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

[elasalle]

Anybody noticed that the first Tesla Model 3s have been registered today in Norway!?
Tesla Registration Stats

Where in process is Registration? Does it mean Sold & delivered to end Customer?

 

[neroden]

True - although I'd expect the economic self-interest of the ruling class to prevail here too.

My study of history says that the ruling class usually doesn't know which side their bread is buttered on. That is, they don't know their own economic (or any other sort of long-term) self-interest. It's actually *terrifying*. Ruling classes who stubbornly insisted on "elite privilege" at the expense of their own long-term self-interest led to the French Revolution, Russian Revolution, Germany and Austria-Hungary starting WWI, Germany starting WWII, Ancient Rome destroying its own social cohesion and its political system in the Social War, and on and on and on throughout history.

Republicans also certainly don't want to go into the elections next year with a recession on voter's mind. They already suffered a historic defeat in the 2018 midterms at the height of an economic boom cycle (!).

Republican elected officials in particular are wildly disconnected from reality and are most certainly ready to waltz right into the next election cycle with an obvious, Trump-caused recession while tying themselves to Trump.

So while the doom scenarios are very real, and the market reaction them them is justified - none of the conflicts appears to be fundamental like some of the old conflicts were. Each of these conflicts is literally one common-sense deal away from being ended.

Unfortunately, so was World War I.

Reportedly Trump is keenly watching U.S. stock indices and appears to judge his own success as a president by the progress of the stock market.

Unfortunately, he's also a complete idiot and prone to stubborn rages.

True - although next year's U.S. elections will likely put an end to that trend too: 56% of U.S. voters feel 'strongly' that they will absolutely not vote for Trump - and this is a metric that was reliable in the past.

That is true. *Enough* people are fed up with this lunacy that we should get a course correction -- and the portion of the ruling class who is saying "let them eat cake" will just have to be saved from themselves whether they like it or not. ;-)

Also, Tesla is in the process of isolating themselves form this vulnerability in their 'home market', by establishing a second 'home market' in China, in the fastest growing EV market on the planet - with production planned to start later this year.

Yes, Tesla is more resistant to macro risks than any other company I can think of.

So while the macro risks are real, I do not share the view that these macro risks are permanent.

But it may take until January 2021.

For Tesla I really am only worried about whether they can solve "customer service hell".

 

[Car4CivilizedAge]

Where in process is Registration? Does it mean Sold & delivered to end Customer?

These model 3’s are not for customers but they’re registered officially. First model 3’s for customers will arrive later in February

 

[myt-e-s-l-a]

Since TSLA has always gone back up after these dips, I'm always curious why people sell here.
Why not just wait for the inevitable climb back up?

Symptom of a Day Trader

 

[neroden]

He won't go private because all the public investors who have supported Tesla can't go private with him.
SpaceX was different because it started private and has only a few major investors along with stock grants to employees.


Staying Public

Yes... *that said*, I have calculated that two more "5%" investors would leave TSLA with "shares sold short >= shares held by short-term traders". Once this was noticed, this would have the result of a short squeeze, followed by killing of real volume. The resulting trading would look a lot more like the trading of a private company -- fairly thin, probably still volatile, but not in the same way.

I do not see two more 5% investors right now, though the lower the stock price is the more likely it gets.

 

[jbih]

Tesla can avoid or soften the "Model 3's in transit on the ocean at the end of the quarter" problem in Q1 by ordering their production smartly: by making European/Chinese Model 3's in January and February, and switching back to producing mostly for the American market in March.

That is if they even care about posting the profit in Q1 instead of Q2. They might be fine with a black zero in Q1.

 

[MartinAustin]

Resistance at $289 but I think TSLA will break through this and end higher today.

 

[Nocturnal]

Ding ding ding. This is a loophole which stock manipulators are driving a truck through. Take a "blog site" which explicitly *refuses* to fact-check *anything* even when verifiably false statements are reported to them. Manage to get anything published on it shoved into the Google/Yahoo/Fidelity/etc. newsfeeds. A gang of stock manipulators can then do whatever they want highly effectively.

And half the time real news outlets will pick that up and cite "IhateEVS4eva.blogs.geocities.com".

 

[neroden]

The leaks say they just cut the second shift. So presumably they need the same amount of factory space. If the paint shop is the bottleneck then that means 1,000 fewer lower margin Model S/X are traded for 1,000 (hopefully) higher margin P3Ds etc.

Although there are no leaks about it I am still suspicious that they are going to try to move the S production onto the X body line, as originally planned. The original S body line takes up *oodles* of space, right in the middle of the factory, and is the most labor-intensive.

 

[Zhelko Dimic]

@tivoboy I'm trying to sell put short, strike $300 for March that would trigger around $277 (price $39.5)
Do you think there is still chance we dive deep? Today's trading makes me think we may have turned a corner, so maybe I should just pull a trigger at current prices...

 

[neroden]

Eliminating 75Ds cuts their max possible annual production to somewhere around 86% of where it was, due to cell constraints.

I'd also guess that eliminating the "night shift" cuts the max possible production to about 2/3 of the "24-hour-shift" production levels (not half). Obviously they're probably targeting some improvements in production speed for S&X so I'm really guessing 70K or 80K per year, believe it or not!

 

[TheTalkingMule]

Just got my Wired magazine out of the mailbox. "Dr. Elon and Mr. Musk" on the front cover. Then I get an Inc magazine article in my LinkedIn feed talking about how a frazzled 1am email from Elon to fired employees marks the end of the company. Ha!

Even mags like Wired can't resist the attention a false negative Musk article brings. We are in a terrible place right now, I sure hope we adjust to the Information Age soon.

 

[Mikey]

If anyone perceives me as extra critical of Donald Trump it’s because I am. He’s a complete jack-wagon on all levels and continues to be a huge embarrassment to this country.

 

[Unpilot]

Unfortunately, he's also a complete idiot and prone to stubborn rages.

Looks like the "great deal maker" has boxed his rather large rear end into a box. He bowed to Pelosi on the SOTU that will cost him a few hugs from the Ann Coulter crowd. Someone needs to find a way to give the baby a pacifier so he can declare victory.

On topic as once the Gov opens and the "Gina" mess is over the stock will pop along with the rest of the Market.

 

[TheTalkingMule]

XXXX Investor Alert XXXX

@neroden has moved from flabbergasted to moderately ok with Tesla customer service. This is as big as a Model Y announcement IMO!

 

[neroden]

A Tesla spokesperson said:

"We recently announced that we are no longer taking orders for the 75 kWh version of Model S and X in order to streamline production and provide even more differentiation with Model 3. As a result of this change and because of improving efficiencies in our production lines, we have reduced Model S and X production hours accordingly. At the same time, these changes, along with continuing improvements, give us the flexibility to increase our production capacity in the future as needed. We'll be providing more details on our earnings call next week."

This definitely does imply that demand for Model S and X is lower right now.

Which should be expected since the $7500 tax credit just expired. This happens every single time any tax credit for EVs expires anywhere in the world: higher demand just before it expires, lower demand just after, then it resumes its normal level.

Perfect time to get some more downtime on the production lines in order to tweak and improve them.

 

[jbcarioca]

There are a number of us here who are as reliable to challenge...I’ll point out what I see as falsehoods, and intellectual dishonesty, but you will not see me referring to any ‘lies,’ ‘outrages,’ ‘scumbags,’ ‘wrongs,’ ‘cheats’ etc. Similarly, I’ll talk about probabilities, levels of confidence, some X or some Y, but, I rigorously avoid use of words such as ‘all,’ ‘certain,’ ‘completely,’ ‘total,’ etc. except to say something like near ‘certain’ on occasion.

Absolutely. One crucial distinction between Hoffer's True Believer and many others is the very attitude you display.
One of the real joys of being here on TMC is that many of us are devoted to reasoning solidly based on fact, and most of us accept the same facts. We have our most productive debates when we are on the same foundation of facts and consider the implications of the facts we see.

Just now we are having one fo those productive debates. We all see Glovis xxx and others loading at Pier 80 to go somewhere. We do not know for certain the implications of large shipments of mostly/all Model 3 to China and Europe. Specifically we are debating teh implication for GM, inventory end of quarter, order backlogs, service capacity, Supercharger CCS capacity for Europe to support all those M3's etc. It is thrilling to not have ridiculous fact-free rants about minor and/or misstated issues.

In my rant I did not point out that I am here precisely because there are quite rational and logical reasons to be either bullish or bearish. I, for one, appreciate the diversity of views, experiences and technical capacity among active participants here.

 

[Drumheller]

If anyone perceives me as extra critical of Donald Trump it’s because I am. He’s a complete jack-wagon on all levels and continues to be a huge embarrassment to this country.

What does this have to do with this thread?

I'd be happy to see every politician in D.C. fired and sent home, but I don't feel the need to post about that in a thread that's supposed to be about Tesla and market action.

 

[SOULPEDL]

So about the EAP/FSD being included on MS/MX in the price... I`m not sure I like that idea from a profit point of view. Obviously the cost is not zero on these due to the development costs of the AP software (the HW cost is split among all cars), but we usually refer to these as 90%+ profits.

Why give that up as long as people are willing to pay for it? Sure, can make it cheaper as a demand lever, do like a Black Friday sales, etc. But simply including it to base, while keeping the price flat would really eats into the margins, don`t you think?

Get more data... Feed the machine.

 

[neroden]

The building is big, but not set up for manufacturing. The whole side is full of loadings docks. It also doesn’t have enough parking space. It will likely be a central parts storage and distribution center for NA and that is a good thing. Tesla needs to structurally improve parts availability and delivery times.

Yeah, getting that sort of central parts storage and distribution center working smoothly will be the "easy part" of solving service hell.