should have been qualified. It's not going to impact revenues at Tesla and is indeed, as you wisely put it, at TMC problem.

 

[Zero CO2]

So enquiring (and gambling) minds wanna know: What will TSLA do next week?

The answer may depend on what caused last week's stock behavior. I've seen two competing explanations for the price plunge after earnings:

1) According to Gary Black and others, institutional portfolio managers are short-term thinkers who need hard numbers to plug into their spreadsheets. All of Elon's talk about FSD and Optimus scared them, because they can't assign a valuation to those pie-in-the-sky future products. They want to see Tesla focused on auto production.

2) According to @Artful Dodger and others, the stock plunge was a pre-planned bear raid by stock manipulators to profit from naive call buyers. Everyone knew the ER would beat estimates, and the manipulators knew naive investors had bet on the stock going up. So they crashed the price and profited from shorting and expiration of the calls they had sold.

So who is right? Or is it both? I lean toward #2 for the following reasons:

Managers of big money may be short-term focused and ignorant about engineering, but I doubt they are dumb. They have seen the track record of Elon's companies in delivering innovative products and services, from the best cars in the world to rockets that land on barges. They know that Tesla's demand is off the charts, and new products are not needed soon for Tesla's growth, and they heard Zach and Elon say the growth will be "comfortably" over 50 percent per year. Only a fool would bet against Elon's juggernaut now. I doubt they are all fools.

And maybe the portfolio managers knew a bear raid was coming, or helped it, and held off from buying because they expected to get in lower after the bear raid.

So how do we determine which explanation is correct? If #2 is correct, I'd expect the PMs to wait until they think the raid is over, playing chicken with each other, then start buying with a vengeance, shooting up the stock price. And I would expect the same pattern to occur after every ER this year, since each one is likely to beat published street estimates.

I won't get fooled again.

the combination of 1,2 would roughly align with Gary Black three day rule ... i think he said to wait at least three days to jump back in ... if my memory serves me we have seen this behavior after good ER before.... HODL

EDIT: I misinterpreted Gary 3 day rule... however he did mention Netflix as missing Earnings ... which was not the reason for NFLX drop it was guidance ... same for TSLA ... so I have no idea what i am talking bout

 

[TN Mtn Man]

What's in the 120lb robot that would cost 100K vs a 4,000lb Tesla which only costs $60K?

A whole lot of motors/actuators/sensors. A car has at worst 4 drive motors (well, when CT comes out). Every single joint emulating a human joint will get a motor or actuator of some sort, some form of position feedback device and many will probably get some sort of tactile (touch/force) sensor.