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

[Tim S]

Just placed a limit buy order at 400, to get back the shares I sold at 402 yesterday. I don't mind if it never fills

 

[humbaba]

GREEN !

(did I do it correct?)

I think we aren't supposed to look at, or talk about, the kermit action of green springing higher.

but I thought Christmas was supposed to be white? Well, maybe that's a bad thing to bring up. Fine, I'll take green

 

[humbaba]

stupid headlines:

Tesla Stock Could Hit Elon Musk’s Infamous $420 Prediction

Maybe I'm just a pedant (pedant pedant) but he never predicted $420. I guess this goes in the same bucket as "but Elon pwomised!"

edit: actually, after taking a look the article isn't that bad. It basically says "caution buyers, don't buy high" and makes the point that when everyone is greedy is the time to be careful. I think the $420 "prediction" was just clickbait and the article itself puts it in quotes. But while the article ignores reasons to be bullish even at this pricing level it isn't FUD, something that seems so different from a year ago. So I'll go ahead and link for those who might be curious Tesla Stock Could Hit Elon Musk's Infamous $420 Prediction

 

[LJS22]

RED !

I was hoping to be using better memes by now

 

[Causalien]

Had an ice breaker at work the other day, where we were supposed to say our hobbies...

I literally couldn't think of anything other than driving my Model 3, admiring my Model 3, reading Tesla forums, and watching TSLA while wishing I had more money to invest.

Tesla is all consuming!

Sometimes when I come back in here from real life, I get a hint of how weird this place is. Then I run the hell out the door back to real life.

But for the past week or so. I will keep going in hell and dine with yall.

 

[Singuy]

MM is such Debbie downers. At least AMD is keeping me entertained with it's freight train to infinity.

 

[humbaba]

View attachment 490619
I was hoping to be using better memes by now

well, volume has largely petered out (at least, compared to earlier) which means shorts and market makers have an easier time of it, and right now both would prefer $TSLA to be lower.

 

[PlaidCPA]

Everytime ELon tweets about new things that will come out the stocks goes down

 

[KarenRei]

One positive I expect to start coming into play in perhaps late Q1 or early Q2 will be if the ER shows strong energy growth. Thusfar, most analysts do not have an energy expert evaluate Tesla's energy potential, and thus it's sorely undervalued. With solid energy growth in Q4 (after solid growth in Q3), I'd expect Tesla Energy to increasingly fall under more diligent scrutiny - which would lead to its (huge) potential being valued more properly, rather than just being looked at as a sideshow to an automotive company.

 

[humbaba]

Everytime ELon tweets about new things that will come out the stocks goes down

Then use his Tesla features twitter posts as a sell signal. :shrug: whatever works for you

 

[SOULPEDL]

And, given what we know, I would be more likely to call it a great big fat devil than a "little" devil. I would sell in a heartbeat if the growth story wasn't intact (but it is). Those with uncertain, weak and trembling hands might want to read this post I made yesterday:

Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the 2019 Investors' Roundtable

Good story, thanks. Agree, future value is not met, but ya in 3 years it will be hard to hide Tesla growth and success.

Similar correction today as with 360 and 380, so it's right on time with 400. Next is 420 (before xmas based on these recent past runs).

 

[StealthP3D]

Who has gone missing from TSLAQ?

Last tweet from the prolific (and smartish) Polixenes (@Polixenes13) | Twitter was December 12:

View attachment 490432


Maybe he just went fishing?

Or who else notable from TSLAQ has gone missing?

For those short TSLA, I recommend going fishing in the Bering Sea about this time of year. Crabbing is the best. I understand it's good money.

Probably better to close your short position before you leave. If you didn't bet the house, I'm sure you can make your losses back in about 4 months. Just think of it as penance for your sins.

 

[humbaba]

In the comments at Ars this caught my eye:

RobDickinson wrote:
Gitlin is buy choking on the short burn I suspect.

No one at Ars owns stock in any company we cover, that's part of our basic ethics policy.

Any journalism outfit without such a policy would be highly suspect in my eyes.

Now, I'm sure their policy isn't about stock ownership but rather specifies the conflict of interest because if someone (Gitlin) is short $TSLA they do not own any stock so the policy statement could be true while Gitlin is feeling the burn

 

[Davidzhao365]

Long term options probably are still profitable, but premiums are a bit steep right now imo. Probably profitable, but more risk and less reward.

I bought a handful of Jun'21 $400s @ $16 some time in August.

Then I bought a handful of Jan'22 $400s @ $26-$17 for avg of $22 in September. I had one more order open for $16.5, which barely did not get filled (bunch of options traded for $16.7). Got too greedy on that one.

Then after Cybertruck dip and redoing the math on 2020 and 2021 financials, I decided to roll over my Jan'22 $400s into twice the number of Jan'22 $500s which were trading at about half the price. I thought that SP of $600 by Jan'22 was much more likely than before Q3 due to increased operating efficiency and due to Model Y being ahead of schedule. I also thought that especially the increased operating efficiency will provide significant further upside beyond $600. I also decided to add a few more of these Jan'22 $500s just for good measure, because they were trading @ $37 and I was regretting not buying more of the $400s 2 months earlier.

If all goes according to plan, I'll sell these options some time in 2021, and hopefully add 400-600 or so extra shares to my long position. If I sold all the options now, I'd be able to add 250 shares. And yes, I think in # of shares rather than monetary value, because all I'm trying to do is accumulate as many TSLA shares as I can, and then hold until 2030.

Great share! I am new to the stock and Tesla and I am wondering which is better?

Buy Jan 2020 $600 call or buy shares with margin ? 5% of my Tesla portfolio is in that call and I am thinking if I should increase that to 10%.

I am tempted because I see that call grows 80% gain and the stock (with margin) had 50% gain since Dec 1 2019. So it is more profitable in a short term.

But I am not sure if options can keep that gain advantage over stock through the year, assuming the stock price goes up in long term. What do you think? Current call price $40+. I bought at $20+ in the last batch.

 

[StealthP3D]

So, this just happened:

First Supercharger in Iceland opening!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That's great! One more and they will have the whole country covered!

In 2028 they will add a third in the highlands, solar-powered of course.

 

[Curt Renz]

Have at it day traders ..... silly exercise in trying to time this stock.

So much good news coming down the pike for Tesla .... so much that I don't even hear much about the model Y and frankly that should be the headline .... looking forward to 2020.

Cheers to the longs.

Today is a Triple Witching Day, a quarterly expiration of stock index futures, stock index options and individual stock options. These involve a lot more open interest than ordinary Friday expirations.

Based on yesterday's closing open interest, Opricot calculates TSLA's MaxPain to be $360. If the share price were to close at that level, then supposedly the greatest number of options owners would be shut out, and option writers (mainly hedge funds and market makers) would be able to keep the largest amount of their premiums. The true MaxPain can vary throughout a trading day.

My cursory survey of today's activity in TSLA options about to expire, indicates that $400 is far more likely the prime MaxPain target for manipulators. Of course any news or other factors could upset their plans.

 

[Nocturnal]

No, dig up stupid.

stupid headlines:

Tesla Stock Could Hit Elon Musk’s Infamous $420 Prediction

Maybe I'm just a pedant (pedant pedant) but he never predicted $420. I guess this goes in the same bucket as "but Elon pwomised!"
rediction

You are going to have to sue yourself for 190 million now.

 

[Dan Detweiler]

GREEN !

(did I do it correct?)

PLAID!

 

[ReflexFunds]

I was looking to see what the value at risk for short interest has been over time. Because Ihor's numbers are fantasy I took the last year's official short interest numbers and graphed them against share price. There's no real surprise in the comparison of the two with value at risk largely mirroring stock price in terms of direction. There is one exception: at the end of April the value at risk jumped up despite a steep decline in share price. So late April is when, broadly speaking, the shorts seriously piled on.

But what I was looking for -- was the value at risk constant -- clearly showed that it was not. It ranged from as low as $7.6B (end of January) to as high as $10.8B (mid November). That's a substantial swing in money betting against $TSLA and, at the end of November, it was at the higher end of that range: $9.5B. Of course we won't get mid December short interest for what, another week? But so far the indications (last datum, prior behavior) are that it will still be at the high end meaning minimal short covering.

Looking at the short interest got me to thinking about the "$TSLA is trailing returns of some index" line. But that is only tracking how your investment would perform if it was static and you weren't doing any trading. What if you had a buy and hold? To be fair, what if you always and only bought at arbitrary points? Using the short interest data points as the buy points I calculated what the return as a static value from the first to the last -- and that gave a 9.8% decline in value. But if you bought the same value of shares at mid and end of each month it had a return of 24.5%.

Obviously, anyone who followed the dictum of buy low, sell high would have accumulated more shares at the lows and the return would be even higher.

This second point is simply that stocks do not improve monotonically so any analysis that assumes that they do over an extended period of time (e.g., gains for the last 12 months or since start of year) is misleading, and not only for day trading. Anyone who is accumulating will have a variation from that overly simplistic metric.

Tesla shares shorted have decreased from 43.6m in May to ~26.5m or below today while the $ value of the short has increased from $8.1bn to ~$10.4bn. However excluding convert hedging I estimate real short seller’s exposure has been in the $6.7bn to $8.0bn range.

These estimates assume 100% of Tesla Converts are delta hedged. As share price rises delta increases and more shares must be shorted to hedge. While some converts will be held by investors who want both debt & equity exposure to Tesla, most converts are bought by debt funds who delta hedge equity exposure. I've spoken to convertible debt market makers who agreed they would expect the vast majority of the convertible bonds to be delta hedged. But hard to know for sure.

I think the $ size of short seller’s position has been relatively stable because their thesis is very dogmatic & and not much will change their beliefs. Yet collateral calls as SP rises together with security, sector & country risk limits means shorts are capital constrained at ~$8bn. These constraint don't prevent them continuing to burn cash to maintain the same exposure though.

These numbers are all for end of month short interest reported by Nasdaq. Estimates for today (20-Dec) assume the $ size of real short seller’s position remains unchanged from the end of Nov. In reality it has likely reduced as some shorts capitulate.

 

[StealthP3D]

well, volume has largely petered out (at least, compared to earlier) which means shorts and market makers have an easier time of it, and right now both would prefer $TSLA to be lower.

I kind of wish we could shed $6 more dollars so we wouldn't have to think about that gap just above $395.