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

[jeewee3000]

This law might be applied to ABS which is a "known vehicle property", but can it be applied to the airbag scenario I outlined:



?

The outcome of the airbag exploding into your face is not something you could have anticipated in advance, especially if it was marketed as a "safety feature".

There is very little the old lady can possibly do to avoid the negative scenario. It's a pure statistically driven benefits versus disadvantages trade-off, measured and decided by the vehicle manufacturer.

Before airbags were legislated to be mandatory did cars with airbags come with a "if you buy this vehicle the airbags might kill you in some circumstances" disclaimer that was legally enforceable against claims of injury/death?

I'm genuinely curious how the product liability angle was treated for airbags and ABS, because I think that gives us a good answer to how Tesla might approach FSD liability - which is I believe the primary gating factor to unlock driver-less FSD revenue.

Interesting point, but IMO it is a non-issue.

If we may believe Wikipedia (which is of course never, but let's):
From 1990 to 2000, the United States National Highway Traffic Safety Administration identified 175 fatalities caused by air bags. Most of these (104) have been children. About 3.3 million air bag deployments have occurred during that interval, and the agency estimates more than 6,377 lives saved and countless injuries prevented.[113][121]

Deaths or injuries by airbags are rare, so the companies deal with it on a case by case basis. In some cases it could go to Court, in others there could be an agreement.

Airbags were "not illegal" so companies put them in their cars to outperform the competition, advertising safety. (Of course they only released airbags because the design showed them to be safer in most cases than having no airbags). Later on, when the world caught on, they became mandatory.

FSD is different since it IS illegal (to use it handsfree). Putting FSD in cars like Tesla is attempting poses new problems never before encountered.

 

[Fact Checking]

I would say that is a significant amount of selling in the last six months.

You've MISSED the point: these are all sales of executed share options. That's how senior executives are paid in Silicon Valley. JB is NOT selling his core holdings. He's executing his options, and using the sales to pay his taxes and to fund his charities. JB is not divesting. And he's not doing anything different now (or in May) than he has been for a long time. The only difference is what Shortz are selling at the kool-aid stand. Don't buy it.

In addition to that note that JB has about 400,000 additional stock options that will vest in the next couple of years, and it's pretty probable that he will be granted more if Tesla does well.

This is in addition to his core holdings of ~400,000 TSLA stock is a huge core stake of almost a million TSLA shares that will be worth billions if Tesla takes off.

Having an automated selling plan in place to sell 30-40k per quarter to generate overall liquidity for his other firms, to diversify a bit (there's a huge quality of life difference between being worth $40m in the worst case and being worth $0) and for charitable donations is literally just a drop in the bucket.

 

[jeewee3000]

Fairly flat in premarket (up $0.44) despite negative (but improving macros)

Off-topic: Wow do we ever need a separate market action thread! Nothing against the self-driving metrics/regulators discussion. It's interesting for sure, but we really need a place where it's easy to check on and discuss news and developments that are moving the stock in the near term. Market action would allow this with less sifting through a lot of longer-term speculation. Just my $.02.

That was the goal years ago but it failed, as others have pointed out.

Main culprit IMHO is the growing amount of TMC members. I'd love to have a "checked facts that are moving the stock price" thread, more like a blogpost without input from other users.

That's why I love the daily analysis by Papafox. Only upgrade would be that it could be real time, during market hours.

 

[Fact Checking]

FSD is different since it IS illegal (to use it handsfree).

Not in Florida though:

New Florida law lets autonomous vehicles drive without humans​

I expect Tesla to fully comply with all local regulatory requirements - so if a "nag" is required there will be a nag, even if it's safer for the driver to not be involved at all.

(Tesla is already doing this in Europe: NoA is crippled by existing EU legislation, as @Christine600 reported it recently - it's much more timid in changing lanes, as required by regulations.)

If we may believe Wikipedia (which is of course never, but let's):
From 1990 to 2000, the United States National Highway Traffic Safety Administration identified 175 fatalities caused by air bags. Most of these (104) have been children. About 3.3 million air bag deployments have occurred during that interval, and the agency estimates more than 6,377 lives saved and countless injuries prevented.[113][121]

Deaths or injuries by airbags are rare, so the companies deal with it on a case by case basis. In some cases it could go to Court, in others there could be an agreement.

Airbags were "not illegal" so companies put them in their cars to outperform the competition, advertising safety. (Of course they only released airbags because the design showed them to be safer in most cases than having no airbags). Later on, when the world caught on, they became mandatory.

My point is: are "only" 175 (proven) fatalities in a 10 year period "good enough" for optional but regulatory-approved FSD, as long as it's saving many more (6,377) lives, statistically?

 

[replicant]

This thread has become 99% off topic. Last 4 pages were nothing but robotaxi talk as always. Can we just rename this thread to 'All Robotaxi, all the time!'?

Stock price is: $252.59 USD on Jul 18 at 10:26 EDT. NB: it might change right after my post is published, but we can discuss the changes if you want to.

 

[EVNow]

Statistics and number of 9s won’t matter* - for each serious (death/injury) accident, the prosecution will come up with a ~plausible scenario for how the FSD made a poor decision and the accident wouldn’t have happened (or have been as serious) if their client had been in control.

That is why actual robotaxi or hands free FSD will take time. Its not (just) about regulators, manufacturers need to be able to quantify the risk involved. Good that Tesla is getting into insurance business now.

 

[Chunky Jr.]

It was pretty obvious to me that when they did Autonomy Day, it was a sign that Q1 was going to suck as it was a way to pump up investors before the horrible numbers came out.

I tried to find a similar foreshadowing with Neuralink, but couldn't at first. Thinking about it a bit, and this is a stretch, but perhaps it is a bullish sign because Elon claimed many times it was a recruiting exercise, and why would he want to try and recruit people if Q2 was going to suck? Get people talking about Neuralink, release some great Q2 numbers, then people who might be interested in working there would want to get in early and benefit from the growth in company value. If Q2 sucked, his recruiting message would be drowned out by skepticism that he really has the magic touch.

So I'm guessing that Q2 is going to be really good and surprise on the upside.

 

[EVNow]

My point is: are "only" 175 (proven) fatalities in a 10 year period "good enough" for optional but regulatory-approved FSD, as long as it's saving many more (6,377) lives, statistically?

Definitely good enough - it is one per year. As long as Tesla shows it is not because of negligence on their part, the damages awarded wouldn't be too big. I guess Tesla can also insure against these to limit risk. Other car manufacturers routinely deal with these - crashes due to malfunction.

Ironically the big issue for OEMs is not with the damages awarded to small number of victims but recall and repair. For Tesla its just an OTA update.

 

[Creekstalker]

It didn't work that way in the past. Market action thread became general discussion, regardless of how it was labeled.

I've been a lurker here since 2013. I realize Market Action regularly got off-topic. Still, the number of posts one had to sift through in order to find market-moving news and current developments was way lower (orders of magnitude lol). The General Discussion forum absorbed a big chunk of the more speculative discussion. It wasn't perfect, but it was better than this.

 

[ReflexFunds]

Fairly flat in premarket (up $0.44) despite negative (but improving macros)

Off-topic: Wow do we ever need a separate market action thread! Nothing against the self-driving metrics/regulators discussion. It's interesting for sure, but we really need a place where it's easy to check on and discuss news and developments that are moving the stock in the near term. Market action would allow this with less sifting through a lot of longer-term speculation. Just my $.02.

I think a solution could be a thread for breaking Tesla relevant headlines sticking to the facts with very limited discussion and no replies (aside from explanations to counter FUD) - any discussion of the news can remain in this thread instead (people can post the news to both threads but keep the discussion to this one). This breaking news thread might sometimes only have one post per day or even less, and should have very strict moderation and post deletion if people start to drift (hopefully people will behave and this won't be much work).

 

[PeterJA]

Someone mentioned that lots of $250 call options expire tomorrow, which gives the call sellers incentive to push TSLA below 250 in the next day and a half.

Are there significant numbers of calls below 250, so the manipulators might try to push down even farther?

 

[MarcusMaximus]

It was pretty obvious to me that when they did Autonomy Day, it was a sign that Q1 was going to suck as it was a way to pump up investors before the horrible numbers came out.

I tried to find a similar foreshadowing with Neuralink, but couldn't at first. Thinking about it a bit, and this is a stretch, but perhaps it is a bullish sign because Elon claimed many times it was a recruiting exercise, and why would he want to try and recruit people if Q2 was going to suck? Get people talking about Neuralink, release some great Q2 numbers, then people who might be interested in working there would want to get in early and benefit from the growth in company value. If Q2 sucked, his recruiting message would be drowned out by skepticism that he really has the magic touch.

So I'm guessing that Q2 is going to be really good and surprise on the upside.

Not everything Elon does has to do with Tesla.

 

[PeterJA]

Re: cluttered thread.

I personally have no problem skipping over off-topic posts if they don't interest me. Often they do, and I enjoy the jokes, which are by definition off-topic.

The only reason that I see for moving posts to other threads is they might be easier to find by people interested in those other topics. However, this benefit decreases when the number of threads becomes unwieldy. A good search engine may be the best solution. TMC's search engine looks pretty good, although I haven't used it.

 

[Fact Checking]

Someone mentioned that lots of $250 call options expire tomorrow, which gives the call sellers incentive to push TSLA below 250 in the next day and a half.

Are there significant numbers of calls below 250, so the manipulators might try to push down even farther?

Here's the latest TSLA options open interest for tomorrow's expiry, in $10 price steps, trimmed at $300:

 PUT $010:  3,695 #                   ,   CALL $010:      2                    
 PUT $020:  2,374                     ,   CALL $020:      0                    
 PUT $030:  1,846                     ,   CALL $030:      0                    
 PUT $040:  3,264 #                   ,   CALL $040:      0                    
 PUT $050: 58,792 ###################+,   CALL $050:      1                    
 PUT $060:  2,565 #                   ,   CALL $060:      0                    
 PUT $070:  2,704 #                   ,   CALL $070:      0                    
 PUT $080:  4,971 #                   ,   CALL $080:      0                    
 PUT $090:  1,820                     ,   CALL $090:     35                    
 PUT $100: 47,881 ################    ,   CALL $100:     81                    
 PUT $110:  2,570 #                   ,   CALL $110:     40                    
 PUT $120:  2,509 #                   ,   CALL $120:      6                    
 PUT $130:  6,248 ##                  ,   CALL $130:     41                    
 PUT $140:  9,747 ###                 ,   CALL $140:    255                    
 PUT $150: 11,748 ####                ,   CALL $150:    126                    
 PUT $160: 11,517 ####                ,   CALL $160:    311                    
 PUT $170:  7,235 ##                  ,   CALL $170:    343                    
 PUT $180: 12,596 ####                ,   CALL $180:  2,473                    
 PUT $190: 11,253 ###                 ,   CALL $190:  1,667                    
 PUT $200: 27,591 #########           ,   CALL $200:  5,739 ##                
 PUT $210: 35,092 ###########         ,   CALL $210:  3,308 #                  
 PUT $220: 20,011 ######              ,   CALL $220: 18,190 ######            
 PUT $230: 46,687 ###############     ,   CALL $230:  6,905 ##                
 PUT $240: 46,413 ###############     ,   CALL $240: 32,733 ###########        
 PUT $250: 45,444 ###############     ,   CALL $250: 31,023 ##########        
 PUT $260:  7,222 ##                  ,   CALL $260: 33,838 ###########        
 PUT $270: 15,953 #####               ,   CALL $270: 24,038 ########          
 PUT $280:    907                     ,   CALL $280:  8,284 ##                
 PUT $290:    373                     ,   CALL $290:  5,659 ##                
 PUT $300:    132                     ,   CALL $300:  8,187 ##                
 
2019/Jul/19:  PUTs:   451,305 ; CALLs:   207,422

Observations:

• Huge open interest of 658,000 options (65 million TSLA shares-equivalent position ...), with a 3:1 put/call ratio. The delta-hedging effect must be significant.
• Bearish (PUT) consensus is in the $230-$250 range.
• Bullish (CALL) consensus is in the $240-$270 range.
• Market maker equilibrium (losses to puts equals losses to calls) is around $250.
• If the "max pain" hypothesis holds true tomorrow (it might not: fundamental news is usually stronger than market-maker forces), then market makers would want the price to be in the $250 range, to deny all but the $270 PUT profits, while paying out much less to the call side.
• If there's a bear raid on any negative news they'd want to push the price below $240.
• If the price holds up a huge number of PUTs (420,000 of them) will expire worthless, including over 130,000 bankwuptcy bets at $100 and lower.

 

[UncaNed]

I've been a lurker here since 2013. I realize Market Action regularly got off-topic. Still, the number of posts one had to sift through in order to find market-moving news and current developments was way lower (orders of magnitude lol). The General Discussion forum absorbed a big chunk of the more speculative discussion. It wasn't perfect, but it was better than this.

SOLUTION:
Aggressive moderators start moving all the Off-Topic investor posts to a new "Off-Topic Posts From The Investment Forum " forum, leaving about 1/5 as many posts in this investor forum. Anyone who wants to can still go to the rejected post forum if they like. After a while, investment forum users will start to catch on and there will be far fewer bad posts in the first place

Also, lets all stop replying to non-investor posts and just report them as such to the mods instead.

Let's all vote - I'm requesting only thumbs-up or thumbs- down ratings to my idea hoping for enough approval so moderators will fix this once and for all.

 

[CyberDutchie]

This thread has become 99% off topic. Last 4 pages were nothing but robotaxi talk as always. Can we just rename this thread to 'All Robotaxi, all the time!'?

That’s only two nines

 

[ReflexFunds]

SOLUTION:
Aggressive moderators start moving all the Off-Topic investor posts to a new "Off-Topic Posts From The Investment Forum " forum, leaving about 1/5 as many posts in this investor forum. Anyone who wants to can still go to the rejected post forum if they like. After a while, investment forum users will start to catch on and there will be far fewer bad posts in the first place

Also, lets all stop replying to non-investor posts and just report them as such to the mods instead.

Let's all vote - I'm requesting only thumbs-up or thumbs- down ratings to my idea hoping for enough approval so moderators will fix this once and for all.

This is too much work for moderators. Plus on-topic / off-topic is often subjective and an aggressive post cull is going to leave people unhappy on both sides.

 

[KarenRei]

SOLUTION:
Aggressive moderators start moving all the Off-Topic investor posts to a new "Off-Topic Posts From The Investment Forum " forum, leaving about 1/5 as many posts in this investor forum. Anyone who wants to can still go to the rejected post forum if they like. After a while, investment forum users will start to catch on and there will be far fewer bad posts in the first place

Also, lets all stop replying to non-investor posts and just report them as such to the mods instead.

Let's all vote - I'm requesting only thumbs-up or thumbs- down ratings to my idea hoping for enough approval so moderators will fix this once and for all.

I don't support such a heavy hatchet maneuver. Too heavy moderation is as bad or worse than too little. I think the mods here generally do a good job.

I think however it would be nice, for anyone who wants a particular thing that they view off-topic to disappear, would be to instead of just complaining, suggest (with a link) a specific thread it should go in. It would save mods the time and make them much more likely to act on what you want.

 

[Fact Checking]

I think there's too many off-topic posts here about off-topic posts.

 

[Pezpunk]

I've been a lurker here since 2013. I realize Market Action regularly got off-topic. Still, the number of posts one had to sift through in order to find market-moving news and current developments was way lower (orders of magnitude lol). The General Discussion forum absorbed a big chunk of the more speculative discussion. It wasn't perfect, but it was better than this.

The friction is between investors who use this thread as a "TSLA Investors Daily Hangout" thread, and those who want to use this thread strictly as a resource for meaningful comments on specific market action. The former like to use this thread to maintain an ongoing daily conversation about Tesla's stock price, and as with any long conversation, tangents arise and the topic can meander somewhat. Anyone who dips in and out is understandably frustrated when they pop in hoping to read about what $TSLA is doing or going to do and why, and instead find themselves sifting through a bunch of posts about stuff only tangentially related to Tesla stock.

I don't think there's anything really that can be done that would improve the situation. I don't think the problem can be solved by creating yet another thread. I like having a central hangout that is for investors chatting about market action and stock price and other loosely related topics. This thread does provide a useful service to many of us here (as evidenced by its popularity). I also think people will naturally gravitate towards whichever thread is the most popular, and use it in the same way we currently use this one. I think the mods do a pretty good job of moving posts and halting tedious diversions when appropriate. I wouldn't argue that anything more is needed.

Well, that, plus maybe the occasional charitable act of brevity from each of us.