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

[abasile]

I think we have to separate out the NIMBY concerns from legitimate, broader pollution and climate issues. It is not progress to invest in new fossil fuel infrastructure. Of course, for the climate, efforts to stop using fossil fuels are arguably more important than efforts to thwart fossil fuel production.

Sure, but what if we swap "climate protestors" and "pipeline" with ... "wind farms?"

https://earther.gizmodo.com/anti-wind-farm-activism-is-sweeping-europe-and-the-us-c-1829627812

Dutch fishermen to sail fleet into Amsterdam in wind turbine protest

Proposal for 24 wind turbines whips up controversy in rural Wisconsin | MinnPost

Or solar?

Virginia residents protest proposed solar farm in Spotsylvania

Victorian Government approves plans for three controversial solar farms

Or high-speed rail?

A DAY IN AUSTIN TO PROTEST THE HIGH SPEED RAIL


My obvious point is that principles can't change based on which side of the specific debate you are on, otherwise they aren't actually "principles." There is a proper legal process for challenging development and of course people always have a right to voice their concerns.

It is impossible to build any big infrastructure without creating at least some losers in the process. The losers inevitably feel justified in protesting and of course they have the right to protest, just not to engage in illegal activity to obstruct progress. If we are going to build a new generation of infrastructure we are going to have to do it in the face of protests. All progress can't stop because every individual landowner/etc feels their spot is special and must remain unchanged.

 

[KarenRei]

Interesting, he calls the new foundations between the factory and the 220KV substation the "battery workshop".

Does anyone know on what basis he is calling it that?

I don't know the basis, but it would be logical as the second phase of the factory.

 

[mrmage]

Honest question - what good does estimating, crowdsourcing quarterly production estimates do for the greater good of TSLA stock price? Whatever gets polled , usually a high number - the Wall Street consensus just rises the bar towards report day and makes it impossible for tsla to look good. Guys like Troy don’t really add much value to increasing share value - just nonsense and noise to spin people’s wheels on. This is just my opinion of course and I’d love to understand and would appreciate hearing why I’m wrong here.

Data that indicates how Tesla is doing helps investors like me, because I don't have the time or aptitude to dig up this information on my own. With credible estimates, I'm willing to buy more Tesla which helps stabilize SP despite the FUD.

As you noted, the downside is shorts will move the goalposts using this information. In the long term, SP will converge on its merits so this isn't too bad unless someone is swing trading.

 

[pz1975]

Interesting promotion in my town (suburb of Vancouver). Last 10 townhomes, just over $1 million each, free base Model 3 with purchase.

 

[dc_h]

It's probably benign:

The Fed Has Not Covered Itself in Glory: Fed Funds Mess Edition | naked capitalism​

The theory is that this is happening because the Fed started paying interest on reserves instead of directly injecting liquidity to control the rates.

The "emergency" measures the Fed is applying now is how the Fed controlled rates for decades.

There's also possibly some arbitrage abuse by foreign central banks using the unlimited dollar lending facility.

I.e. this is probably not the sign of some systemic lack of lender trust (such as a big bank facing a bank run), but incompetence of the Fed not fully understanding the consequences of the unwinding of QE and not properly managing the levels of reserves. If that's the case then the Fed will eventually sort it out by the end of this quarter.

Not advice.

I believe they also had turnover in leadership of the trading desk. Not sure if that mattered.
It does bother me that they don’t seem to equate quantitive tightening with normal reduction in money supply through selling of treasuries. When the fed sells treasuries banks pay with cash, reducing monetary supply. The quantitive exit was happening at a rate that would normally be associated with an inflationary economy. In this instance the yield curve was properly indicating risk.

 

[mrmage]

View attachment 457505 Interesting promotion in my town (suburb of Vancouver). Last 10 townhomes, just over $1 million each, free base Model 3 with purchase.

Presumably the garages come equipped with 240v. Market must have gotten a lot softer with fewer buyers from China.

 

[Causalien]

TSLAQ Fraud of the Day: Dennis Clark.

Here Dennis being interviewed for a Tesla hitpiece earlier this year by Washington Post reporter Faiz Siddiqui:

View attachment 457486

What can we say about Dennis? Well, according to the guy himself, he's a real American hero! Fought in Afghanistan, lost an arm and a leg, got back, started drone company and made a ton of money, owns a coffee farm in Kona, a private jet, and is a major car collector. Let's forget that sometimes his stories rather contradict each other (such as claiming to only own 2 or 3 cars at one point); that's tangential. His TSLAQ backstory is that after owning multiple Teslas, he got tired of them breaking down, even betting his employees to pay them a certain amount of money for each day one of them was in the shop - ultimately having to pay six million dollars because "a promise is a promise". Strangely, there's no pictures on his accounts to backup any of his claims (including him ever having owned a Tesla), despite having posted tons of pictures. He posted a picture of a Taycan reservation, but you can get those for free.

A variety of people have found his story suspect over time, but been afraid to call him out over it. Who wants to call out a double amputee war hero as a fraud? Even after he reneged on a promise to buy a Model X for Earl of Frunkpuppy (who wants to start a charity to help veterans), people held off. The other day, however, this thread happened:

Skabooshka For Prison on Twitter

The "prosthetic arm" stuff really went too far

View attachment 457480

This got people to start looking through his pictures. Funny thing... (a couple examples)

View attachment 457481

Called out on this, he responded that sometimes he posts old pictures, from before he lost limbs during the Afghanistan war. Funny thing, how long ago was the Polestar 2 launch?

View attachment 457482

View attachment 457483

View attachment 457484

Also, about his coffee farm pics...

That farm is, of course, not owned by Dennis Clark. That's Greenwell Farms:

Owned by, of course, the Greenwell family, and run by Thomas Greenwell. That photo was taken from this green shelter:

That shelter is part of the tour of Greenwell Farms, where tourists are taught about how coffee is made.

He says he does multiple 1,5h swims per week in Kona Bay (during his endless boasting about his athletic prowess... something which pictures of him hardly reveal!). Problem is:

TriTurboTexan on Twitter

The waters off of Kona are extremely hazardous; there are tons of warnings for people not to enter the water:

The original Ironman competition is held there, but it's specifically designed to be hard - it's not a place for a double-amputee, let alone someone as visibly out of shape as Dennis.

People kept piling on:

View attachment 457485

On and on it went. As everyone who had hesitated from calling him out earlier started pouring in, eventually he gave up and deleted his account:

Congratulations, Dennis - you're our TSLAQ Fraud of the Day (as well as having severe Munchausen syndrome)! Oh, and Washington Post? Check your freaking sources better next time. :Þ

It's thanks to guys like this that ppl like me who eschew the media spotlight can live in relative peace.

 

[pz1975]

Presumably the garages come equipped with 240v. Market must have gotten a lot softer with fewer buyers from China.

From the townhome company’s website: “...each home offers an innovative design with energy-efficient capabilities and our partnership with Tesla is a true expression of that.”

Not sure why this relates to a softer market. Pretty sure this is a company buying the cars from Tesla and almost certainly at full price. They are leveraging the popularity of Tesla around here to sell more homes. It’s really just a $45K or so discount (after rebates) on the house but grabs more attention with the “free Tesla” part than just a cash discount.

 

[SpeedGoat]

I think we have to separate out the NIMBY concerns from legitimate, broader pollution and climate issues.

That may be a cause that is important to you, but there are lots of causes people are passionate about. Who decides which cause warrants breaking the law?

There are people who support nuclear as an alternative to fossil fuels... and of course people who will literally lay on the railroad tracks to stop nuclear plants from operating. Who is right?

I could just as easily make an example of various hydroelectric plants. They are in a sense almost the perfect renewable energy, but they do come with an environmental cost and there are those that oppose hydroelectric construction. (or are campaigning to remove existing dams)

In a democracy ultimately it is up to the people to elect representatives to make laws/regulations that reflect their values, an imperfect system to be sure, but far superior to leaving the matter in the hands of whatever gaggle of activists chooses to oppose a project.

 

[Hock1]

It goes like this: A market maker wants the price to be much lower. They submit short sales of say 250,000 shares using a waterfall approach: They will execute against all of the order books, gobbling up all the highest 250,000 shares of standing buy limit orders, but doing it over a period of a minute or two. The market makers generally also have insight into most of these buy limit orders, so they can estimate just how big a drop they will cause. Say it causes a $6 dollar drop in about two minutes. Now this huge drop has the potential to spook retail market participants, many of whom will be scrambling to figure out what news do big insiders have that they don't? Some of them will decide to sell too. Over the next several hours (or several days sometimes - market makers are allowed to have FTDs for many days too!) they buy back these naked shorts with many small ~500 share orders at the "new" lower prices they caused with their artificial mini-crash.

The buying back does have an upward effect on price, but it is smaller because it is drawn out over a long period of time. If the market maker sees actual strong buying interest before they have bought back their shares, then they can cap it with limit sell (naked short again) orders such that large buying volume does not raise the price much. If they do that, it will increase the size of their short so it's likely they will also extend the time over which they cover. The point is that this is done to control market psychology - that this stock is being dumped by big players, so now is not the time to buy and maybe it is the time to sell. Coordinating it with some bogus news, downgrade or such just adds to the psychological force.

The SEC rules allow them to do this for the supposed reason of providing orderly markets. I'm sure the MM would say that they are "adding liquidity" to the market, but there is no need for them to say anything because the SEC does not care what they do.

Nice job of describing what happens pretty much every day in TSLA and many other manipulated stocks. Just to elaborate on this a bit:

As I have mentioned before, this ability of so-called market makers to naked short under the auspices of assuring a liquid market, was the brainchild of Bernie Madoff. Back in the early 2000's the Madoff Exemption was adopted by the SEC. As can be easily imagined, this was a godsend for the big brokers and a serious blow to the individual investor. (A few years back, in an interview, Madoff said that one of his biggest regrets was that he naked-shorted and "just stayed that way") In other words, never actually delivered stock. The next and final nail in the coffin of the investing public happened in 2007 when the SEC removed the uptick rule, a safeguard against manipulative shorting, that was put in place after the debacle of 1929.

Both the Madoff Exemption and shorting on downticks are "legal" and they are used everyday to do exactly the opposite of what the SEC (in the Securities Exchange Act of 1934) was charged with: protecting the investor. So, even though both of these actions are legal, it is still illegal to manipulate stocks.

IMO, this is the biggest crime ever perpetrated on the investing public. The problem in bringing this crime to light is the fact that no legislators or regulators or anyone that could possibly do anything to stop it, understands what is going on. The only people who understand it are the people perpetrating the crime. The future of our markets does not look bright.AIMO

 

[JRP3]

An alternative to electrek? Earlectrek - EV and Tesla News

 

[dc_h]

That may be a cause that is important to you, but there are lots of causes people are passionate about. Who decides which cause warrants breaking the law?

There are people who support nuclear as an alternative to fossil fuels... and of course people who will literally lay on the railroad tracks to stop nuclear plants from operating. Who is right?

I could just as easily make an example of various hydroelectric plants. They are in a sense almost the perfect renewable energy, but they do come with an environmental cost and there are those that oppose hydroelectric construction. (or are campaigning to remove existing dams)

In a democracy ultimately it is up to the people to elect representatives to make laws/regulations that reflect their values, an imperfect system to be sure, but far superior to leaving the matter in the hands of whatever gaggle of activists chooses to oppose a project.

Laws should be evenly enforced and created equally. We have too many crack vs cocaine laws that punish the poor. People should be able to protest without fear of punishment. We’ve already given up our privacy, if we’re giving up on unpopular speech, what’s next?
Tesla has survived in part by its fan base standing up to entrenched interests and financialists social media campaign. If protesting becomes illegal our speech can’t be far behind.

Mod-understand if this thread needs to go. It’s OT, but philosophically was related to the organized fight against environmentalism and the EV.

 

[Captkerosene]

I feel like you guys are talking past each other. I don’t think the argument is: “people should be able to just randomly block any construction trucks they want for any reason with no punishment”. Rather, it’s that 25 years in prison is an absurd(and arguably unconstitutional) sentence for such an offense. If an 18 year old kid participated in the protests, blocking a truck from starting, they would be thrown in prison until they’re 43. They almost might as well just go all the way with it and give the death penalty.

A small minority of the population decided to stop the proliferation of nuclear power. Now we have coal plants poisoning our people and destroying the environment. Hundreds of thousands killed and hundreds of billions lost. Ecoterrorism is a serious crime that deserves serious penalties.

 

[jdw]

Presumably the garages come equipped with 240v. Market must have gotten a lot softer with fewer buyers from China.

Charging shouldn't be a problem, this is the view on approach to the development ...likely why the Tesla incentive is included.

 

[Fact Checking]

A small minority of the population decided to stop the proliferation of nuclear power. Now we have coal plants poisoning our people and destroying the environment. Hundreds of thousands killed and hundreds of billions lost. Ecoterrorism is a serious crime that deserves serious penalties.

Oh wow, this gets the "worst argument of the week" award from me.

Firstly, those groups that successfully opposed the proliferation of nuclear power had broad public support, and they might also have done humanity a big favor:

• In an alternative future with thousands of nuclear reactors the horrible experiences of Chernobyl and Fukushima might just be fading memories in a series of even more severe
• With much more nuclear power comes much more weapons grade fission material, which might have created both a bigger opportunity for nuclear terrorists to create dirty bombs and target their enemies, rendering historic cities uninhabitable for thousands of years, or the plutonium might have empowered a rouge state, a desperate state or a crazy dictator to start an actual nuclear war.

So you cannot at all claim it with confidence that the stoppage of nuclear power didn't save lives. As @neroden and @KarenRei argued in the past, there's essentially no "safe" nuclear power: it's not possible according to our current understanding of physics.

Secondly, the world wasn't forced to use fossil fuels as a response to resistance to nuclear power: it could have used green energies instead, and it could have enacted carbon taxation to make green energies the more economic choice faster. The decision to go coal, gas and oil was voluntary and lobbying influenced, it was not the only option. That outcome was not the "fault" of those who opposed nuclear (on mostly valid grounds).

Third, given your willingness to transfer blame along very vague externalities, are you also arguing that those fossil fuel execs who in the 1980 and 90s conspired to hide global warming research and who subverted the Republican Party to become climate deniers should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, charged with a few million counts of murder committed as part of a criminal conspiracy, with monetary penalties going into the tens of trillions of dollars?

 

[deffu]

View attachment 457505 Interesting promotion in my town (suburb of Vancouver). Last 10 townhomes, just over $1 million each, free base Model 3 with purchase.

Gosh, I wish I knew this deal earlier. I had to buy a house to get my car charged after I got a tesla.

 

[Carl Raymond]

It all depends on context. On a Tesla forum M3 probably isn't a Bimmer. And MS probably not an illness. And MX probably not a multiplexer?

The worst is SC. Service Centre, Supercharger, Securities Commission?

 

[hobbes]

Honest question - what good does estimating, crowdsourcing quarterly production estimates do for the greater good of TSLA stock price? Whatever gets polled , usually a high number - the Wall Street consensus just rises the bar towards report day and makes it impossible for tsla to look good. Guys like Troy don’t really add much value to increasing share value - just nonsense and noise to spin people’s wheels on. This is just my opinion of course and I’d love to understand and would appreciate hearing why I’m wrong here.

So you are saying that it is our job to increase Tesla share price?? IMHO this forum should enable discussion to make good, informed investment/trading choices. So learning things that influence where share price is headed is central to this. And sales numbers are important in that regard. If we´d say that sharing a positive sales estimate raises the bar for what´s reported, you can as well argue sharing a negative sentiment may drop stock price when it is picked up by the media. This leads the whole idea of a public forum discussion ad absurdum.

Not saying that Troys analysis is without errors - but at least he is trying hard to give his best estimates. Except for that, don´t forget that he is the architect of our European registrations wiki. I hate it when people start bashing others for mistakes they make in their work, while not adding any value themselves. Just my two cents.

 

[Beltsbear]

The worst is SC. Service Centre, Supercharger, Securities Commission?

Also EAP. Early access program and enhanced auto pilot.

 

[abasile]

In a democracy ultimately it is up to the people to elect representatives to make laws/regulations that reflect their values, an imperfect system to be sure, but far superior to leaving the matter in the hands of whatever gaggle of activists chooses to oppose a project.

I do agree with this. If you have a fringe gaggle of activists opposing a given project and they feel justified in performing some act of civil disobedience, then they will go to jail, and rightfully so.

On the other hand, if you have non-violent activists acting with substantial (though possibly latent) public support and sympathy, then their actions may well help to galvanize public opinion and thereby influence the democratic process. This was certainly the case in the US civil rights movement, which has been judged favorably by history.

I do think there are ample legal avenues to address our current climate crisis, so please don’t misunderstand me; I am not advocating that people go to pipeline construction sites and block bulldozers, etc. I would rather that people buy Tesla stock, drive EVs, support sustainable energy, invite others to do the same, and lobby for better government policies. Those actions will, I expect, send a much better message than Greenpeace-like disruptive actions.