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

[KarenRei]

In case anyone is curious as to why it's spiking: it's because I rolled my high leverage calls yesterday. :Þ

 

[Dan Detweiler]

(Except for the fact that it's about $100 lower than it should be right now).

Well yeah, then there's that. lol

Dan

 

[Fact Checking]

I hope not.

I should clarify: I mean the West German coal mining industry, which has been in a steady decline, and which was one of the social hotspots in German politics:

Förderung von Steinkohle im Ruhrgebiet bis 2017 | Statistik
​

East German coal mining is at steady output levels, but they are mostly surface extraction with a lot higher level of automation and industrialization and much lower levels of employment - which now hopefully will be reduced further, now that Germany has decided to phase out coal use over the next 20 years:

Kohleausstieg – Wikipedia​

I was mainly thinking about the social impact angle of the transition away from coal - which is usually dependent on levels of employment, not absolute output/revenue.

 

[jhm]

It was the U.S. chief of VW, so I believe it was limited to the U.S. market - where Tesla certainly has 50% of the EV market.

Also, the car industry likes to use unit sales as a measure of market share, while the real metric of success should be revenue driven and cash earned.

Unit sales is inferior:

• It allows the hiding of transaction prices (you can bridge shortfalls by incentivizing/discounting at the dealership level, without it showing up in unit sales data),
• it allows the inflation of market share by low value high volume models.

But the car industry has a lot of influence over messaging, so unit based market share is used dominantly.

Ok, makes sense, just US. My bias is to focus on global market.

Also agree about unit sales. Share of revenue I think is a much better metric. This especially important as EV disrupt from the top of the market and will tend to push down the average price of ICE vehicles. For example, in 2018, EVs had about 2% unit market share (globally). EVs will gain another 1% share of units, but this could be a gain of about 2% share of revenue. So the pace of economic disruption at play is much swifter than what unit sales would suggest.

 

[Fact Checking]

New So yesterday, Option Sniper said it's clear that the shorts are going to get it handed to them soon. (Posted in this thread yesterday, too lazy to look it up).

I'll just assume, for the time being, that this short squeeze prediction is going to be a failure as well, like the last 20 ones over the last ~12 months never materialized.

This is a much safer prediction: eventually I might turn out to be wrong with my assumption of no short squeeze, but it will be after a very nice track record of only 1 failure out of 20-30 predictions.

 

[Anstandswauwau]

Can anyone offer any insight on that? I know he's a technical trader so it likely is based purely on technicals...wondering if anyone here had thoughts about it. Guessing mostly because we're sitting near the bottom of the Boellinger Band (I think?)

Check out @currentgardens’s Tweet: Mila Current on Twitter

I think OS's assumption is largely based on this huge cup-handle pattern (see tweet).

 

[Intl Professor]

I hear Longhorns are deadly afraid of Terrapins.

They get sprained ankles if they step on them by accident.

 

[Fact Checking]

Check out @currentgardens’s Tweet: Mila Current on Twitter

I think OS's assumption is largely based on this huge cup-handle pattern (see tweet).

Note that there's big macro optimism on the NASDAQ Composite index after good earnings reports by consumer-demand dependent firms, so part of today's $TSLA move is probably that expression of lowering U.S. recession risks.

 

[Todd Burch]

I'll just assume, for the time being, that this short squeeze prediction is going to be a failure as well, like the last 20 ones over the last ~12 months never materialized.

This is a much safer prediction: eventually I might turn out to be wrong with my assumption of no short squeeze, but it will be after a very nice track record of only 1 failure out of 20-30 predictions.

Not sure that he was predicting a short squeeze per-se. Just a big runup.

 

[KarenRei]

For the record, we did have a short squeeze after the Q3 report. You can see from plots of short interest that shorts were bailing in droves as the stock price rose.

 

[jhm]

GREEN!

 

[shlokavica22]

I was mainly thinking about the social impact angle of the transition away from coal - which is usually dependent on levels of employment, not absolute output/revenue.

Well, here comes the difference. It's becoming blatantly obvious that for the BIG auto, transition is off the menu.
Disruption is on the plate and the question is who will survive. They are going to compete to death between themselves.

I'll just assume, for the time being, that this short squeeze prediction is going to be a failure as well, like the last 20 ones over the last ~12 months never materialized.

This is a much safer prediction: eventually I might turn out to be wrong with my assumption of no short squeeze, but it will be after a very nice track record of only 1 failure out of 20-30 predictions.

Oh, that will be more than enough. There are many of us loaded with options for such a scenario.

 

[Cosmacelf]

Who is supplying bollinger or rivian?

For Rivian, it might be LG Chem: LG Chem is likely supplier

 

[mongo]

Morgan Stanley downgrade $283

On its way to 0...
(we are taking Morgan Stanley's value right?)

BTW, I don't see how Tesla has a 50% share of the EV market. I think we're getting close to 20%.

Just musing here, but 20% of current volume could be 50% of future 'FSD lets wife and I share car, and/or I take an autonomous taxi' vehicle volume. Okay, likely won't be that extreme, but % vs unit could be misleading. If total vehicle sales go down due to decline of ICE and/or autonomy, Tesla market share goes up, and pain increases for ICE OEMs.

 

[Curt Renz]

About an hour ago on CNBC new panelist Mark Tepper advised viewers to sell Tesla shares, because Model S & X test drives are down 50% year over year. I have no idea where he got that information, but if true:

A temporary dip could have been expected when tax credits were halved. Three more months of free Supercharging is now given to those who choose not to test drive. A car can now be returned for a refund within three days with no questions asked if no test drive was taken. Since most of those cars are made to order, one cannot easily test drive a particular car and then choose to buy it. There are now so many of those cars out there that a great many prospects can now test drive a friend’s car.

By incentivizing not to test drive, fewer employees and test cars are needed at Tesla stores. The business decision to discourage test drives is a sound one. It’s added reason to buy the stock, not sell it.

Most likely the same place Gordon Johnson found out that Tesla was going to build cars in China and sell them in the US.

Curt, I know you are well aware of what's in the "Cramer Manipulation" video.

I've bought this up with Mark Tepper on Twitter, but have not yet received a response from him. Although a Tesla FUDster did respond, and Tepper gave him a "like". Others may want to join the conversation at @MarkTepperSWP

 

[Mobius484]

Looking rather bullish this morning.... analysts other than Adam Jonas are figuring out what the maxwell acquisition means and how V3 upgrade will further separate Tesla from everyone else

 

[defc0n]

So yesterday, Option Sniper said it's clear that the shorts are going to get it handed to them soon. (Posted in this thread yesterday, too lazy to look it up).

Can anyone offer any insight on that? I know he's a technical trader so it likely is based purely on technicals...wondering if anyone here had thoughts about it. Guessing mostly because we're sitting near the bottom of the Boellinger Band (I think?)

From a technical standpoint I have no idea why he would be saying that. TSLA appears pretty darn close to fairly valued in those terms at the moment. Pretty much at center of this range since early/mid 2017.

In my view, the market believes $250 as the low and $380 as the high. Middle thus being around $315. Of course, Model Y, Autopilot, S&P 500 or other catalysts could help move it out of this range.

 

[winfield100]

interesting about Florida and Tesla Energy (hopefully) unsure if this will affect PV + Powerwalls (VPP's) or those of us _buying_ PV and batteries

"The Florida Public Service Commission says Tesla's (TSLA +0.9%) residential solar equipment lease program isn't considered a sale of electricity or make the firm a public utility under state law.
The residential solar equipment lease will not subject Tesla or its customer lessees to commission regulation.

FPSC press release
"
--------------------------------------------snip--------------------------------------------------
PSC Issues Declaratory Statement to Tesla, LLC

TALLAHASSEE — The Florida Public Service Commission (PSC) today issued a declaratory statement that affirms Tesla, LLC (Tesla) can offer residential solar equipment leases in Florida. In its declaratory statement, the PSC found today that:

• Tesla’s residential solar equipment lease, through Tesla’s SolarLease, does not constitute a sale of electricity;
• Offering its solar equipment lease to Florida consumers will not cause Tesla to be a public utility under Florida law; and
• The residential solar equipment lease will not subject Tesla or its customer lessees to Commission regulation.

PSC rules have long allowed leasing of renewable energy equipment, as long as the lessor is not effectively selling electricity to the customer. Homeowners can purchase or lease equipment to generate electricity for personal use and also benefit from interconnection and net metering with their local utility.

In its decision today, Commissioners agreed for the third time in the past year that a solar equipment lease is not a retail sale of electricity. In 2018, the PSC issued similar declaratory statements for Sunrun, Inc., and Vivint Solar Developer, Inc. PSC approval is not required for a company to lease solar equipment to Florida residents.

“While today’s declaration is limited to the facts in Tesla’s petition, companies operating under the same facts can rely upon this declaration as well,” said PSC Chairman Art Graham.

For additional information, visit www.floridapsc.com.

----------------------------------snip-------------------------------------------------------------
edit: bolded the salient part for me (and other Floridians) my system has made over 1.6megaWatthours so far, in winter, of which i consumed ~1/3

 

[KarenRei]

Honestly, I don't think the SP is driven by things like MY or AP very much right now. I think it's driven by demand fears. What the market actually wants to see is:

• General US demand recovery for all of Tesla's vehicles after the December rush and the halving of the tax credit.
• S / X sales settling in at a value where, combined with their higher margins, Tesla is earning a similar amount of money to what they used to.
• European Model 3 sales showing good, sustained strength
• Chinese sales holding up despite the tariffs - or much moreso, the outright end of the tariffs.

I think they want to be comforted that demand will be fine up to the point where base Model 3s can be introduced with a reasonable margin. Once you get to that point, then they'll be more focused on things like MY and AP.

 

[AudubonB]

Yes that's Tesla in a nutshell. They make lots of obvious mistakes, yet they end up on top anyways.

After running my own company for a while I came to the conclusion that while we made our share of mistakes, the competition's was usually a lot worse.

This is the "Bear's-not-a-concern-since-I'm-faster-than-YOU" school of business. I love it! No, how to make it a pithier phrase....