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

[StealthP3D]

Oh was just watching Electric Viking again and his latest piece is on ze Germans and Autopilot, Germans overrules the ban on Autopilot naming.

I'm glad Tesla won this one because I would hate to see Germany forced to rename their highway system to prevent people from thinking they could enter the Autobahn, set their cruise control, and take a nap! Calling it the "Autobahn" does not make the highway fully autonomous!

 

[Huskyf]

FSD switched lanes for a squirrel for me before, quite casually I must say while I was still contemplating my options. Switched back into the right lane after we passed it.

Yes a squirrel is a real animal

 

[jw934]

So, going to go up and going to go down. Wow, something new!

What is new, at least to me, is to see $TSLA (or any stock) with the bid and the ask spread $12 apart for 34 seconds during regular trading hours yesterday, and two algos fighting it out. (my interpretation)

Screen recorded live from Stockmaster app.

Spoiler: Twitter nonsense, to some

https://twitter.com/x/status/1559540965144203264

 

[lascavarian]

Apparently Tesla pulled the non-Tesla subscription out of the app now.

It seems like the whole non-Tesla subscription thing was a slip up. Makes sense since… there are no chargers which support it.

Also, solid chance the $0.99 fee is a filler cost in the app until they actually green light this.

Though it wouldn’t surprise me if it hangs around at $0.99 until they get a bunch of non-Tesla sites online.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1559751308667666432

Incentivizing using a Tesla app could make solid sense as an entry to many services in the future like insurance quotes, robotaxi or a social network even.

 

[hobbes]

Manchester United is publicly traded on NYSE as MANU. Still not sure if he’s joking or what, though.

Pheew, not another distraction!

https://twitter.com/x/status/1559760618537848832

 

[kanweg]

Correction: You have only sold if it is worth at least $175/share in one month. If bad news causes it to trade in a lower trading range, you are stuck with it. Therefore, I would have used a capital "G" in the second sentence, so you don't irritate Him.

Yes, you hear people sometimes complaining on this forum but if the old stories were to believed, then that is a petty mod, eh Mod. Expect macros to take a dump just for this capital offense.

 

[hobbes]

Tesla is selling charging memberships now

https://twitter.com/x/status/1559715573898117121

This is new only for the US, has been like that in Europe for a short while but monthly subscription fee here is EUR 13. Looking at the twitter thread it now looks it has been removed again, likely they accidentally published a too low fee.

 

[Artful Dodger]

Many institutional shorts have capitulated these past weeks, but perhaps more is coming, as Cory predicts.

Transcript: YouTube:

Why Don't Markets Care? 10,958 views Aug 16, 2022​

Tom Hearden, Skyland Capital Senior Trader, on "Bloomberg Markets: Americas"

04:23
This weekend we saw from Goldman Sachs prime broker
the rolling four-week data of short books covering was actually the third
highest cover rate in the last decade.

Why Don't Markets Care? | Bloomberg Markets and Finance

 

[Artful Dodger]

using a Tesla app could make solid sense as an entry to many services in the future like insurance quotes

Tesla will not be insuring other manufacturer's cars. They don't have the detailed data, telemetry, and video/evidence
'black-box' advantages that will make Tesla Insurance profitable yet with a lower cost to Tesla owners. It's an amenity, more than a general offering to the public.

 

[mongo]

Tesla will not be offering to insure other manufacturor's cars. They don't have the detailed data, telemetry, and video evidence advantages that will make Tesla Insurance profitable at a lower cost to Tesla owners. It's an amenity, more than a general offering to the public.

Plus control of the parts supply chain along with developing in-house body repair beyond bumper cover swaps.
Helps keep costs down.

 

[Buckminster]

Papafox excerpt:

The feeling investors can perhaps take away from such a day is that TSLA is losing some of its zoom. This somewhat disappointing trading day followed Monday's unremarkable trading when TSLA rose "only" 3% and disappointed some speculative traders. What we most likely saw for the past two days was a carefully choreographed manipulation. What happens when TSLA is artificially stunted in a climb is that option traders rearrange their bets. Calls at 950 on Monday morning dipped from above 15K contracts open interest to "only" 15K open interest Tuesday morning. OTOH, calls at 1000 strike increased from about 21K to about 28K. This move suggests 950 strike is a bit expensive to be in for traders seeing smaller upward price moves than hoped, but 1000 strike is cheaper and remains a hail Mary possibility if something big happens regarding the split. Such a change in sentiment makes 950 less important to protect and 1000 more important to protect, which is a good thing for us longer term investors. A gain of $50 per week is quite healthy. We also saw TSLA's put to call ratio fall from .74 to .70 by Tuesday morning. Bottom line, disappointment, even if it is artificially manufactured, leads to adjustments in options held, which in turn leads to market maker selling of shares if the move is in a negative direction (which only supports the manipulation).

 

[jerry33]

Interesting that it is only $0.99/month. It is £10.99/month ($13.31) in the UK or €12.99/month ($13.22) in Europe. But maybe the discount isn't as significant here in the US, or maybe they will adjust the monthly fee when it really goes live. (I would expect $12.99/month here.)

While I could sign-up for it right now, it doesn't show that there are any Superchargers that I could use, so it wouldn't make since to start paying anything right now. There is no mention of adapters, so they must be going with adding a second cable or the MagicDock that we have heard of.

Other interesting tidbit: You are only allowed to charge at a Supercharger 5 times per day per account in a non-Tesla.

Five times per day would get you from DFW to Lincoln, NE. So that's not much of a limitation. Of course, your non-Tesla would need to be able to travel at least 200 miles at highway speeds because there is one 200 mile leg.

 

[SN_8]

Thanks for the link. That guy sure talks a lot without really saying anything.

Although I suppose it's true that his videos can be summarized as "if the market goes up, it'll go up more, and if it goes down, it'll go down more", that's an oversimplification. His analysis of important support and resistance levels is usually spot on. As are his explanations about how human psychology plays out in the charts.

Maybe his videos aren't for you but I wouldn't necessarily dismiss them after one day. I find it to be one useful data point among many.

 

[jerry33]

I don't know why Tesla would want to undercut with them as the supercharger uptime is like 99.98% or something. It's a premium service which deserves a premium fee.

It's a smart move to insure Superchargers remain relevant for the foreseeable future.

 

[jerry33]

That isn't true network wide. I think the problem is mostly in California.

It's a big problem in Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska. There are often waits to charge. I got lucky on the last trip (end of July) in that I was able to get the only open spot at Ardmore with no wait. After I plugged in, six more Teslas arrived and had to wait. Tesla either needs more sites, V3/4 Superchargers, or double the number of V2 chargers. So the problem is certainly not only in California.

 

[SmokyPeat]

Although I suppose it's true that his videos can be summarized as "if the market goes up, it'll go up more, and if it goes down, it'll go down more", that's an oversimplification. His analysis of important support and resistance levels is usually spot on. As are his explanations about how human psychology plays out in the charts.

Maybe his videos aren't for you but I wouldn't necessarily dismiss them after one day. I find it to be one useful data point among many.

Yeah, I guess the TA stuff just isn't my cup of tea. Maybe I'd find it useful if I was doing more active trading.

 

[Singuy]

The issue that I’m struggling with here is the quintessential “edge case”. Does it matter if there’s a <1% child in the street? How do train your NN for these ridiculous edge cases that might actually happen?

You don't. Tesla is working on transforming what the car see into vector space so even if a ufo landed in the streets, the car should avoid it.

 

[SageBrush]

Yeah, I guess the TA stuff just isn't my cup of tea.

I find it hard to be so polite. I call it a toxic mixture of market manipulation, BS, and confirmation bias. The meme stocks are a natural outgrowth of TA, and TA a natural outgrowth of social media stupidity.

 

[mongo]

Tesla will not be insuring other manufacturer's cars. They don't have the detailed data, telemetry, and video/evidence
'black-box' advantages that will make Tesla Insurance profitable yet with a lower cost to Tesla owners. It's an amenity, more than a general offering to the public.

Tesla does insure non-Tesla car as additional vehicles in all states and overseas, and allows non-Teslas as the only vehicle in California.
Tesla Insurance

• For Tesla vehicle owners with non-Tesla vehicles, you can also insure your non-Tesla vehicles by adding the vehicle when you purchase a policy. For existing policyholders, contact us to add your non-Tesla vehicles to your policy.
• For non-Tesla vehicle owners in California, you can also insure your non-Tesla vehicles by adding the vehicle when you purchase a policy.

 

[jkirkwood001]

That's great, it pencils out for you financially. It doesn't for us.

In San Diego, we run the AC about 6-8 weeks per year. We run the heat about 10 weeks per year. Rest of the time we might turn on the whole-house fan to pull some air through and provide a breeze, but that's it. The "payback" period because of the short utilization is very long for Heat Pumps. I'll do it when our HVAC units die, but they are only 6 years old, so it's going to be a while. We have over-provisioned solar so that we can run the AC whenever we want (from our powerwalls directly, this isn't a net-metering swap, we touch the grid for less than 500 kWh per year).

Our gas usage for the stove and hot water (tankless) heater are so small ($10/mo) that replacing either of them will NEVER, not in 30 years, not at 5X the current gas prices, pay for itself. Labor and appliances are expensive here (as in most of Cali), it's a large hurdle to jump to make it pencil out, especially when we are already in a new house with all new appliances (we couldn't pick them, they were already picked before we found the house or we would have put in much less natural gas stuff). If I was getting back some of my taxes for this rebate, I would do it. But it looks like they are going to exclude high-income earners in this move. That's not surprising given the political optics.


I'm 100% behind being environmentally friendly, but I won't do it when it doesn't pencil out financially. Otherwise you are just giving a blank check to the equipment manufacturers and installers.

I want to agree with everything you say, and your case is much like mine. But please don't say "I'm 100% behind being environmentally friendly" when you choose not to get rid of your gas appliances. Sounds like you're about 40% environmentally friendly, where the majority of your decision is financial, even though by your own admission you're "high-income earners".

I shouldn't pick on you because you've done a lot. But trying to overcome global warming takes sacrifices. Us making 50% sacrifices is pretty good, like my aunt saying "but I'm taking fewer flights now" when I chastise her for flying across the country to see relatives every year. Will it be enough? Was our cost/benefit analysis sufficient? Will our grandchildren be proud of our choices? Let's see in 10 or 20 more years.