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From stocks to bonds, credit to crypto, money managers looking for somewhere to hide from the Federal Reserve induced storm battering virtually every asset class are finding solace in a long reviled corner of the market: cash.
www.bloomberg.com
Most of mine is tied up in TSLA thanks to the "buying opportunities"
Hate to say it but tons of cash sitting on the sidelines might not suggest good things for the inflation outlook and what might be required to tame it.
Every time we get a big rally in this environment, every good earnings report, I think it's ammunition for the Fed further ratcheting up the pain because the economy can handle it.
Having started dating again after a divorce a couple of years ago, I’ve heard quite a bit of negativity about Musk (unjustified and exaggerated imho) from women and have had a couple of initial encounters go south in a hurry because of this.
So I think this is a real thing and something for investors to be aware of. ‘This’ being both biased content and skewed recommendations in feeds.
Of course once the street gets all the shares they think they can, they’ll be happy to roll them into a fund and sell them back to retail—for a price—with the press singing their praises.
edit: I also know a few women who are positive about Musk. Alas, they are taken.
It just seems that using both of these, at such high velocities is way too big for our current indicators. Might be appropriate for highly lagging indicators which seem to be all the Fed is paying attention to.
I agree with the gist of your point - that we could be doing this at a less drastic pace. I disagree that .25 at a time would have done the trick as the mountain is just too high - even starting a year ago we'd be at 1.5 right now (6 meetings a year I believe). But yeah - the less drastic raises could have / should have started a year or year and a half ago, and we wouldn't need to be running this big experiment. Its almost like the Fed also forgot that 0% rates aren't the norm.
The other germane thought, and this is one I agree with the Fed on - price increases of all kinds are sticky. Its hard to get employees to take a wage cut, and its easy for businesses to maintain prices they're already charging. This is a good reason to go after the inflation hard before it settles in - don't let it get comfortable as it were.
I haven't studied it closely but an idea I've read consistently about 70s and 80s is that inflation wasn't tackled aggressively or consistently enough. There would be a hint of, finally, recovery and the Fed would let up a bit. For years. The eventual pain necessary was even higher as a result.
All that being said, I see this macro situation as being paint ball splash on TSLA, and it will turn out effectively irrelevant to Tesla. Demand so far exceeds supply that Tesla can see some actual demand destruction and still need to be growing the business just as fast to satisfy the current demand and be ready for future demand. If 1 year queues shrink to 6 months, they're still too long to gain access to the big chunk of the car market that needs a car pretty quickly between identifying the need, and satisfying the need.
On top of which - the households that Tesla sells to are less affected by inflation and interest rates.
My own take is that this is all noise and irrelevant to my long term buy and hold outlook.
Does the Fed need to remove all the bonds it owns through QE via QT? Yes, but it should just do that first as a big hammer and not swing the rate hammer so flippin' hard.
I expect, and from what I've seen from the Fed, all of the bonds won't be removed. Not even close. Simplistic order of magnitude - something like $3T balance sheet at the start of the pandemic, $9T now, with a QT goal to shrink down to $6T. The balance sheet is going to be a lot bigger even if it all goes swimmingly.
Which for me is just fine. I think the balance sheet / government spending was too low before the pandemic (0% sustained interest rates and inflation being the primary evidence), so the pandemic has cured that problem We got too much of a correction though and the evidence is in the inflation rate.
Without going into technical details / nuances (and that I am 100% confident I'd get wrong in important ways), and agreeing that I'm not an economist, I do agree with the idea from modern monetary theory that the constraint on government spending comes from the inflation rate, not from bankruptcy or something else. In particular the sovereign issuer of a currency can never go bankrupt in its own currency - it just issues more. Too much issuance can degrade confidence in the sovereign and its currency, but that is an inflation constraint - not a bankruptcy constraint. Our state and local governments - they face the household constraint of bankruptcy as none of us can issue our own currency to satisfy our debts.
If there is indeed a settlement, the options activity for next week sure seems like someone knew of an incoming settlement. If you go and look at the options volume today, things get even more interesting. By far, the most volume on 350 Calls for next week.
It also makes the stock action weakness on Thurs/Fri that much more suspect.
It isn’t just me raising the topic. That is why I mentioned this here: The negative Musk and Tesla stories must figure more prominently in many people’s feeds than I realized.
As for me personally and joking aside, I’m looking for a real relationship and a long term match. Nature and the planet are important. Musk is doing a lot of good in that regard. I’d rather find out sooner than later that someone doesn’t share that view of the world.
Ukraine invaded, fascists gain power in Italy- why do I feel like I've heard this story before? At least my portfolio stopped circling the drain for a day.
If there is indeed a settlement, the options activity for next week sure seems like someone knew of an incoming settlement. If you go and look at the options volume today, things get even more interesting. By far, the most volume on 350 Calls for next week.
It also makes the stock action weakness on Thurs/Fri that much more suspect.
Total is 8,634 deliveries in a single day. If Tesla was in fact setting up delivery logistics to deliver all across China in the final two weeks (and especially the last week) like they do in the US, this is what it would look like.
Say what you will, TwTR is the winner of this entire market crash. Out of all of the major tech companies, Twtr sits on top having evaded most of this storm, a lot at Tsla shareholder's expense.
Zé's Guide For What To Be Impressed By Any Optimus Demo
While I'm definitely no expert, having a background in both machine / deep learning and modeling and simulation of robotic humanoids gives me some decent insight into where the challenges are, and therefore what would be really impressive to see if there is any Optimus prototype demo.
First, I would really like to dampen some expectations I'm reading. Having Optimus accomplish any task that requires movement of the feet would be really impressive. Accomplishing this is absolutely not a given as it is one of the core challenges in robotics (also why I incorrectly didn't even think they would do a bipedal humanoid form).
Look at some of the leaders in walking robots
Asimo is clearly totally preprogrammed with routines so less impressive than the latter two which show some ability to navigate difficult "new" terrain.
One of the core challenges is robotics is navigating sudden contact forces when you first touch a surface or an object. Humans have an "internal model" of the environment and make a guess what the mechanical properties of the object are before touching them. We use this to first estimate both our limb poses and what acceleration and velocity we should approach the object at.
Imagine trying step on pavement vs stepping on ice. The pavement is stiffer so naturally you will with a bit more relaxed muscles & joints so they can absorb the impact appropriately. However because you are very confident about what the surface is, you could push with confidence and higher impact forces. You can also step with a longer stride because you know what the frictional forces will be.
With ice, you know the surface is more slipperly, but also less predictable. You will step in a more crouched stance (because this gives you a better ability to change the direction and magnitude of contact forces, but requires more energy). You will also take smaller steps because less friction requires you too by laws of physics. You will also co-contract more muscles to ensure higher stability in case you are wrong on what the surface will do.
The robots operate more like they are on ice, even if they aren't. They make a more crouched position, and make small steps with less horizontal velocity. They attempt to stomp down almost vertically to reduce the effects of uncertainty around how much friction there is.
So they are certainly not as good as humans, even the best ones. I'm saying all of this to point out that balance is an extremely challenging task. If you mess up estimation of the surface, you will likely fall over.
My ranking of demo tasks by impressiveness from least impressive to most:
1. Arm-only movements that move an object
2. Arm-only movements that grasp and move a stiff object
3. Standing robot that can move arms around but doesn't touch anything
4. Standing robot that can grasp a stiff object
5. Robot that can take steps on flat surface
6. Robot that can walk and navigate multiple surfaces (Asimo level)
7. Robot that can navigate variable unknown surfaces (Agility / Atlas level)
8. Arm-only robot that can grasp and move delicate objects without crushing them (think raspberries)
9. Arm-only robot that can grasp and move variable delicate objects with crushing them.
10. 7 & 10 combined.
To be honest, even have an arm only robot accomplish #2 within a year is decent progress.
A robot that can stand and grasp an object (#4) would be amazing progress.
Anything above that, considering the pace of development, would IMO already make Tesla leaders in humanoid robotics.
The only thing which makes Musk's reschedule remotely eyebrow lifting is the fact that Parag also rescheduled his deposition. One is not uncommon, the two both rescheduling is at least a bit curious.
Zé's Guide For What To Be Impressed By Any Optimus Demo
While I'm definitely no expert, having a background in both machine / deep learning and modeling and simulation of robotic humanoids gives me some decent insight into where the challenges are, and therefore what would be really impressive to see if there is any Optimus prototype demo.
First, I would really like to dampen some expectations I'm reading. Having Optimus accomplish any task that requires movement of the feet would be really impressive. Accomplishing this is absolutely not a given as it is one of the core challenges in robotics (also why I incorrectly didn't even think they would do a bipedal humanoid form).
Look at some of the leaders in walking robots
Asimo is clearly totally preprogrammed with routines so less impressive than the latter two which show some ability to navigate difficult "new" terrain.
One of the core challenges is robotics is navigating sudden contact forces when you first touch a surface or an object. Humans have an "internal model" of the environment and make a guess what the mechanical properties of the object are before touching them. We use this to first estimate both our limb poses and what acceleration and velocity we should approach the object at.
Imagine trying step on pavement vs stepping on ice. The pavement is stiffer so naturally you will with a bit more relaxed muscles & joints so they can absorb the impact appropriately. However because you are very confident about what the surface is, you could push with confidence and higher impact forces. You can also step with a longer stride because you know what the frictional forces will be.
With ice, you know the surface is more slipperly, but also less predictable. You will step in a more crouched stance (because this gives you a better ability to change the direction and magnitude of contact forces, but requires more energy). You will also take smaller steps because less friction requires you too by laws of physics. You will also co-contract more muscles to ensure higher stability in case you are wrong on what the surface will do.
The robots operate more like they are on ice, even if they aren't. They make a more crouched position, and make small steps with less horizontal velocity. They attempt to stomp down almost vertically to reduce the effects of uncertainty around how much friction there is.
So they are certainly not as good as humans, even the best ones. I'm saying all of this to point out that balance is an extremely challenging task. If you mess up estimation of the surface, you will likely fall over.
My ranking of demo tasks by impressiveness from least impressive to most:
1. Arm-only movements that move an object
2. Arm-only movements that grasp and move a stiff object
3. Standing robot that can move arms around but doesn't touch anything
4. Standing robot that can grasp a stiff object
5. Robot that can take steps on flat surface
6. Robot that can walk and navigate multiple surfaces (Asimo level)
7. Robot that can navigate variable unknown surfaces (Agility / Atlas level)
8. Arm-only robot that can grasp and move delicate objects without crushing them (think raspberries)
9. Arm-only robot that can grasp and move variable delicate objects with crushing them.
10. 7 & 10 combined.
To be honest, even have an arm only robot accomplish #2 within a year is decent progress.
A robot that can stand and grasp an object (#4) would be amazing progress.
Anything above that, considering the pace of development, would IMO already make Tesla leaders in humanoid robotics.
Zé's Guide For What To Be Impressed By Any Optimus Demo
While I'm definitely no expert, having a background in both machine / deep learning and modeling and simulation of robotic humanoids gives me some decent insight into where the challenges are, and therefore what would be really impressive to see if there is any Optimus prototype demo.
First, I would really like to dampen some expectations I'm reading. Having Optimus accomplish any task that requires movement of the feet would be really impressive. Accomplishing this is absolutely not a given as it is one of the core challenges in robotics (also why I incorrectly didn't even think they would do a bipedal humanoid form).
Look at some of the leaders in walking robots
Asimo is clearly totally preprogrammed with routines so less impressive than the latter two which show some ability to navigate difficult "new" terrain.
One of the core challenges is robotics is navigating sudden contact forces when you first touch a surface or an object. Humans have an "internal model" of the environment and make a guess what the mechanical properties of the object are before touching them. We use this to first estimate both our limb poses and what acceleration and velocity we should approach the object at.
Imagine trying step on pavement vs stepping on ice. The pavement is stiffer so naturally you will with a bit more relaxed muscles & joints so they can absorb the impact appropriately. However because you are very confident about what the surface is, you could push with confidence and higher impact forces. You can also step with a longer stride because you know what the frictional forces will be.
With ice, you know the surface is more slipperly, but also less predictable. You will step in a more crouched stance (because this gives you a better ability to change the direction and magnitude of contact forces, but requires more energy). You will also take smaller steps because less friction requires you too by laws of physics. You will also co-contract more muscles to ensure higher stability in case you are wrong on what the surface will do.
The robots operate more like they are on ice, even if they aren't. They make a more crouched position, and make small steps with less horizontal velocity. They attempt to stomp down almost vertically to reduce the effects of uncertainty around how much friction there is.
So they are certainly not as good as humans, even the best ones. I'm saying all of this to point out that balance is an extremely challenging task. If you mess up estimation of the surface, you will likely fall over.
My ranking of demo tasks by impressiveness from least impressive to most:
1. Arm-only movements that move an object
2. Arm-only movements that grasp and move a stiff object
3. Standing robot that can move arms around but doesn't touch anything
4. Standing robot that can grasp a stiff object
5. Robot that can take steps on flat surface
6. Robot that can walk and navigate multiple surfaces (Asimo level)
7. Robot that can navigate variable unknown surfaces (Agility / Atlas level)
8. Arm-only robot that can grasp and move delicate objects without crushing them (think raspberries)
9. Arm-only robot that can grasp and move variable delicate objects with crushing them.
10. 7 & 10 combined.
To be honest, even have an arm only robot accomplish #2 within a year is decent progress.
A robot that can stand and grasp an object (#4) would be amazing progress.
Anything above that, considering the pace of development, would IMO already make Tesla leaders in humanoid robotics.
www.bloomberg.com
