Relative.
Compare it to wrestling with a gas pump hose. I can still smell the gasoline all over my pants.
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Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable
- Thread starter AudubonB
- Start date
Compare it to wrestling with a gas pump hose. I can still smell the gasoline all over my pants.
There have been a few comments from folks here regarding the additional supercharger load these deals will put on the system. Additionally, some have shared some more alarmist sentiments they've seen from others (some perhaps attempting to FUDify the deals...).
Overall supercharger capacity & expansion rate has been discussed here a number of times over the years, typically in the context of the total of current Teslas on the road, and the planned manufacturing and sales growth.
Phone companies modeled years ago their analog circuit-switched lines and trunks (the Erlang B model), taking in to account system capacity, total consumers, peak utilization times, and acceptable queue wait times. This model generally applies to any queued resource, like superchargers. As it turns out, the needed # of stalls isn't a linear function of total cars. This makes sense, as if you have 1 car on the road, you need at least one supercharger. But 2 cars don't require 2. There's a spot at which utilization is maximized with acceptable queuing. Thread on this some time ago HERE.
Long story short: doubling the number of NACS cars, won't require doubling the number of chargers. Likely significantly less.
What this means is that more NACS customers is a good thing for the Supercharging network, provided Tesla can quickly enough expand the capacity needed, and manage the queue times and bottleneck locations. Why? Because overall infrastructure utilization goes up. That means the number of customers paying that aforementioned 10% profit to Tesla may double, while the number of additional chargers needed may only go up by 50%.
That means more $$$ to Tesla for maintenance, powerpack installation, solar build out, or simply profit to the bottom line.
This is a big win, IMO.
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UkNorthampton
TSLA - 12+ startups in 1
I'd prefer NACS for Europe and by extension heading East and South to Asia (until it meets up with China's GB-T) and Africa (some already in Morocco). NACS as a global standard would be great.
However CCS2 does seem superior to CCS1.
Reasons for NACS include one-handed ease of use by a wide range of people including disabled, elderly or managing kids at the same time. Add in extreme cold weather in certain places which might make SOME cables stiffer and NACS wins.
CCS1 seems awful compared to CCS2 - latching in particular, but USA ones seem to do handle on a handle whereas Tesla CCS2 can be done one-handed by many/most people. Whether that's bad CCs1 handles design or something about CCS 1, I'm not sure. Europe CCS 2 below (one handed operation on V4 Supercharger ).
Video timestamped at one handed use - about 2:15 -
Attachments
This is logical and defensible, as are some very different approaches.
For some decades I invested almost entirely in startups, some absolute including a half dozen I started myself. A half dozen more were public, but still startups. A few were established but not yet profitable, or else were distinctly not mature. I lost everything on more than half of them. The ones I did not lose on included TSLA, AAPL, AMZN. Those made up for the losses quite well. The problem now is that it's financially difficult to sell any of them since the taxes finally bite.
In the end those become HODL. As for the losers, they're, every one, in the dustbin of history with the exception of ones in which I was a founding officer/advisor. Three of those still operate profitably, one each in genuinely strange countries.
The conclusion I have reached is that there is no substitute for knowing more about that in which one invests than any securities analyst ever would know. Superficiality almost always produces losses, as does depending on third party advice. In my opinion something can easily appear to be ridiculous high risk but be successful and something apparently low risk can be anything but. There is no single answer.
Some people here know of my first investment, Honda ADR in 1967. I was in Thailand then, and bought a Honda motorcycle built in their new factory there. Soon thereafter I bought an S600 coupe that had been imported for a Honda executive. A few weeks later I was offered Honda ADR's. I did not even know what they were, but I loved both those products and thought they would grow. That turned out well. That success gave me false confidence...luckily not terminally so.
I include the previous paragraph because quite a few of us may have done something similar with Tesla. Such decisions are deceptive, for they build the idea that 'concept' stocks tend to be Good Things. They are, for securities sellers. Not so much otherwise.
Today I tend to recommend HODL for TSLA while watching very, very carefully. Without question it is wise to buy on dips, IF you're certain there is not bad news underlying the dip.
Right now TSLA is at a major inflection point in numerous ways. They've all been thoroughly diagnosed here and elsewhere so I'll not repeat them. If any investor things strongly that the future products and present market positions portend a rosy future now is a great time to buy and hold. In so doing, one must also understand that the short overhang in TSLA is proportionally one fo the highest ever. It is essential to understand both of those facts before making any investment, divestment or speculation in TSLA.
In short: NEVER buy TSLA if you cannot withstand volatility. "It ain't gonna stop".
We're all lucky that Tesla management knows that, encourages it and expects it to help Tesla to compete better, while also helping overall BEV adoption. In short, this does advance the mission!
FastEddieB
Member
Maybe it does “work” on some level. Reliably enough to profit consistently? Who knows.
The flaw I see is at the moment that everyone sees a consistent pattern worth utilizing, doesn’t it have the effect of canceling itself out? I’m old enough to remember “Elliot Wave Theory”, and there have been countless TA schemes between then and now, with “candles” being just one of the more recent iterations. And if TA had consistent predictive power, one might expect TA aficionados to rank somewhere in the upper echelons of the world’s richest people. Do they?
But this is a hoary old debate, and maybe a bit of a derail from the main thrust of this thread.
I've been travelling for much of the last six weeks: Denmark, Germany, New York, France, Spain, Holland, have seen many Teslas, everywhere, absolutely splendid!
I see there have been a number of confessions as of late, so in the spirit of openness I will admit that I sold out of ALL my TSLA in the recent dip via selling -c150's expecting a "fill the gap" down to $146. OK, for the record, a net sell of $164 taking into account the premiums I earned, but given that I'd bought these shares at $300, not ideal! On the other hand, these were bought with profits from shares previously sold in 2021 at the $240 - $260 (split-adjusted), that were initially bought in Feb 2015 for a split-adjusted ($8 - $10), and I made a lot of covered-call premium on the way down, so not too much was lost along the way, more churn than anything else and some profits to keep the tax-authorities happy
Yes, I could have kept the shares, but decided to de-risk into cash with all the recession worries, and not getting any younger. To counter the upside, I loaded up on December 2025 c140 & c200 LEAPS, but immediately sold July -c200's against the lot, along with straddled puts, to start to recuperate the premiums in the case they don't work-out, will start healing those calls as of tomorrow
In any case, even with capping the profits at net $220 (for the moment), it's still a substantial gain if I cash out the lot, and will still be up 27x my initial capital investments in TSLA, and that's with taking out quite a lot of cash over the years it's more like 35x, but not the 53x we hit in October 2021...
Easy to say "don't trade options", but if I had just bought and HODLed my shares then my portfolio value would be worth less than it is today, plus I have zero debt, don't trade with margin, and have an MX Plaid and MYLR, bought with cash sitting outside, so although it could be better, I'm not complaining either
I see a lot of euphoria on this thread recently about how many days to get to ATH... historically this kind of talk, along with the discussion around purchase of major land-masses, has been a great contrarian indicator. I hope this isn't the case, regardless of my personal situation, I would like to see TSLA longs richly rewarded, but please do take care, these rallies are often fuelled by call-buying and the resulting Delta hedging by the MM's, leading to a violent Gamma squeeze that can often reverse faster than it arrived, for sure noting much changed with Tesla the last two months, but a great shareholder's meeting and the Ford/GM deals have certainly shifted sentiment to the positive
Live long and prosper!
I see there have been a number of confessions as of late, so in the spirit of openness I will admit that I sold out of ALL my TSLA in the recent dip via selling -c150's expecting a "fill the gap" down to $146. OK, for the record, a net sell of $164 taking into account the premiums I earned, but given that I'd bought these shares at $300, not ideal! On the other hand, these were bought with profits from shares previously sold in 2021 at the $240 - $260 (split-adjusted), that were initially bought in Feb 2015 for a split-adjusted ($8 - $10), and I made a lot of covered-call premium on the way down, so not too much was lost along the way, more churn than anything else and some profits to keep the tax-authorities happy
Yes, I could have kept the shares, but decided to de-risk into cash with all the recession worries, and not getting any younger. To counter the upside, I loaded up on December 2025 c140 & c200 LEAPS, but immediately sold July -c200's against the lot, along with straddled puts, to start to recuperate the premiums in the case they don't work-out, will start healing those calls as of tomorrow
In any case, even with capping the profits at net $220 (for the moment), it's still a substantial gain if I cash out the lot, and will still be up 27x my initial capital investments in TSLA, and that's with taking out quite a lot of cash over the years it's more like 35x, but not the 53x we hit in October 2021...
Easy to say "don't trade options", but if I had just bought and HODLed my shares then my portfolio value would be worth less than it is today, plus I have zero debt, don't trade with margin, and have an MX Plaid and MYLR, bought with cash sitting outside, so although it could be better, I'm not complaining either
I see a lot of euphoria on this thread recently about how many days to get to ATH... historically this kind of talk, along with the discussion around purchase of major land-masses, has been a great contrarian indicator. I hope this isn't the case, regardless of my personal situation, I would like to see TSLA longs richly rewarded, but please do take care, these rallies are often fuelled by call-buying and the resulting Delta hedging by the MM's, leading to a violent Gamma squeeze that can often reverse faster than it arrived, for sure noting much changed with Tesla the last two months, but a great shareholder's meeting and the Ford/GM deals have certainly shifted sentiment to the positive
Live long and prosper!
I agreed with you except for this one. They ALL can win, because they are all competing with ICE rather than BEV's, in this situation. Tesla will lose market share of BEV, but gain market share of all vehicles. That is the point for both Ford and GM in this context.
Everyone wins!! ...except ICE
Thumper
Active Member
Asking Fairchild, how much are you actually up after selling, paying cap gains and brokerage fees. Is that worth the angst in the interim. For myself, more comfortable just holding with conviction it will recover before I need the money.
Great points. Thank you for sharing.
One important point.
"The problem now is that it's financially difficult to sell any of them since the taxes finally bite."
I felt the same way and I believe the tax bite had a major influence on my decision to "hang on so long as Tesla fell."
In the end, my losses from the falling stock were far worse than the tax bite would have ever been.
There was something very freeing about taking the tax bite and no longer having to worry about it.
As the old adage goes, "Tis better to pay taxes on gain, than to have no gain."
I have this newfound freedom now that allows me trade more wisely and judiciously free of having to worry about the tax man.
I am not saying it didn't hurt, especially for the TSLA stock I bought in 2016, but the tax man cometh anyway, at some point.
An example of the FREEDOM: I was free to put almost my entire portfolio into cash during the recent pseudo-debt ceiling scare.
Sure it didn't come to fruition, but I didn't have to worry about it, or fear the severe market losses that were experienced at the last one. Trading FREEDOM.
Just a personal preference. I enjoy the freedom from the tax man entanglements. I guess I call it, "Pay as you Go."
One important point.
"The problem now is that it's financially difficult to sell any of them since the taxes finally bite."
I felt the same way and I believe the tax bite had a major influence on my decision to "hang on so long as Tesla fell."
In the end, my losses from the falling stock were far worse than the tax bite would have ever been.
There was something very freeing about taking the tax bite and no longer having to worry about it.
As the old adage goes, "Tis better to pay taxes on gain, than to have no gain."
I have this newfound freedom now that allows me trade more wisely and judiciously free of having to worry about the tax man.
I am not saying it didn't hurt, especially for the TSLA stock I bought in 2016, but the tax man cometh anyway, at some point.
An example of the FREEDOM: I was free to put almost my entire portfolio into cash during the recent pseudo-debt ceiling scare.
Sure it didn't come to fruition, but I didn't have to worry about it, or fear the severe market losses that were experienced at the last one. Trading FREEDOM.
Just a personal preference. I enjoy the freedom from the tax man entanglements. I guess I call it, "Pay as you Go."
Being ignorant of technical trading, including algorithmic automated trading, is a risky thing for any investor. Despite being a devout HODL, perhaps partly because of that, I view ignorance of quantitative aspects to be dangerous. At a minimum that knowledge can help avoid the most pernicious effects of volatility.
That, in my opinion, is vastly different than trying to beat 'the system'. That is essentially impossible unless one is a market maker or effectively control major market flows. Having been 'on the inside', albeit long ago, now I try to understand as well as possible; Opine on such subjects very, very rarely and try hard to understand as much as possible.
I italicized your last sentence because it capsulizes the best plausible consistent outcome for a retail investor. Actually doing that is very time consuming and is incredibly complex from a tax management perspective. Ideally one needs ready expertise not only in these techniques but in tax management, accounting rules with personal quantitative skills including statistics.
Personally I no longer have a qualified staff to help handle all those issues. When I did all this was enormous fun and profitable too. I can imagine some people might be able to have all these skills personally, although I do not know any of them.
when I knew I wanted a Tesla, before it became Tesla
(and irksome cardiac events that precluded getting an S60, or even an S40)
(and irksome cardiac events that precluded getting an S60, or even an S40)
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As I have said before, each person must be comfortable with their own strategy.
1) Fired the broker years ago (went up 40% in the year after getting rid of the broker. Would have gone down if I stayed with him. I don't need to pay someone to lose my money). I don't need to call anyone to make trades and lose out, because he is out on the golf course spending my money. I can trade in an instant, as many times as I choose from my phone or computer and with TD Ameritrade, trades are FREE.
2) I kept track for my own purposes and I was up 32% during the transition (from selling TSLA to now going back in) and in general, during a down market. Didn't include the potential Tesla losses or it would have been much. much more.
3) See my note below on Capital Gains. I am now in a "Pay as You Go" mode, which doesn't allow the tax man to determine or interfere with my trading decisions and strategy.
4) I spend about an hour a day managing my stocks and I feel that is reasonable for the return I am getting. It sure pays way more than my work ever did.
Comfort level is priceless, so I respect your strategy.
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This has been my strategy.
I rated this 'informative' because the NA people who've never seen CCS2 think that CCS1 differs only in some pins. I use both. CCS1 almost never is in service anywhere I go, although I have had it work a few times. CCS2 always works, I've never had one that did NOT work.
I know there are multiple reasons for that but...CCS1 has an idiotic clicking pin that some idiotic people keep breaking. Almost all the outages I find are because of that pin. FWIW, despite numerous tries I have not ever, not once, managed to use CCS1 DC. I do manage to use it AC.
My stupid charging provider in the US is EverCharge, who for seven years had a Tesla connector for me. Last year they replaced my perfectly fine charger with their own CCS1 unit, advising me they no longer supported the Tesla connector "because electricians tended to install it incorrectly". Now the CCS adapter regularly disconnects for no reason. Yesterday I saw here that EverCharge say they'll support NACS again. I'm waiting until tomorrow to tell them I want mine back NOW! They only discontinued it a year ago. Truly idiotic since they tell me >80% of their clientele are charging Tesla.
[sorry for the rant!] Just imagine how all those poor GM and Ford sods must feel.
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You can live in your car, but you can't drive your house to work.
General topical comment not directed at you:
There's always something to feel bad about (especially in a tax free account). Even if one picks the right choice of hold/buy or sell, there's always a higher delta strategy one could have used.
Let me offer an alternative view:
If you had dollar cost averaged additional shares in from other cashflows instead of selling, now that we are back up past the $234, you would not have had to pay the taxes and you would have a lower total cost base. You would likely have more shares than you have now. Of course time in the market only makes sense if the business prospect of the company you invested in has not changed. IMHO it has improved significantly since $408 per share, so it is definitely worth more than that now. That will eventually show up in its stock price. When? Who knows. We had to wait years before as well. And when it happens I prefer not to be caught with... being out of the market.
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