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

[thait84]

Is there any chance this turn of events is a positive for tesla?

I doubt it in the short term. The market doesn't like uncertainty.

 

[LJS22]

Tesla cuts starting price for China-made Model 3 vehicles

Prices cut in China

 

[gerebgraus]

Since targeting a specific political or military person for murder (assassination) is considered a war crime under the Geneva Convention, Congress wouldn't have authorized such a thing.

Meanwhile, since this is an investment thread, the assassination news is pushing down stock index futures. There might be follow-through in the morning.

Concentrating on Tesla here and not on some other unpleasantries this should lead to increased oil prices and more sales for solar and battery storage.

 

[Artful Dodger]

Based on my own experience of “he said/she said” during the early days of the Model 3 ramp I won’t believe anyone until it shows on the financials.

I marked your comment funny because you seem to expect that the P&D report will somehow be inaccurate, or differ substantially from the 2019Q4 Earnings Report.

Perhaps you have some basis for Tesla's reporting changing substantially in the past? Or is this just your 'middle-of-the-road' driving style? I prefer to pick a lane. In the meantime, LOL.

 

[Jack6591]

War is never positive.

 

[ggr]

Mod: 44 posts with good discussion or vaguely funny jokes about IRAs moved to their own thread, so they will be easier to find if anyone looks. But then I locked the thread... it's all been said. Anyone ignoring three moderators' warnings in this thread will be swatted.
Roth v Traditional IRA
--ggr

 

[kengchang]

Tesla cuts starting price for China-made Model 3 vehicles

Prices cut in China

S and X appear cheaper in US also

S&X still 80K/85K in the US

 

[UnknownSoldier]

Hmmm.. it seems Iranians were not fond of him either
Twitter

Today's reminder that just because you like what it says doesn't mean it's true. We have no confirmation positive or negative that the average Iranian did or did not like Qasem Suleimani and I doubt anyone here knows any average Iranians so let's just take everything on Twitter with a grain of salt.

Also Twitter is hilariously awful at managing their platform's content, whether the image in the comments really is what the caption says it is, that's irrelevant. The fact that image is allowed to remain there is emblematic of Twitter's complete lack of management of their platform's content.

 

[LJS22]

S&X still 80K/85K in the US

My bad on S and X. Must have been looking at it with incentives

 

[Mkorpal]

Today's reminder that just because you like what it says doesn't mean it's true. We have no confirmation positive or negative that the average Iranian did or did not like Qasem Suleimani and I doubt anyone here knows any average Iranians so let's just take everything on Twitter with a grain of salt.

Also Twitter is hilariously awful at managing their platform's content, whether the image in the comments really is what the caption says it is, that's irrelevant. The fact that image is allowed to remain there is emblematic of Twitter's complete lack of management of their platform's content.

Even if the average Iranian disliked him, it's mostly irrelevant. They hold zero power.

 

[sundaymorning]

I marked your comment funny because you seem to expect that the P&D report will somehow be inaccurate, or differ substantially from the 2019Q4 Earnings Report.

Perhaps you have some basis for Tesla's reporting changing substantially in the past? Or is this just your 'middle-of-the-road' driving style? I prefer to pick a lane. In the meantime, LOL.

At this point, I am worried that we may miss Q4 guidance. China production has me thinking, that perhaps Tesla/Elon was overly confident of record deliveries there, and perhaps counted that in our guidance. I would not have been this worried, but I fear the stock price being at this point, has my 90% exposure quite vulnerable in the short term. I’ll have to ponder this over tonight, and may have a chance to purchase some insurance as protection.

I’ll be happy to be wrong, but my gut tells me differently.

 

[anthonyj]

At this point, I am worried that we may miss Q4 guidance. China production has me thinking, that perhaps Tesla/Elon was overly confident of record deliveries there, and perhaps counted that in our guidance. I would not have been this worried, but I fear the stock price being at this point, has my 90% exposure quite vulnerable in the short term. I’ll have to ponder this over tonight, and may have a chance to purchase some insurance as protection.

I’ll be happy to be wrong, but my gut tells me differently.

It's a marketing strategy. Oldest trick in the book, mark up then mark down. They were always intending on the 20% lower price. Free advertising

Also if they revealed that price last year, Chinese would have held off buying new Teslas in Q4 and wait for a few days in Q1.

 

[mongo]

At this point, I am worried that we may miss Q4 guidance. China production has me thinking, that perhaps Tesla/Elon was overly confident of record deliveries there, and perhaps counted that in our guidance. I would not have been this worried, but I fear the stock price being at this point, has my 90% exposure quite vulnerable in the short term. I’ll have to ponder this over tonight, and may have a chance to purchase some insurance as protection.

I’ll be happy to be wrong, but my gut tells me differently.

Sometimes a gut feeling is just indigestion.
And often, when a gut speaks, it is just hot air, and smells like a fart.

GF3 was never planned to be a critical portion of Q4. The factory was a mud pie one year ago. Elon is happy they are churning out cars for Q1.

Get some sleep.

 

[tinm]

Anyone know if Tesla gave Fremont workers some time off around the New Year? I ask because I'm wondering how much production got done this week, if any.

There are no car carrier ships in the SF Bay nor I don't believe even in western U.S. Pacific waters headed to San Francisco, right now. I'm doubtful any ship will make it to SFO by next week, though it might still happen. It's making me wonder if the reason is because there aren't any (or arent' enough) new cars from Fremont to ship out yet, pushing 2020's first outbound cargo shipment to mid-Jan.

 

[LJS22]

At this point, I am worried that we may miss Q4 guidance. China production has me thinking, that perhaps Tesla/Elon was overly confident of record deliveries there, and perhaps counted that in our guidance. I would not have been this worried, but I fear the stock price being at this point, has my 90% exposure quite vulnerable in the short term. I’ll have to ponder this over tonight, and may have a chance to purchase some insurance as protection.

I’ll be happy to be wrong, but my gut tells me differently.

Only thing that could mess up guidance is Q1. It was obvious they were winging transportation of deliveries around the world, the rest of the quarters were in line with his guidance. Hopefully they did enough to make up for it in Q4, but even if they don’t it’s not a big deal. It will make for some good stories for shorts, but the record setting days are still ahead of us and remaining profitable will be key.

 

[deffu]

Tesla China announced price cut of China mad rm3 right before delivery. It’s now priced below rmb 300k after subsidy

 

[UnknownSoldier]

Not sure if I should deleverage and sell my calls tomorrow. My shares are fine the way they are, but holding calls right now seems pretty dicey. Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think TSLA has ever popped on any P&D reports throughout it's history? It's only ever remained level, or dropped sharply?

 

[M3Rider]

Even if the average Iranian disliked him, it's mostly irrelevant. They hold zero power.

I think it's good to keep the perspective that the quarrel is not with average Iranians who protest and get oppressed by these same people - Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

1500 protesters killed in Nov this year:
2019 Iranian protests - Wikipedia

If the regime is weakened, these people might as well put the final nail in its coffin, so need to remember that not everyone in Iran is our enemies.

 

[FrankSG]

Disengagement is not necessary to train the system. It's always driving itself in shadow mode. When the driver's response diverges from what the Autopilot would have done (had it been in control) the system can flag it much like a disengagement.

9 out of 10 times when I disengage it's just because I think I will handle a particular situation better than the AP, or because I want to drive faster than the 5 mph over it allows on secondary highways, or I have some erratic traffic to deal with, not because AP has done something wrong.

The usefulness of disengagements for training the neural net is often over-stated. Yes, Tesla does use disengagement flags, but no, they are not necessary to continually improve and train the neural net.

I do agree with you that they can do a lot of training from shadow mode, clear examples of this were given during Autonomy Investor Day.

However, although I could be wrong, my interpretation is that shadow mode is not a substitute for actively testing how the system performs with actual control over the car.

If you watch this part of the presentation from 2:55:50 to 3:00:00 or so, they talk about the development process of FSD features, and shadow mode is only the second step in a five step process:

1. Observing what humans do, and using that as a base to build a new feature.
2. Shadow Mode testing of the feature, to increase its reliability and performance.
3. Controlled Deployment where the feature is tested by people in the early access program.
4. Wide Rollout with Restrictions. Like in the case of NoA with some constraints and driver having to OK lane changes.
5. Wide Rollout without Restrictions. Final step is full rollout with no constraints.

To me it seems like in terms of testing, shadow mode is a temporary phase used to correct for gross errors the system is making, and to get the reliability up to a point where it is safe enough to go into controlled deployment.

Another clue is from 2:59:45 - 2:59:55 where the software guy replies to Elon that he watches every single accident. So perhaps at this point there are still so many accidents that they still have their hands full fixing mistakes that lead to actual accidents, but I'd imagine that at some point (if not already) they will start looking at disengagements (even the ones you talk about) to look into why disengagements happen, and to make sure that the autopilot handles that situation as well as the human in the future. The eventual goal is no need for any disengagements whatsoever after all.

 

[MP3Mike]

Tesla cuts starting price for China-made Model 3 vehicles

Prices cut in China

It's not really a price cut if it is because of a subsidy. It still costs the same but now the government is directly paying for a portion of it.

(Yes I understand that they did lower the price some as well as mark it down for the amount of the subsidy.)