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

[StealthP3D]

My friend picked up a 3 in Carlsbad delivery last night and there were only a couple other people there so it was a bit slow. I thought for sure it would be busy,

Uh-oh, quick, better sell, sounds like demand finally dried up and deliveries will miss expectations!

 

[jbcarioca]

The pedant in me would have gotten into trouble by adding
"Pretty awful lie indeed. There ARE NO emerald mines in emerald-free South Africa. Geology is all wrong. Closest mines are in Zambia, and they opened up only after Elon departed from Africa."

Pedantry is not equal to sophistry. The Sophists who made up that "...Pretty awful lie..." would have done well to have a Pedant around!

 

[pnungesser]

Back at the end of Q1 '19, there was a lot of enthusiasm about possible results, and many high figures were posted here. After a while the media picked up on some of them, and the analysts, and they raised the market expectation higher than Tesla could have met, even without the shipments to Europe and the Raven slowdown, so that made Q1 look even more terrible than it was.

Since then the joke became to always quote something around 83,000 deliveries.

The joke has grown old, I'm afraid.

It will only grow old after the P&D numbers in about a week. It's helpful that everyone on this forum has not been putting out overly optimistic numbers to create a large "miss". Thanks to you all (almost all) for your restraint.

 

[lklundin]

Even if one's early investments in TSLA are at a low price, let's say $23.8 in my case, continued addition as the value and growth of Tesla unfolds, reduces the current return rate to 5X instead of 18X. So depending on entry and additions, 70% may not be bad.

Right. I first bought TSLA at 140 ($), but had to sell it all (at 240) when we bought our holiday house in Italy. I was only able to start buying TSLA again in 2018 so I am up (just somewhat) less than 70%. As for the calculations of how expensive this summer house then has turned out to be, I tell myself that I could not know at the time - and that I can now post to TMC while looking out the window to see Corsica on the horizon (well not just now, but it will be there again tomorrow morning).

On that note, can the PowerWall be recharged from the grid?

Italy (and Spain) have this terrible (residential) electricity pricing where an increase in your allowed peak load on the grid makes the monthly base fee go up drastically. So you have to choose your base rate along with your allowed peak power (e.g. 6kW) and whenever you happen to exceed that, the power turns itself off and you have to go to your meter and push the relay lever back up to reinstate power. In such markets, the Powerwall will basically allow the owner to choose a peak load that only corresponds to their daily average load (since you average your load on the grid out on all 24 hours). So in addition to being sunny countries, the PowerWall could really make a difference here.

 

[printf42]

Very well said. Twitter is not a place for anybody with self-respect, especially that runs multi-billion dollar companies. Scum and shorts only bait him with crap and wait for 1 - ONE weird reply.

Once Elon makes another mistake, shorts will turn in against Tesla/Elon and us, the investors.

He should not fight Twitter scum as it will never succeed. Waste of time and big danger this is.

Elon is not fighting the dirty fight this time.

Just simple statement of facts, no name calling, no challenging of any specific person.

I don’t see any downside of doing that, Elon is handling it like a champion recently.

 

[kbM3]

The lesson for people is that professionals are;

a) people just like everyone else and therefore not perfect and make mistakes

b) not all equal; somebody graduated at the top of the class, somebody at the bottom, and everyone else are shades in between - additionally their graduation placing has no baring on their future abilities to be good at their chosen profession, it’s far more complicated than that. Some of the most brilliant (at their chosen profession) people I know never graduated from college/university, some never even finished high school

c) not necessarily impartial and can tend to project their personal beliefs and realities onto others

d) not necessarily honest, good, or on your side - sometimes they are for themselves at your expense

e) people just like everyone else and sometimes they don’t know better than you (and their poo stinks just as much as yours)

f) My guess is that financial advisors are generally not tech savvy and are thus better trained/inclined to give advice where they can analyze steady state companies’ balance sheets. Not hi-tech, hi-growth companies which will be the dominant force more and more.

g) They don’t know 1/10th as much about Tesla as we do.

 

[SW2Fiddler]

Automobile dealerships are very large contributors to state politicians (at least in Texas). They hate Tesla's direct sales model for obvious reasons.

This happened in my backyard. Mayor being an ex-cop makes it perfect. East Providence mayor under investigation for SUV lease

That’s a mayor leasing and not paying.

Hold our beer: In Texas, the dealerships wrote the auto franchise laws. Wrote. The. Laws.

 

[Bet TSLA]

This does presume that we do not get a stock split.

Stock splits change nothing about anything. Talking about stock splits as though they mean something makes you sound like a complete noob.

And disagreeing just confirms that. Get a clue.

 

[Cherry Wine]

Stock splits change nothing about anything. Talking about stock splits as though they mean something makes you sound like a complete noob.

I disagree. Look at AAPL options pricing and then look at AMZN options pricing. Similar IV and market cap, and yet AMZN options are significantly more expensive. Why? The intrinsic value of 100 shares of the underlying is much higher for the latter. So in this case splits do matter.

 

[dc_h]

Musk setting the record straight on the emerald mine FUD isn't why he should stop tweeting, even if it has an effect on the SP. Honestly, I'm actually glad he's debunked that one.

Musk making enemies of urbanists by crapping all over mass transit and the science of induced demand is why he should stop tweeting, as this directly goes against the mission of sustainable transport, even if it doesn't have an effect on the SP.

There are areas where induced demand has less effect, true - remote rural areas. But induced demand even happens in closer-in rural areas - especially as road infrastructure is built out towards them, they build up as exurbs of a major city, and then they get the city's traffic problems. The faster transport is, the more an urban area can sprawl, further reducing sustainability through increasing transportation energy requirements (and making it harder to get around the area for those who can't afford the fast transportation technology).

Basically, while he debunked FUD about his background, there's been a lot of FUD going around that Tesla is part of the problem because they're still making cars. While replacing ICE cars with EVs for those that are unable to eliminate car usage does improve sustainability, we do need sustainable non-car transport, and Musk's stance isn't helping. (It's still FUD even if it's true, though, because... let's face it, while Volkswagen and Toyota do make buses for some markets including their home markets, do you see either of them truly promoting mass transit? Basically, Tesla beating the ICE incumbents leaves us better off than not beating them.)

Living in Chicago I’m aware of the limitations of our public transit. Our old diesel electric trains are very dirty and my walk through the station is like sky diving into a smokestack. The train stations can’t handle more volume, since the stations are full. You can only get so many trains in and out of the stations at a time. The subway and elevated can be improved a bit, but we would need a new layer down in tunneling to add significant capacity. what we don’t have is ride frequency in the suburbs and we have gaps in urban areas where disadvantaged people live and need more frequent and more distributed solutions. Gentrification has pushed the poor into more transportation islands. Developing lower cost tunneling systems with frequent robotic cars adds a new layer to existing solutions.
I like Michael Mann’s environmental idea that we don’t need people to make better choices, we need to give people better options.

 

[sparcs]

The pedant in me would have gotten into trouble by adding
"Pretty awful lie indeed. There ARE NO emerald mines in emerald-free South Africa. Geology is all wrong. Closest mines are in Zambia, and they opened up only after Elon departed from Africa."

A teenage Elon Musk once casually sold his father's emeralds to Tiffany & Co. while his dad was sleeping

Elon Musk's family owns an emerald mine in Zambia — here's the fascinating story of how they came to own it

so are these all just fake articles? really bizarre if so.

Mod: yes, they are made up. --ggr.

 

[Krugerrand]

My friend picked up a 3 in Carlsbad delivery last night and there were only a couple other people there so it was a bit slow. I thought for sure it would be busy,

Did you just post there’s a demand issue?

 

[Unpilot]

He should not fight Twitter scum as it will never succeed. Waste of time and big danger this is.

Yoda is that you?

 

[dc_h]

How do you know that they have been or track to 10,000 packs to Shanghai?

I don’t know, but I believe it was a Carson night report about sending 1000 packs a week from sparks. That was October when it was said several thousand had already been sent.

 

[Bet TSLA]

A teenage Elon Musk once casually sold his father's emeralds to Tiffany & Co. while his dad was sleeping

Elon Musk's family owns an emerald mine in Zambia — here's the fascinating story of how they came to own it

so are these all just fake articles? really bizarre if so.

Pretty much everything from Business Insider related to Tesla is complete garbage. If there are any facts they are taken out of context and twisted.

 

[Bobfitz1]

Since I expect the share price of Tesla and some other to rise faster than expected, I might be able to retire in six rather than ten years. But I don‘t want to necessarily sell my shares. Is there a strategy to live off shares but not to sell them? Some points for me to google about? Thx!

I won't claim this simple "strategy" is a good one or not. Hopefully it's not flat out dumb vs more sophisticated ones for my use case.
I'm retired already and will starting drawing SS this coming year. I'd like to supplement my retirement income with some of what I hope will be the steadily increasing value of my Tesla shares.
At some point in the next few years, if Tesla hits $1K /share, I might sell enough shares each year to boost my monthly income by 2 - 3K. I think it is likely that Tesla SP will continue to double every 3 - 5 years for quite some time. If that is how it goes, it will take selling fewer and fewer shares each year to yield that same income boost. I'll own fewer shares each year but the draw down will be slow and stretched out. If the SP grows each year as robustly as we hope, it should be possible down the line to sell enough each year to boost monthly income by 4 - 5 K. Since my expenses are covered by other, diversified retirement income, the extra income can fund trips, solar roof, future Tesla models, etc.

 

[Chickenlittle]

Even if one's early investments in TSLA are at a low price, let's say $23.8 in my case, continued addition as the value and growth of Tesla unfolds, reduces the current return rate to 5X instead of 18X. So depending on entry and additions, 70% may not be bad.

Huh let’s keep same units and not compare 70% to 5X. How about 70% percent to 500% every year? Although if we annualized the 70% over 10 years it’s closer to 5% per year

 

[Krugerrand]

OK, it's time to nail our colours to the mast and with all the NL craziness, I'm upping my 19Q4 delivery estimate to 84138

Aye, caramba! It’s people like you with these ridiculously, uber, non-sensical, impossible targets that cause Wall Street misses and me to have postpone my island purchase another quarter. I might have to make you the first one I put on ignore.

 

[Krugerrand]

Says the cat alone on a island.

Yeah, except thanks to you I can expect a large influx of immigrants. I’m going to have to build a wall.

 

[Krugerrand]

The joke has grown old, I'm afraid.

You won’t think it’s old if it keeps WS expectations in check and then Tesla beats it to a pulp.

We’ve already got a few people floating around some pretty bloated numbers. I’m not interested in a repeat performance and reading post after post about unfair and criminal so and so is.

Garbage in, garbage out. Let’s feed garbage in that’s to our advantage.