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

[Cosmacelf]

I have no idea what that means. Is he prepping us for more pain?

OMG. It isn’t that hard. No one can predict the stock market in the short term (wars, viruses, govt response, etc). So don’t buy short term options. Buy long though.

 

[Max Plaid]

On Wednesday, I sold shares at around $112 to buy leaps. I bought a spread of January 2025 leaps mostly at strike prices a bit above where we are now and others at some higher stock prices we’ve seen this year. The shares I sold were ones I was planning to hold indefinitely and comprised less than 10% of my holdings.

This is certainly not advice. I felt I should share given my previously stated opinions about options. These remain and I do not consider this an about face.

On one hand, it’s still my opinion that it is a fool’s errand to try to time the market and I’m not planning to make a habit trying to do so or of using options.

On the other hand, I have sometimes wished I’d bought leaps instead of more shares in the Summer of 2019. Now feels so very like then. I’m not trying to hunt for something, it is simply that the circumstances are just so…ripe. Also and given the circumstances, I suppose I see an opportunity to reassure myself that my reticence to buy leaps hasn’t simply been a lack of, shall we say, testicular fortitude (ah, we men ).

Obviously, I am of the opinion that we’ve bottomed, but I’m prepared to accept it if we haven’t.

As for the moral hazard, it’s not great for other longs when shares are sold. However, it is in the interest of longs that Elon remain in charge at Tesla. While I don’t believe the comments by some investors, ahem @TrendTrader007, for change will amount to much, I want as many shares as I can get to vote in Elon’s favor should it be necessary.

Don't worry too much about the shares you sold, because MM's have to hedge bought calls by buying shares, so all is good!

 

[CorneliusXX]

Looks like Tesla needs a new factory for mega packs soon...

https://twitter.com/x/status/1608971741073899521

So are we trusting this guy? His initial work seemed pretty thorough but he seems to have come from nowhere and already has "people familiar with the matter" and is reading tea leaves to make predictions that sound like he's pretty certain.

Don't get me wrong, I expect additional megapack factories to be announced frequently given Tesla's scaling ambition, the volume of LPF getting pushed into the market and the expiry of the LFP patents, but it seems strange that some random has turned up with so much new info so quickly.

 

[elasalle]

So are we trusting this guy? His initial work seemed pretty thorough but he seems to have come from nowhere and already has "people familiar with the matter" and is reading tea leaves to make predictions that sound like he's pretty certain.

Don't get me wrong, I expect additional megapack factories to be announced frequently given Tesla's scaling ambition, the volume of LPF getting pushed into the market and the expiry of the LFP patents, but it seems strange that some random has turned up with so much new info so quickly.

New factory.. Lathrop
New local resource with local connections?

 

[ThisStockGood]

Finally picked up my MS Plaid ordered 2 years ago. Car was perfect.

They give us 48 hours to file any issues via the app. So it was fast in - fast out.

By 1 PM delivery center was almost empty. Last delivery for today was scheduled for 2 PM. Some cars had not made it to Regensburg on time. They will be delivered Beginning of Jan.

Lots of new cars: MY, some M3 and quite a few MS and even MX, which I haven't seen much of in Germany in the past year.

There were only showroom cars left.

No demand problems to be seen here in Germany.



View attachment 890767

Congrats! And a happy new year to you and your beautiful wife Its amazing to be a TSLA investor

 

[Knightshade]

It's my understanding that V11 was rolled out to FSD Beta testers a few days ago with the holiday update, see this teslarati article: Tesla FSD Beta V11 release gets the “next week” treatment from Musk

I have FSD Beta and got the holiday update (light show, Apple carplay, among other things, etc) a week or two ago. I didn't notice a major step-change improvement in FSD Beta though...a bit smoother and less jerky in complex situations, more mild starts from stops, and doesn't race up to a stop light then suddenly decelerate like it used to. It's incrementally better.

You don't have V11, and it was not rolled out to anybody who isn't an employee/internal tester.

You can always get a fairly decent proxy for new rollouts of software here:

TeslaFi.com Firmware Tracker

V11 hasn't made any appearance at all except a single vehicle on 12/27, which is virtually certain to be an employee car still registered on Teslafi.


Fleetwide the majority of those in the public beta remain on 10.69.25, with a small percentage having been moved to 10.69.25.1, and a tiny few still back on 10.69.3.3 or older



Further discussion would best go here:

FSD Beta v11.x

The next big milestone for FSD is 11. It is a significant upgrade and fundamental changes to several parts of the FSD stack including totally new way to train the perception NN. From AI day and Lex Fridman interview we have a good sense of what might be included. - Object permanence both...

teslamotorsclub.com

 

[Rarity]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1609115242587656192

So weird to see a knowledgeable bull abandon his thesis. Yes ASP will come down. Like he just decides to forget how Tesla executed BEFORE 2022 when they dropped prices continuously while margins expanded. ASP will come down but so will COGS in a recessions. Austin/Berlin being at 5000/week has major impacts on gross margin…margins might not be consistently over 30% but even if they’re like 27-28%, now Tesla is overvalued and can only be valued more if FSD works or they crank out 4680 in heavy volume?

It’s like he completely ignores the effects of the IRA and Megapack.

Really clear example of someone’s emotions putting them in the despair part of the investing cycle

Poor guy could be on tilt. "There but for the grace of God go I."

 

[2daMoon]

I agree with you that Tesla will be fine with the IRA's EV purchase tax credits, but it requires them to adjust production and sales in a non-optimal way. It might even help them next year in terms of financial performance but those who know me know I'm always looking five years down the road and I think Tesla would be better off without the EV purchase tax credits. I also think the transition to EV's would happen more quickly overall without the EV purchase tax credits. That may sound counter-intuitive but incentivizing manufacturers to tailor production to arbitrary price points and arbitrary specs will have the undesirable side effect of causing legacy manufacturers to also tailor ICE production to slot between the EV "sweet spots" which will help them move more ICE cars in certain segments even though they don't have subsidies.

I've long been of the belief that the fastest transition to EV's, at the lowest overall cost to consumers, happens with the laggards, the higher cost producers, going out of business, especially out of the business of making more ICE cars, and letting the most efficient car producers scale more quickly. Nothing would stimulate production of the raw materials required to make batteries more quickly than the shocking news that legendary ICE manufacturers were going out of business.

You have misunderstood what I wrote. We are actually in agreement. I was simply acquiescing to the inevitable and acknowledging how it being crafted to thwart application to some Tesla models would have no significant impact on Tesla's strategy for world domination.

 

[y_naught]

(I haven't gone through a lot of posts on this thread since a while, so the topic might have been covered already)
Are you seeing unusually very high number of M3, and MY purchases after the incentive, especially the latest ($7.5k) incentive?

In SF BayArea, people I know of who never were planning to buy a Tesla bought Model Y.
In the case of one, several (~5) neighbors bought similarly.
In the case of another, ~5 of his friends bought, 2-3 of them had ID 4 orders, they cancelled those orders and bought MY. One drove 400 miles to pick one.
Another one in that network is considering buying one tomorrow.
None of them ever owned cars/vehicles that are >40k.

Know of another in NW who bought. His buddy drove ~300miles to get his today. This guy who drove 300miles had an order 3k below current price, declined his VIN when the incentive was $3750. After incentive changed to $7500, he started calling Tesla daily asking if he can get a VIN assigned, and he didn't get one. And, yesterday after the IRA guidelines came, and MY 5-seater's weren't going to be eligible for credit, he repeatedly reached out to Tesla asking any VIN in inventory in surrounding cities, had to pick a color he wasn't keen on, and it was 300 miles away.

I wonder if this is what's happening across the US.
And hopefully there were a lot of vehicles in various locations across US with the way vehicles were shipped in Q3.
Are you guys seeing these in your network?
If this is happening across US (and maybe to some extent in EU), wouldn't this lead to a huge beat in deliveries, especially given there was a lot of inventory end of Q3.
I am NOT trying to hype things before the event. In fact, I am one who over years was wishing folks here not hype things as much as is done, followed by disappointment (even in instances when Tesla does a great job)

All this speculation about 5-seat vs 7-seat and the higher limit…this is all manufacturer stated, correct? So, could it be that Tesla didn’t want everyone to think the Model Y would qualify for the higher price, to clear out inventory now? I fully suspect they will do what they need to do to make all Ys qualify, and it won’t be cutting the price by $10k.

 

[mongo]

All this speculation about 5-seat vs 7-seat and the higher limit…this is all manufacturer stated, correct? So, could it be that Tesla didn’t want everyone to think the Model Y would qualify for the higher price, to clear out inventory now? I fully suspect they will do what they need to do to make all Ys qualify, and it won’t be cutting the price by $10k.

Per Federal law, Tesla's self reporting is correct.
Other OEM two row vehicles may be qualifying based on the other criteria (or are in error).
If someone *really* wants to know about a specific model, DM me and I'll search for data.

 

[bpjod]

Good Morning.... My news years resolutions.

1. Whenever I see a "competition is coming post/article" do as the cat does and buy a share.
2. Whenever I see a "Demand problem post/article" do as the cat does and buy a share.
3. Be nicer to people.
4. Give more freely of my time.
5. Spend less time on TMC...( ok, that will be tough)

Have a great new year ya'all.

Forgive my ignorance. Is this the capitulation everyone here is going on about?

 

[wipster]

Maybe there's not much that *you* can't do, but I find that Tesla's voice recognition for my voice is unreliable at best, so I can't use it for anything time or safety critical.

And I hardly even try for navigation any more. After trying to get it to recognize the destination I'm saying four or five times and giving up and typing it in, that approach gets too annoying after a few times.

Plus, there are many people who have a difficult time using any type of voice recognition. My former spouse has a condition that causes her throat to seize up when she starts to speak, so nowadays we utilize text to communicate. It's really stressful and caused her to retire using disability.

So while you and I would probably use VR quite a lot, there are a lot of others who can't take advantage of it. Thank dawg for touchscreen and tactile!

 

[ZeApelido]

New Year and Tesla taking immediate action.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1609229632808824832

 

[FireMedic]

Per Federal law, Tesla's self reporting is correct.
Other OEM two row vehicles may be qualifying based on the other criteria (or are in error).
If someone *really* wants to know about a specific model, DM me and I'll search for data.

I saw someone reporting that it was due to curb weight. (EDIT: Checking for a source) The seven seat model Y is some 300 pounds heavier, which allows it to fall into the truck/SUV category. Thus incentivizing inefficiency .

New Year and Tesla taking immediate action.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1609229632808824832

Tesla is financing now? Is that new, or just in China? We used 3rd party financing as it was our only option in 2019/2020 in California.

 

[bkp_duke]

I saw somewhere between reporting that it was due to curb weight. The seven seat model Y is some 300 pounds heavier, which allows it to fall into the truck/SUV category. Thus incentivizing inefficiency .

Per Google, curb weight is 4555lbs. Those seats are not getting things to 6000lbs.

 

[Artful Dodger]

So my estimate is that for each 40' container of LFP cells in to the factory, they will put out one completed Megapack. So a 40GWh/yr factory taking one trainload of LFP in per month (830 containers/month) will probably spit out one trainloads of completed utility-scale packs per month.

830 containers per month is 9,960 per year. Tesla estimates they can make about 10,000 megapacks per year. I'd say your numbers are spot on +/-0.4%

Cheers!

 

[Max Plaid]

If this quarter's numbers were in the bag, I don't think they would try this hard to move a few thousand more cars. They must be trying to squeeze every car they can into the quarter.

I expect the numbers are already decent and they'd like them to be decenter...

Looking around, EU is tracking around 50% up on Q3, US looks pretty much on track too, China is the question-mark, and yet we've had a ton of exports to Australia and Japan, some other places too

But yeah, I've played this game a few times now and know not to get my hopes up too much - look at Q3, everything was amazing, except for 20k cars in-transit, and the stock tanked

 

[CHGolferJim]

Any Washington lawyers in the house? It used to be that administrative rules had to be subjected to public comment periods before implementation. Was that done? If not, legal challenges to follow?

 

[bkp_duke]

Any Washington lawyers in the house? It used to be that administrative rules had to be subjected to public comment periods before implementation. Was that done? If not, legal challenges to follow?

Probably what traditional auto wants, sadly, things to be disputed and in legal limbo for as long as possible.

 

[Artful Dodger]

So are we trusting this guy? His initial work seemed pretty thorough but he seems to have come from nowhere and already has "people familiar with the matter" and is reading tea leaves to make predictions that sound like he's pretty certain.

Not only that, but his original account was suspended on that platform:

https://twitter.com/zersosumgame1/

Now he's retweeting the same content under a different account with a similar name plus a couple digits.

https://twitter.com/Zerosumgame33/

Something else is going on behind the scenes.