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

[ReflexFunds]

Tesla working with LG? That would be weird.
Tesla building a GF in Indonesia? That would be weird.

There is one thing about Indonesia of note re: batteries, however, in that it's an emerging potential source of battery-grade nickel sulfate. New HPAL tech for processing laterites is being first applied at scale in Indonesia (it'll produce cobalt sulphate as a side product, too).

It looks like a large JV project that Tesla has expressed interest in. Seems strange to me.

'Tesla wil batterijen maken in Indonesië'
Google translate: "Tesla is one of the automakers who wants to invest in a battery factory in Indonesia. South Korean technology brand LG would also like to invest money in it, Indonesian Maritime Affairs Minister Luhut Pandjaitan said. The total investment could therefore go up to 4 billion dollars.
The Chinese company CATL took the initiative for the factory to make batteries for electric cars and already invested 1 billion dollars in it. In addition to Tesla and LG, Volkswagen and Mercedes-Benz have also expressed an interest in a partnership with CATL, Pandjaitan said, handling the case."

Looks like Tesla only joined recently with a small stake:
""CATL is in agreement with LG, Volkswagwn, Mercedes. All that. [...] Tesla came in, even though it might have a small portion, but they came in because they saw a lot of battery in Indonesia," he explained. "
Mercy, Tesla Cs Keroyokan Bangun Baterai Mobil Listrik di RI

 

[Pezpunk]

Well, I think I know what your responses to this survey will be then

Tesla Service Survey

I created a survey as to what people's experience here with Tesla's service has been, and for how many people it matches the phrasing in that question. This is irrespective of the question of whether it's a good idea to phrase a question in a FUDdy manner to bbe read off during a very public business event - this is just to see if people agree with the claims being made therein.

This is only for Tesla owners, living in an area served by Tesla (eg. I imagine that most Tesla Iceland owners service is bad... because it doesn't exist here). Please take part.

I took the survey, although i've only interacted with Tesla Service a couple of times -- once very recently, and once a couple years back, and both instances were excellent. I couldn't honestly answer yes to any of the questions.

However, I do want to make the point that majority opinion isn't really what's important here. if even 20% of your customers are outraged, that's a big problem.

 

[humbaba]

FWIW: @ihors3 estimate of maximum $TSLA short interest is ~43%. This implies plenty of shares at 31%, but closing in on 40% should result in increased interest rates for shorting.

Ihor Dusaniwsky on Twitter

Please note: @ihors3 has good data and insight, but it is not perfect. Though his estimate of short interest for June 28 was proven to be spot on, his prior estimate was way too low. His (quite reasonable) argument that short interest closing in on the limit results in higher rates did not occur and is likely one reason his estimate was so far off. I take the incident as evidence that market makers were deliberately encouraging shorting of $TSLA. @ihors3 argues that they are just afraid of being undercut by competitors, but somehow when it isn't $TSLA the interest paid by shorts has more upward mobility.

In short: I appreciate his estimate of the maximum shares that can be shorted, but be aware that interest rates paid by shorts do not correlate well with the level of short interest in $TSLA.

 

[S3XY]

This freaking news has been on CNBC for more than 3 days, still front and center Tesla news.

They say it's updated, yet I don't see no updated sugar whatsoever.
They just want it to be the first thing normal people see about Tesla.

So obvious, so blatant misinformation campaign.


View attachment 431499

View attachment 431500

It's pretty obvious what was updated. How long ago it was updated. It used to say 3 days and now it says 5 hours ago.

 

[anthonyj]

Actually, 96.4% of retail Robinhood holders of TSLA have NOT cashed out yet:

Robintrack

View attachment 431581​

Today 163.6k users are still holding, compared to the peak of 169.7k, a reduction of only 3.6% - which is unprecedented: look how quickly Robinhood holders sold after the bottom in 2018.

This is amazing not just because it's a departure from past trading patterns, but because almost half of all current Robinhood holders bought TSLA below price levels of $250, so they could cash out profitably if they wanted to - but didn't.

This is a sign that maybe the number of long term TSLA holders has increased significantly, i.e. quite a few of them are transitioning from swing-traders to investors.

Keyword: slowly
Point is they aren’t accumulating, but the price is going up. The shorts aren’t covering, but the price is going up. Who’s buying

 

[Navin]

It's pretty obvious what was updated. How long ago it was updated. It used to say 3 days and now it says 5 hours ago.

Lora: wolf
Lora: Wolf (update)
Lora: black wolf (update)
Lora: Wolfie (update)

Painful but she will be the girl who cried wolf.

 

[anthonyj]

This is not good news. They're doing their traditional MO of raising their forecast right before earnings so the headline will be "Tesla missed analyst expectations".

They've done this for a few quarters now. It's like how all of a sudden, after months of doom and gloom, analyst expected over 90,000 deliveries when they were reported! It's so transparent when you follow the stock, but to most casual observers, it looks like Tesla is always in trouble.

Nah Tesla is going to blow everyone’s minds on July 24th lol. Tutes loaded up from $176 to $257 to dump at much higher prices, not under $300 for sure. The only thing that can cause another sell off is negative cash flow and lowered guidance which isn’t happening

 

[Artful Dodger]

Another low volume start to the day, with 1.5 M shares traded in the 1st hour (2.3 M shares after 2 hrs of trading). Continued capping action holding the SP in the 255-256 rge (so far). Macros started up, slightly down after Open.

Today's story is the Monstrous open Options contracts:

Also, there is strong Options volume already today, centered around the $255-260 Strike price:
$255: 2.3K Puts, 2.79K Calls
$260: 0.32K Puts, 3.02K Calls

'Max Pain' remains at the $240 Strike price as it has most of the week, anchored by the massive amount of open PUT contracts at the $50 and $100 Strike.

 

[jerry33]

i can't tell you how many 20-somethings tell me their next car is going to be a Tesla. Anyone over 35 is a MUCH MUCH harder sell.

This really hasn't been my experience. That is yes the younger folks know about Tesla and are positive, but the older folks are also positive (except for a very few) once they actually see and sit in the car.

 

[MarcusMaximus]

In every one of these areas, the actual problem is that there are very strict government regulations preventing the construction of new housing -- "zoning" regulations.

If governments start prohibiting Tesla from manufacturing more cars, it'll be comparable. As long as that doesn't happen, it won't be.

Government is not the only possible downward pressure on units available. As we’ve agreed before: Tesla is production constrained. Unless they could actually build enough cars to satisfy all the new investment demand, it hits the same problem.

 

[jerry33]

Well, I think I know what your responses to this survey will be then

Tesla Service Survey

I went to the survey, but you have to have a google account to take it. No thanks. And my experience with service has been good to excellent.

 

[pz1975]

Another low volume start to the day, with 1.54 M shares traded in the 1st hour. Continued capping action holding the SP in the 255-256 rge.

Monstrous open Options contracts:

View attachment 431607

Also, their is strong Options volume already today, centered around the $255-260 Strike price:
$255: 2.3K Puts, 2.79K Calls
$260: 0.32K Puts, 3.02K Calls

View attachment 431608

'Max Pain' remains at the $240 Strike price as it has most of the week, anchored by the massive amount of open PUT contracts at the $50 and $100 Strike.

Max pain must have been calculated incorrectly. The effect of the $50 and $100 puts should have no effect on pulling the max pain down since the odds of them becoming ITM are essentially 0. Thus, whether the stock ends up at 240 or 255 makes no difference on them anyways. Only strike prices that have some chance of being hit should be used in the max pain calculation (240-265 or so).

 

[Doggydogworld]

….and there is no project that we know of in any stage of definite planning, funding, design or acquisition to follow the trail blazed by the South Australian mega battery.

Their PG&E project is 5x the size of Australia, but may be on the back burner while PG&E attends to other issues.

I agree TE is a rounding error in terms of 2019's bottom line. And 2020's for that matter.

 

[Fact Checking]

'Max Pain' remains at the $240 Strike price as it has most of the week, anchored by the massive amount of open PUT contracts at the $50 and $100 Strike.

I believe the "true" max-pain is in the $250-$260 range for today's expiry, because close to expiry the effect of deep out of the money options (too low puts and too high calls) is near zero.

 

[sparcs]

I think it is already quite clear that 2019 is NOT going to the year of TE. The gigafactory is not yet producing to capacity, solar roof just debuted a third iteration in extremely tiny volume, regular solar except for some token panels on newer supercharger locations seems to have stalled after initial construction on the gigafactory and there is no project that we know of in any stage of definite planning, funding, design or acquisition to follow the trail blazed by the South Australian mega battery. The best we can hope for is a healthy incremental increase in sales of powerwalls and packs, but from such a low volume that Tesla's bottomline will continue to be determined by what happens with the car side of business for the rest of 2019.

2019 is definitely going to be better than 2018. Tesla took away the two lines at GF1 producing energy cells and moved them over to model 3 cells. Those lines have since been converted back to producing energy cells. I suspect those lines are also undergoing upgrades to increase production as well.

Anecdotally, we're hearing installers actually surprised they are getting reasonable amount of deliveries of Powerwalls in 2019.

We're on an upward trend even if it's not a huge impact yet to Tesla's bottom line.

 

[Nocturnal]

Spent the last 4 days trying to avoid heatstroke at Disney so I hope you guys appreciate this SP increase. Day 2 I remembered the real world and checked out TSLA and was pleasantly surprised by the jump.

 

[mrmage]

Well, I think I know what your responses to this survey will be then

Tesla Service Survey

I created a survey as to what people's experience here with Tesla's service has been, and for how many people it matches the phrasing in that question. This is irrespective of the question of whether it's a good idea to phrase a question in a FUDdy manner to bbe read off during a very public business event - this is just to see if people agree with the claims being made therein.

This is only for Tesla owners, living in an area served by Tesla (eg. I imagine that most Tesla Iceland owners service is bad... because it doesn't exist here). Please take part.

The survey would be more effective if it captured a range beyond exceptionally bad, eg less than 5 hour phone hold times. I find service to be very poor and my parents think the service sucks, but not 5 hr hold times or nearly impossible to set up appointments.

 

[kengchang]

From IB

 

[Congo Line]

Anyone concerned about a pull-forward effect in Q3 due to reduction in tax credit from Q2? It's not as much as between Q4 '18 to Q1 '19, but it's still almost $2k reduction in incentives. The recent price reduction and elimination of standard-range S/X seems eerily reminiscent of what they did in Q1 '19, so am worried we're going to see something similar for deliveries this quarter.

 

[wheelwhright]

I believe the "true" max-pain is in the $250-$260 range for today's expiry, because close to expiry the effect of deep out of the money options (too low puts and too high calls) is near zero.

Isn't max pain just the minimum point on the curve "options reward by stock price"? You could add another million oom puts at say 220 and the max pain would still be the same if I am not mistaken.