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

[Artful Dodger]

Quite a week, wot? Yeah, that's +31% intra-week:

Cheers to the Longs!

 

[Sancho]

I’m with you Tim. I have a great pension and an adequate 401k. My close friends think I’m mad for buying, holding and continuing to accumulate shares of TSLA into four figures. I try to explain how rare an opportunity Tesla presents and that shooting the moon with Elon is risky, but losing the quarter million or so I’ve invested to date would not change my life. But, if my evaluation of Tesla as an energy behemoth proves correct, then 5-10 years from now this investment will have a generational impact on me and my family. And, in no small part, it’s the collective wisdom of this community that gave me the courage to continue on this course in the face of the FUD Storm and the skepticism of my smart, but ill-informed friends. That and the experience of owning a P3D!

And now it’s funny. Over the past few days this group of friends is looking at me quite differently. It’s a seldom seen combination of envy and respect tinged with awe. I must admit, I’m enjoying the moment, but definitely not gloating. This is a long play and Tesla is sure to continue on a roller coaster ride.

I’d be surprised if all your smart, skeptical friends have turned the corner on Tesla based on just one ER and a two-day SP surge.

But I’ve been predicting for awhile that a tipping point of sentiment shift is coming soon. Most people will never admit that they were wrong about their skepticism, but they won’t have to: the prevailing wisdom will be that “Tesla has changed.” Musk has become more serious, the company has overcome its production missteps and has been able to cut costs. Everyone loves a good turnaround story.

If you are right, and the sentiment shift is happening now, then the SP could very quickly rise well beyond its ATH, without any new fundamentals “catalyst.”

I’ll be looking out for more signs of this. Some evidence needs to be better press over the next weeks. But as you say, the best evidence will be when I hear many of my skeptical friends starting to recite some version of the Tesla Turnaround Story.

 

[DragonWatch]

I really think they have cried "wolf" a few too many times. People might be slow to catch on but they are not completely stupid! I've already noticed the hit pieces don't have much impact (like they did previously).

People are on to the fake news and now they are hungry to profit from it.

Sadly, people are truly that stupid. Some, only some is knee-jerk reaction, but mostly cold face stupidity. I can smell fear, and stupidity ~ blame it on my military career or human interaction and observation. Later in life, I went as far as to tell my students in their college basic introduction to computers class that people actually took a little yellow pill in order to be as stupid as they are.

I am, and never have been in life for money. My first job, minimum wage was a $1.70 and I got a $0.05 raise within a week because I was so good and fast at turning out oak toilet seats. Yep, they crack and pinch your butt. As a volunteer soldier in May of 1969 I earned $98 a month ~ I volunteered to offer myself up to the gods to die. Now if that is not stupid, hell I could have paid a doctor for a letter qualifying me for 4-F. That is probably the number of “f’s” I got in high school. Sadly after a year or two teaching, a student asked if people really took that silly yellow pill

I have people tell me time and again it does not pencil out ~ Tesla stock. Bought my first 300 shares at $30 each. If I have nothing in the end, well, I started that way in life anyway.

It is all about my GrandPups ~ seven and nine. Kade (7) says he is headed to Mars ~ his grate grandfather’s dream was to be an astronaut. Grandpa just passed, but his name is in granite along with others that made our space exploration possible.

My dream, stupid as it sounds, is that Elon/Tesla is successful. I also told my students I did not care at all if I gave them all “A’s.” It is what they do with the “A.” One might be the FUDster that makes mega bucks hating Tesla; or one may be an engineer making batteries last a million miles. I always held close to my heart the student that struggled to find themselves and caught me getting a cup of coffee; only to tell me how I helped them turn their life around.

Does Tesla actually pencil out ~ depends on who holds the pencil Please put down the little yellow pill and back away

 

[Fact Checking]

I’d be surprised if all your smart, skeptical friends have turned the corner on Tesla based on just one ER and a two-day SP surge.

People like to be in the winning team - just witness the polls of voters after an election, they are consistently showing much higher support for the winner than the voting results.

But I too agree that it's more than just a two-day SP surge:

• A spectacular Starlink launch with a train of 50+ diamonds in the sky. I saw it and millions of others saw it too. Powerful demonstration against the 'fraud' narrative.
• Almost a million Teslas are now on the roads. People notice.
• Traditional OEMs have stopped dissing EVs, now that they are trying to make and sell them too.
  
• Smarter, more mature twittering from Elon. People eventually forget and remember only the current demeanor, which is excellent.

 

[lascavarian]

I am under the impression that plant workers have compensation that involves stock. For those that have held their shares, this must have been a sweet week. And beyond that for all Tesla employees who have worked under some withering press at times, this has been a good week. And really this includes customers as well. I hope they take a moment to enjoy what they have helped bring into the world.

 

[UncaNed]

Agreed. But how often is that happening?

The Man Who was Struck By Lightning Seven Times

Local word is that he was just a nut case who burned himself with a welder on purpose and made up stories. I talked to a few folks who knew him in the early 1970's.

 

[avoigt]

This was a great Twitter reply:

Twitter reply by Ben Hallert (@chairboy)

"It's weird for someone who's lost a ton of money by following the emotion-based $TSLAQ mob... praising the group that sherpa'd him to losing most of his net worth."

"This is some serious Stockholm stuff here."​

Of course as a thank-you for that valuable financial advice Ben Hallert was immediately put on the TSLAQ censorship list:

View attachment 470114​

What these TSLAQ geniuses still don't seem to be realizing is that their Twitter blacklist created a self-reinforcing feedback cycle isolating them from the very investment information that could have saved their investments...

I.e. the TSLAQ Twitter blacklist by Shorty Air Force @Paul91701736 is magnifying the short squeeze.

This TSLAQ supporter's effective personal bankruptcy and the wipeout of his life savings should be a cautionary tale to Tesla bulls too: we should embrace bearish Tesla opinion as well, as long as they are not abusive.

While I have a flaw of erring on the side of Tesla hyper-bullishness, my TMC, Reddit and Twitter block lists are empty.

Beside I never engaged in any discussion with TESLAQ at Twitter and most who know me are aware I don't insult people or even write with emotions, I feel like I should probably be proud to be on that block list where I can't see anything what they are writing but just responses.

Faithful trolls and Fudsters who used to attack me every day got lost somewhere in the last weeks and some of them may realize how wrong they have been but its human not to acknowledge that easily therefore most of them will call this just a fraud again. Few will believe them though considering the almost perfect ER.

Frankly I don't care that much not been able to read their posts because I never seen a logic argumentation or proved solid chain conclusion that made sense to me or could be used for me to validate or even dismiss my own thesis and conclusions.

Many attacked my articles in the past and likely will do in the future though but again thats okay and did never bother me.

The true Fraud that happened with TSLA is indeed the heavy manipulation that created a virtual reality which did not exist but believed by many who followed their "leader". Now since the first are loosing all their life savings and I predict many will follow next weeks they will try to find someone guilty for it and of course it can't be in their understanding be TESLAQ.

What often happens is the illusion that 'what happened can't be true' and needs to be turned around and people may invest now their last money in shorts in order to win back what they lost. Losses weight emotionally stronger then wins so they will try to get rid of that pain like one who lost a fortune at the casino asking you for funding because he know now is the moment and he will win all back + more.

Thats the worst mistake of all as people may have lost a lot but not all of it yet but I predict the worst is still to come for many of TESLAQ.

 

[KarenRei]

One thing I have been wondering - does anyone have a good explanation as to why after share price gapped up over night after the earnings report, it stayed flat over the course of the whole day yesterday only to start running up again today? To me this does not seem like an organic stock movement (or better: lack thereof), more like something engineered. Also, don´t remember having seen this before after an earnings report.

I've seen this happening, both on gaps up and down. It's as if when it gaps up, you have a bunch of people guessing as to whether the gap was too much or too little, and it relatively flatlines for the day. Then the subsequent day(s) it drifts in one direction or the other - more often than not expanding the gap, due to fear, margin calls, changes of opinion, people needing time to run the numbers, etc.

 

[mongo]

I thought I've read that you had to repay money you withdraw from the 401k with post tax dollars. Then when you withdraw from the 401k when you retire, you get taxed again. I could be wrong though since I never did it (even when I was tempted too during cash constrained periods of my life)

You do, but it depends what you did with the loan. If you make a purchase, you spend $50k of post tax money whether or not you used a loan to finance it. If you use it as a margin loan (and get lucky), you never spend the loan and pay it back with the pre-tax money.

Two scenarios:
Borrow $50k, buy 277 TSLA @ $180, sell 156 TSLA@$320 for $50k, repay the loan. Only post tax (double taxed) money is the intermediate interest. You never 'spent' the pretax money.

Borrow $50k to buy something, repay loan over time with post tax money. But that is the same as buying the item with post tax money ($50k post tax purchase) other than the interest which gets double taxed.

 

[Prunesquallor]

Hell, I don't even care if they are abusive.



All I require is that they are logical and make sense!

Hey guys, all I’m getting is a link to the Giphy stuff, not an embedded clip. Do I have a setting wrong? (iPad).

 

[KarenRei]

Agreed. But how often is that happening?

The Man Who was Struck By Lightning Seven Times

Yep. Statistics says that things like this will happen. Some percentage of service people will be less reliable than others at any given point in time, there may be some statistical biases that make a given individual more likely to end up missed (either their fault or not their fault), and then add bad luck on top of that. Times the number of cars, times the number of issues so far that require a service visit. And if someone is skipped seven times, do you think that they won't go on the internet and complain? Of course they will.

There's another issue which - and one feels like a bad person for even bringing it up, but.... that is people outright lying about service issues. Don't get me wrong, I do not believe this makes up anything but a small minority of cases. But it does happen. I know one well-known individual (no, I'm not going to name names) who made up a fake hardware defect in order to try to get out of paying for damage that was their own fault. This sort of thing does happen.

But to reiterate, it would be horrible to make said assumption about any particular random person who reports a defect - or even something like being skipped seven times - because such falsified cases will only ever be a small minority. But they can and do sometimes happen, because.... well, humans :Þ. And we shouldn't be gullible enough to automatically believe that everything we read is true. The more important things to keep in mind are:

A) Places like service threads, comments sections of videos or articles complaining about service, shared Twitter posts, etc are like complaints boxes - if you open them, *of course they're going to be full of complaints*.

B) The denominator for statistics on anything related to Tesla is very large.

There's not a huge number of polls not involving a statistically biased sample on what people think of Tesla's service, but the ones that I've seen, from memory, about half of people said that their experience with Tesla's service has been excellent, and only a rather small minority thought it was horrible. And you'll find that with any brand. Mobile service tends to score superb marks - if I remember right, something like 80% find it excellent.

None of this is to dismiss from how I, and many others, would like to see more resources put into service, or how Tesla's comms are subpar. Tesla can and should, have the best service in the industry, and I think far too large of a percentage of owners have had comms issues with Tesla - particularly during rush periods.

 

[jerry33]

I think it is the cascading leverage that really made it bad. Margin, then options, then withdrawing from your 401k where you get taxed again while paying it back. I don't know what amounts you are taking about but borrowing from your 401k is risky. If you lose your job you have to pay it all back right away. Certainly not good if your primary stock is in the dumps

You don't actually have to pay it back right away, you can elect to, or you can pay monthly.

 

[Prunesquallor]

Makes sense.

My question was supposed to be focused on why Thursday was completely flat though, looking at the answers I got it seems I didn´t get this across. Do you have an idea about that? With boths shorts and institutions tripping over each other to get in, you wouldn´t expect a flat day, would you? So I am thinking if market makers or anyone else with a lot of buying power might have had some interest in keeping price constant.

Thursday looked like the response of a high-gain, critically-damped position-hold feedback system. Looks like lots of algorithms (or a few with high levels of input) were employed.

 

[mongo]

You don't actually have to pay it back right away, you can elect to, or you can pay monthly.

In the case of job loss which @thait84 was refering too, the monthly payment from paycheck option no longer exists. Longest time period for repayment post 2017 law change would be Jan 1 of year n to April 15th of year n+1(Oct 15 of n+1 with extension and late tax payment penalty).

(There is one rare corner case based on age and job situation)

 

[CorneliusXX]

I’m glad I didn’t hear he had sold out or I would have been tempted to do the same. He was a long-term steady bull until he started freaking out about the service issues. I got the impression that the fact you couldn’t call service was killing him, but the rest of us are comfortable using the app.

He was a super good guy and I miss him.

Me too. The service and lossless audio topics aside, he had truly insightful commentary around the industry and the business. One particular area where I am thankful he highlighted was how exceptional Elon was at cost engineering, this was years ago before the 3 was released. This quarter's results show just how prescient he was.

 

[jerry33]

In the case of job loss which @thait84 was refering too, the monthly payment from paycheck option no longer exists. Longest time period for repayment post 2017 law change would be Jan 1 of year n to April 15th of year n+1(Oct 15 of n+1 with extension and late tax payment penalty).

(There is one rare corner case based on age and job situation)

Is that a recent change? I've borrowed from the 401K a few times (all paid back now), and it was specifically stated that
1. It could be paid back as a lump sum when you leave your employment.
2. You could pay it back monthly.
3. If you didn't pay it back it would be considered a withdrawal and you would have to pay the tax.

 

[Prunesquallor]

Thursday looked like the response of a high-gain, critically-damped position-hold feedback system. Looks like lots of algorithms (or a few with high levels of controllability) were employed.

Edit: and Friday looked like the system lost control authority.

 

[CorneliusXX]

Our local Reno TV station did a piece on the Gigafactory and the following statement stood out for me:

KOLO 8: Sept 2019
"We're in the final assembly of the drive unit area so we actually make all of the drive units for Model 3 and now we're making Model S and Model X units as well...it's what gives the Tesla its signature speed, acceleration, power, and torque." said Vice President of Operations, Chris Lister....The drive unit manufacturing line is 90 percent automated. "

I've been trying to explain over on SA - what this says about Tesla. Tesla would only switch the production of drive units for the Model S/X to Sparks, Nevada - another 250 miles from Fremont - if there was a compelling reason. It has to be significantly cheaper and it has to involve components already made for the Model 3. Otherwise you'd leave it alone. And, I'd wager that the process which in Nevada is 90% automated was a much lower percentage of automation in California.

Tesla found a way to make a component for the Model S/X cheaper..and followed up. This is why COGS are down.

My understanding was that Fremont needed to make additional room for seat and other part manufacturing, and that the drive unit production was moved to GF1 for this purpose.

 

[Krugerrand]

Tilson is not only a loser, but also a liar: his bet was "up to 10k." So on the online bet entry form, I waged $10k. On Wednesday he e-mailed me "Please send me a link so I can donate $1000 to your favorite charity." It seemed to me that he probably has a pool of $10k for all a bets, which has never been stated anywhere, anytime.

He also PSed his e-mail with this:

If it later turns out that Tesla cooked its books and was really losing money (which I don't think is likely), this all gets reversed!​

SMH

Think of it this way; at least your charity got money it wouldn’t have otherwise. And if you have any spiritual beliefs at all, cheating a charity is very bad Karma.

 

[mongo]

Is that a recent change? I've borrowed from the 401K a few times (all paid back now), and it was specifically stated that
1. It could be paid back as a lump sum when you leave your employment.
2. You could pay it back monthly.
3. If you didn't pay it back it would be considered a withdrawal and you would have to pay the tax.

Right, we are talking about the timeline of #1 repayment when leaving (or losing) you job.

#2 is only applicable while employed at the job where you got the loan. (In both versions of the law)

#3 and 10% penalty