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

[jerry33]

Pretty sure there are billionaires registered here (net worth > $1 billion).

I can assure you that I am not one of them.

 

[jerry33]

If that was the whole point why did Elon make a truck which he said he doesn't know if people will like it or buy it?

This is one of those items that will almost assuredly make a profit because there will be enough folks that want something unique. However, if it actually goes over it will be better than printing money and likely take GF5 through GF7 to make the backlog not too large.

 

[jerry33]

It would be cool if your theory war correct. Would explain some of Elon's excitement for this vehicle.

Airless tires have been in R&D for a while.

The issue with airless tires are rolling resistance (I believe the best of them are 6% higher than non-LRR pneumatic tires). And heat. That extra rolling resistance turns into heat plus there is heat from the friction brakes. A couple of decades ago there was a big push for plastic wheels because they can be made truer and faster than metal wheels at less cost. They were almost at the mass production stage when someone figured out that brake heat would melt them (only in extreme cases).

 

[ggr]

Lol, I noticed that too, but I thought it would be more fun if one of you caught Ford slapping a porthole on a Cargo Dragon while trying to stump TMC. Well done!
(the hint was the static display model)

Cheers!​

That second photo isn't a static display model, it is a real returned Dragon V1. I took that photo at the Seattle announcement of what is now called Starlink.

 

[HG Wells]

Pretty sure there are billionaires registered here (net worth > $1 billion).

Depends on which currency.
In some countries most of us would be BILLIONAIRES.

 

[scaesare]

The dealers that are going to LOVE this car are the Norwegian Ford dealers.

But what about the Norwegian Fjord dealers??

 

[Singuy]

Newb here. Would someone explain this ?

I'm having trouble understanding puts and calls options lingo. Are they from the perspective of the person holding the stock, or does a person e.g. either buy or sell a CALL (or PUT) ?

So the best explanation I found online are these videos. Reading about it always seemed very confusing to me.

 

[JRP3]

Interesting bit of TSLAQ history, initially they supported the efforts of Chou Zhou, GF3 stalker, when he was taking pictures of mud They turned on him when the actual building became obvious.
How TSLAQ Got Played In China | CleanTechnica

 

[scaesare]

Q: Why did this thing sell well, at ridiculous prices with terrible stats?

A: Because anything you can market as being a veritable military vehicle excites the heck out of a certain segment of the market.

If Tesla's truck A) looks like an armoured personnel carrier, and B) Tesla shows that you can abuse like an armoured personnel carrier, then it should strongly appeal to that market segment.

Gotta have (B), though. If it comes across as a poser vehicle that only looks tough but can't take abuse, it ruins the image.

Your last point is valid, but an interesting balancing act.

The "H2 Hummer" was basically a Tahoe chassis with a boxy body thrown on it. It was nothing like a real "Humvee" military truck. If anything the body they put on it compromised the vehicle performance (especially off road) without adding any real value. It's literally the definition of a poser vehicle.

Yet it came across to one portion of the segment as macho (I think many of the guys who wore Ed Hardy shirts). But a large segment of the "real" truck/off-road folks saw it as a joke.

So if the styling can be functional and not seen as just window-dressing, they could have a winner in both segments as long as the radical quotient isn't too high.

 

[scaesare]

Just realized. The generation that grew up watching blade runner, and thinking it was really cool (my generation) are now 50. Thus they have decent jobs, kids have left home, they have money...they are having a mid life crisis... they desperately want to regain the manly youth.
Maybe someone should sell them a truck that cleverly reminds them of their youth?

(also the APC in aliens...)
View attachment 477350

Incidentally that thing was a jetliner tow rig like you see at airports.

 

[SunCatcher]

Weekend OT:

If VW finds it too hard to get their EV lineup going, maybe they could start off smaller. Like perhaps an electric version of these? I mean, they already have the tool & die castings for these somewhere in their warehouse, right?

The Volkspod VW Beetle Minibikes Are Part Creepy, Part Adorable

 

[Prunesquallor]

Weekend OT:

If VW finds it too hard to get their EV lineup going, maybe they could start off smaller. Like perhaps an electric version of these? I mean, they already have the tool & die castings for these somewhere in their warehouse, right?

The Volkspod VW Beetle Minibikes Are Part Creepy, Part Adorable

View attachment 477566

Minionbikes!

 

[goinfraftw]

Is this a joke? No, this is the result:

View attachment 477540

This is following along with Google Trends for the Netherlands:

Though, there's a different look for Worldwide and the US this quarter which suggests that China and Europe seem to be a focus area (any thoughts would be appreciated here):

Germany has crazy growth this month via Google Trends.

 

[Webeevdrivers]

Thought this might be interesting for the Tesla crowd. I am a polyglot but have some difficulty reading German news articles such as those found in “Der Spiegel” etc. News articles in any language tend to have more complex vocabulary than the spoken word. I am working to improve my vocabulary but in the meantime I go to this German Goverment website designed for those with reading or learning disabilities. It allows me to stay current on European and global matters in a format that I can currently handle.

Anyway, they did a story on the upcoming Tesla factory. I thought it might be interesting for some.

I’m not a Tesla owner but am a huge fan and Ambassador. My wife is fairly certain I want to have Elon’s babies even though, you know, I’m a dude. .

Anyway, here is the link.

- Fabrik für Elektro-Autos

 

[avoigt]

In addition you have to understand that at least in Germany there are dealer registrations („Tageszulassungen“) as well as fleets services with fixed and agreed upon amount of cars they need to buy from the OEMs. That‘s more often than not a mix of cars. Say they want 100 A4 they need to buy 10 A6 an 5 A8, too. In return they get quite a discount but they must register them ASAP (even just for one day hence Tageszulassung) so they show up in the sales stats. I bought my wifes car through one those fleet services with 26% discount.

So I wouldn‘t count those registrations stats in these cases to be a customer who bought the car. Dealer registrations makes up a lot of those. I‘m not aware that Tesla does this besides the usual demo and loaner cars.

Tesla does not do any discounts in Germany at all and they do not do this kind of one day registrations with associates reduced prices which is why to compare registrations # is indeed an apple to oranges comparison.

The large fleet of vehicles standing at dealerships are compared today to what Tesla delivers directly to customers.

 

[Tslynk67]

Well, it has to be done.

IT in this film wasn't even futuristic in 1983!! Hope the CYBRTRK fares better...

And there it is!!!

 

[Tslynk67]

I've had my daily cup and was within less than a minute of deleting your post as a missing-linker. Nice edit. Very helpful as well as Karen's response.

Could be added to the Moderators' Choice: Posts of Particular Merit thread I think, it's a great summary.

 

[ggr]

It's been copied to page 3 of the Moderators' posts of particular merit.

Also, if you click on the article number at the top right, you get a window with a permalink to the article.

 

[Cherry Wine]

Let's start at the beginning: leverage.

Leverage is how much the value of your assets moves in relation to the value of an underlying asset (for example, TSLA stock). If you want to profit more, you increase your leverage, but this comes with the downside that if the stock moves down, you lose correspondingly more. Increasing leverage also comes with costs that accrue over time. Note that you can also decrease leverage which has the reverse effect.

The most straightforward way to increase leverage is to buy stock on margin. Buy twice as much stock as you put in money for it, you double your leverage. The time-costs on margin are in the form of paying interest on your borrowed shares.

Options trading is a more nuanced form of managing leverage. Owning a call option gives you the right (but not obligation) to buy 100 shares of stock from the person who sold the option, at a given price (the "strike price"), at or before a given date (the "expiration date"). Owning a put option is just the opposite - it gives you the right (but not obligation) to sell 100 shares stock to the person, at a given price (the strike price), at or before a given date.

Let's say that TSLA is at $350 and you buy a June $420 call for $2000 (note: options prices are listed per-share, not per-100 shares, so the sale price would list as "$20"). Now let's say that it's June or earlier and Tesla's stock is at $500, and you exercise the call. You can buy 100 shares of stock for $420, which you can immediately sell for $500, earning you $80 per share, or $8000. Minus the $2000 you paid for the option, you've earned $6000 on your investment - e.g. tripling your money on a $150 / 43% rise.

On the other hand, if you never get the chance to exercise the option with TSLA above $420, then you earn absolutely nothing on it, and it's $2000 down the hole.

Puts are just the opposite. Shorts buy puts with low strike prices. If they exercise below the strike price, they can force someone else to buy stock at the strike price which they're buying at the current, lower price - and thus they profit. But if they never exercise above the strike price, then the puts expire worthless.

You can as an investor also take the other side of the bet - selling calls and puts. A bull who sells, say, a $250 PUT, thinks that the stock is going to be above $250 at expiration (and not get dramatically below $250 in the interim). A bear who sells a $420 call is making the opposite bet - that the stock won't be above $420 at expiry.

Buying calls at puts has a maximum liability as the premium you pay to purchase them. Selling puts has the maximum liability of the strike price times $100, which an be a lot (for example, sell a $250 put, the company goes bankrupt, they exercise and force you to buy 100 shares of stock at $250 which they can buy for $0, you're out $25k). Max liability on sold calls is even worse - it's effectively unlimited, since the stock can just keep going up.

Generally sellers of puts and calls cover them, to limit their max risk. A sold put can be covered by having 100 shares of stock short, or by buying a put at a lower strike (buying one put and selling one at a different strike for the same date is known as a sold "put spread"). A sold call can be covered by having 100 shares of stock, or by buying a call at a higher strike (a sold call spread).

A common strategy is the opposite - buying call (or put) spreads. This means that you think the stock will go up (or down), but not by an unlimited amount. By selling off the less likely possibilities, you can buy spreads cheaper than you can buying pure calls or puts. A nice thing about this is that assuming the less likely possibilities don't pan out, you get to watch your obligations on the upper end decline to nothing - and indeed, if you want, repeatedly resell at lower strike prices On the other hand, if you're wrong, and the price does zoom up past the upper end of your spreads - hey, you've made so much money on the lower ends, it probably won't bother you much. It just means that you could have made more by choosing a higher strike or not using a spread.

Terminology:
* Out of the money (OTM): The option hasn't hit its strike price yet, and still isn't that close.
* Near the money (NTM): The option is right around its strike price.
* In the money (ITM): The option has already exceeded its strike price.

Most people don't exercise options themselves. The risk/benefit reward changes over time, and so over time it's generally a different type of buyer who'd rather own a given option, with only the most short-term traders and MMs being the ones to actually execute them (word of warning: one can execute an option well before the expiry if they want. This generally only happens for options that are way in the money). Options have a mix of intrinsic value - e.g. "I could exercise this right now and earn $X" - and time value - e.g. "the market would like to buy this option to bet on the stock price moving between now and the expiry date". Time value declines over time (this is known as theta, and the process known as theta decay), increasingly fast as you near expiry; like interest on margin-purchased stock, this is the penalty you pay for increasing your leverage with options. It you sell options, theta works in the opposite direction, as the time value of the options you sold steadily declines to zero.

The other important greek letter apart from theta (although there's a bunch of them) is delta. Delta is very simple: this is how much the value of your option will increase or decrease as the stock price rises or falls. It ranges from 0 to 1. A delta of 1 means that the value of the option goes up by $1 per share (e.g. $100 per options contract, since each contract is for 100 shares) for every dollar the stock price rises. A delta of 0,5 means that it goes up by $0,50 per share ($50 per contract) for every dollar the stock price rises, and so on. Delta is near zero for far-OTM options and near one for far- ITM options.

There's also an important parameter in the background called IV (Implied Volatility). High IV (like we have now) means that options traders expect big movements in the stock price (up or down) before the expiry period. This pushes the value of options up, often significantly. Low IV does just the opposite - it means that traders expect relatively flat stock movement, so options aren't as valuable. IV tends to rise before major news events and drop after them. Right now IV is rather high because a lot of people think Tesla could be ready to spike big over the next year (showing sustained profitability, producing from GF3, S&P inclusion, etc, plus the imminent pickup launch). This means you pay a premium for buying options, and earn a premium for selling them. IV changes can do weird things - for exampple, after Tesla Q3 deliveries missed Musk's 100k figure, the stock plunged... and while short term option values fell as well, long-term option values actually increased, due to IV rising as options traders saw even the lower 97k figure as being proof that Tesla was on the road to recovery.

Some people love options trading, and some people are terrified of it. It's a great way to balance your risk/reward ratio and fine-tune things (including for reducing leverage - for example, by buying 1 put for every 100 shares of stock you have, you can guarantee that your investment never drops below a given level... e.g. a "protective put" hedge). But you need to understand that if you significantly increase your leverage, your total assets can swing wildly. Like, by orders of magnitude. If in buying stock, you're wrong about timing... well, you just sit it out, and so long as the company eventually recovers, you're fine. With options, being wrong about timing can be crushing. And note that you can be right about a given hypothesis (for example, "Tesla will turn a profit next quarter") and still be wrong about the stock price due to macro effects, changes in outlook, unexpected departures, catastrophic events, a major investor bailing, etc. Keep this in mind if you mess with options, and be willing to accept the consequences. Increasing leverage can both make and lose fortunes.

This should probably be a post of merit.

Edit: never mind! Well with that said, anyone interested in options could certainly use the above as a starting off point. Very well...put, Karen!

 

[elasalle]

Are Ford Mustang Mach E production targets for 2020/21 available?