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

[RiverCard]

Offshore wind is more predictable and constant. Still works best when combined with a natural gas peaker plant.

As long as the farm in not off shore Hyannis Port.

 

[EVNow]

Could you elaborate on your thoughts here?

Edit: My apologies if you elaborated previously and I missed it in the thread volume.

There have been a lot of debates about this.

Articles re Tesla—Fact or Fiction?

Briefly, MSM works on a "conventional wisdom". Journalists follow the CW, because doing so is safe. Nobody gets fired for following CW, that's why nobody got fired for saying Hillary was sure to win. Current CW is anti-Musk. It wasn't always the case - but over the last 2 years it changed. A few guesses as to why, in the order of importance, IMO.

- EM started going after journalists​

- EM joined a Trump "strategy council", that he refused to quit when Trump started a refugee ban that was widely criticized
- EM got into a fight with that Thai cave guy
- The infamous tweet, which he had to back off and settle a case by SEC

- Tesla started fighting with Unions (this only turned off people on the "left", not MSM)
- EM dissed about public transport in support of Boring​

 

[TradingInvest]

Unbelievable. I needed a close under 335 last Friday. I had to buy back 35 covered calls at a loss of over $35k. I swear the market knows what my option positions are, and moves the SP just to hurt me! Warning to everyone - I sold a lot of puts for 2/15 with 320 SP, so expect the SB to be just under 320 on that day....

If your covered Calls turned bad last Friday, you could have closed those and sold this weeks covered Calls, all at the same time. You wouldn't have to take the loss. If you push out a few times, there is a good chance shorts will help you out once in a while.

 

[CaliBear1]

Please, please, please incorporate the design language of the Roadster 2.0 into the refreshed S fascia!

Note that this likely isn't the refreshed website yet: it still says 100D/P100D, not "Performance" as promised by Elon:

"Are you moving away from battery sizing in a similar sense to how Model 3s are sold ie Long Range, Performance etc?": Yes​

"Is Model S & X being phased out over the next year or two?": Def not​

This interim step IMO further increases the probability that they are introducing new Model S/X models: if the only intended change was to remove the 75D, they could have renamed 100D/P100D to "Long Range" and "Performance" today and communicate the change.

That they didn't and that they are staying mum suggests this is only an interim step before other changes.

(Speculation only, not advice.)

 

[SunCatcher]

Too simplistic.

When Musk & Tesla were the darling of MSM a few years back, Tesla wasn't advertising either.

Tesla was a cute little newbie on the scene back then; a newsworthy novelty. And they were certainly no threat whatsoever to the media's dependable cash cows.
Now?
Tesla now threatens the entire auto industry, which advertises heavily in the MSM (and most other media as well). And Tesla has made it abundantly clear that they have no intention of spending a dime on advertising. Media needs advertisers. Without them, they'll die.
Both our legacy automakers, and our legacy news sources are getting backed into a corner. What would logic expect them to do?

 

[TradingInvest]

My brother texted me the blog below by Bill Cunningham posted on Seeking Alpha.

I generally don't pay any attention to Seeking Alpha, and I'm extremely confident there's no such day of reckoning coming.

That said, given my brother specifically asked about whether there's anything concerning with this one, and given that quickly scanning Cunningham's previous SA blogs it doesn't seem like he just posts blatant obvious nonsense, I don't want to simply dismiss this blog... no day of reckoning I'm confident of, but, some considerable liability I've not been aware of, not impossible.

For me what he writes about gets into quite technical accounting details heavily involving Solar City financial arrangements ("Variable Interest Entitiies" according to Cunningham). To be honest, it would take me many hours to study up and try to answer my brother's question... and it might turn out that all that time was spent just to discover a more jargon filled version of typical Seeking Alpha gibberish bearish false narratives.

If there's anyone here who already has the knowledge base to just read this blog in a few minutes to determine if there's anything uncovered of substance in it, I'd really appreciate your opinion on it.

Tesla's Day Of VIE Reckoning Approaches - Tesla, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) | Seeking Alpha

Bill Cunningham has been a Tesla bear/short for years. I never gained any insight by reading his articles. So I stopped reading. I thought in case there is anything important, someone would bring it up here.

 

[sundaymorning]

No, again too simplistic. Infact many were saying how great it is that Tesla is not advertising. That is simply not how MSM works (not talking about shady places like seekingalpha).

KISS. Keep it simple.... they’ve made a u turn because the boss upstairs wasn’t getting his fat check. He stepped in and forced the little guys to start bashing.

If you’re looking for a complicated answer, then aliens made them do it...

 

[sundaymorning]

Today Nasdaq went down by 0.94% and Tesla by 3.7%.

Looking at readily available spreadsheet I have (11/27 to 12/28) - the last 4 times Nasdaq went down by over 2%, Tesla went down by 7.6%, 5.3%, 3.3%, 4.7%. The first two of these took Tesla from $332 to $295 over the Holidays.

PS : BTW, @tivoboy, you were telling us last time when the SP went down to 29x that it may go further down. What changed ?

He bought calls, that’s what’s changed.

 

[EVNow]

Tesla now threatens the entire auto industry, which advertises heavily in the MSM (and most other media as well). And Tesla has made it abundantly clear that they have no intention of spending a dime on advertising. Media needs advertisers. Without them, they'll die.

Media is far more concerned about Facebook and Google that are eating their lunch now to worry about something that might happen years down the road (and they would know this only if they were paying attention). The world doesn't revolve around Tesla.

Anyway, don't want to regurgitate all the arguments, I just posted since I was asked.

 

[RiverCard]

. In the case of Desertec I believe it was also mainly a problem of too many cooks spoiling the broth...

Cooks or crooks?

 

[EVNow]

He bought calls, that’s what’s changed.

More likely, sold puts.

 

[EVNow]

KISS. Keep it simple.... they’ve made a u turn because the boss upstairs wasn’t getting his fat check. He stepped in and forced the little guys to start bashing.

If you’re looking for a complicated answer, then aliens made them do it...

Zuckerberg was getting positive coverage and tipped to get Dem 2020 nomination even as facebook was destroying media - until the Russia issues started cropping up.

 

[Opus BC fan]

There have been a lot of debates about this.

Articles re Tesla—Fact or Fiction?

Briefly, MSM works on a "conventional wisdom". Journalists follow the CW, because doing so is safe. Nobody gets fired for following CW, that's why nobody got fired for saying Hillary was sure to win. Current CW is anti-Musk. It wasn't always the case - but over the last 2 years it changed. A few guesses as to why, in the order of importance, IMO.

- EM started going after journalists​

- EM joined a Trump "strategy council", that he refused to quit when Trump started a refugee ban that was widely criticized
- EM got into a fight with that Thai cave guy
- The infamous tweet, which he had to back off and settle a case by SEC

- Tesla started fighting with Unions (this only turned off people on the "left", not MSM)
- EM dissed about public transport in support of Boring​

Thanks for the elaboration. I will check out the other thread for the diversity of opinions also.

 

[RiverCard]

Typical design life of Atomic Reactors ~40 years. Constant protons bombardment deteriorates most everything.
Imagine the cost to rewire a reactor. Pull out the old pull in the new along with disconnect/reconnect every connection - test all and make no mistakes. And then the plumbing the same. You get the idea. So German plan was set up to close down Atomic Reactors at end of design life. The French are closing down some of their Atomic Reactors because of some material failures (cracks) and considering safety decided cheapest to shut down vs repair and move onto wind/solar.

How many of those old nuke-powered Navy subs and surface vessels are still in service?

 

[azaz]

Amy Fiscus on Twitter

This will probably have an impact on markets

 

[sundaymorning]

Finally a sane analyst.

Tesla is ahead of automakers in 3 key categories, tech money manager says

 

[CuriousSunbird]

I see. To clarify, sounds like these Solar City instruments are included in the roughly $5 billion or so of debt figure (don't remember the exact number) already widely referenced to as debt Tesla took on when they bought Solar City.

My impression is the guy blogging on SA is trying to confuse people into thinking he's found billion(s) of future Tesla liability virtually nobody was aware of, when in reality, nearly every article that has ever talked about Tesla's purchase of Solar City has noted this liability as it is part of the ~$5 billion in Solar City debt these articles so reliably mention.

fwiw, this paragraph from the SA blog apparently tricked me into thinking it might be some sort of buried liability, balance sheet gamesmanship, so I appreciate you're helping me shake off that misimpression.

"These transactions fall into a bit of a netherworld. Although they appear on Tesla's balance sheet, they are classified neither as debt nor as stockholders' equity. Instead, they are listed as "non-controlling interests" or "redeemable non-controlling interests" and are reported below the liability line in the equity section of the balance sheet."

I don't really agree with you here, and (perhaps more importantly) neither does Tesla, as can be see from reading the VIE and equity statement sections of the registered financials.

The VIE equity financing to which Bill Cunningham refers is not found in the debt (recourse or non-recourse) but is rather divided between redeemable non-controlling interests (above the line) and non-redeemable non-controlling interests (below the line). While the redeemable are full obligations of Tesla (so far as I can see, arising from Tesla's agreement to buy back the investors positions in some circumstances) the non-redeemable can be viewed as economically equivalent to a kind of limited recourse debt (even though they are classified as equity) where their position in the credit tree is (a) effectively senior to general Tesla creditors with respect to the relevant solar or automotive leases, but junior to the lease-specific creditors, and (b) no access to other Tesla assets.

 

[kyzhk]

Unbelievable. I needed a close under 335 last Friday. I had to buy back 35 covered calls at a loss of over $35k. I swear the market knows what my option positions are, and moves the SP just to hurt me! Warning to everyone - I sold a lot of puts for 2/15 with 320 SP, so expect the SB to be just under 320 on that day....

If those were covered calls why not just let your shares be called away?

I didn't see a reason for share price to jump way up this week. I also thought that I could get back in at better price during brexit / trump news / MMD, so I just waited.

My trading shares got called away from selling near the money $345 covered call on the same day, I just let it be. Now this morning I used part of the proceed for secured short puts (in the money, to increase chance of getting assigned and reduce cost basis) and bought some leaps.

 

[Cherry Wine]

Amy Fiscus on Twitter

This will probably have an impact on markets

I’d say “unbelievable”, but...

 

[Oil4AsphaultOnly]

Unbelievable. I needed a close under 335 last Friday. I had to buy back 35 covered calls at a loss of over $35k. I swear the market knows what my option positions are, and moves the SP just to hurt me! Warning to everyone - I sold a lot of puts for 2/15 with 320 SP, so expect the SB to be just under 320 on that day....

1) Why didn't you just let your shares get called away? Unless you were trying to avoid short-term capital gains?

2) . If you sold puts, then you might get the shares assigned to you at any time they're under $320 (even well before Feb 15th). But in that case, you'd get TSLA shares cheaper than the current price. Why is this a bad thing?