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

[Skryll]

cnbc is about as irrelevant as coal and kiernan is leading the way in the driver seat, shifting into 5th

i believe he’s an MIT guy too,
just goes to show not everyone can be ‘enlightened’ regardless the pedigree

MIT is full of good research Solution for remotely monitoring oil wells wins MIT $100K

On a more serious note: The fossil fuel industry's invisible colonization of academia | Benjamin Franta and Geoffrey Supran

 

[TheTalkingMule]

MIT is full of good research Solution for remotely monitoring oil wells wins MIT $100K

On a more serious note: The fossil fuel industry's invisible colonization of academia | Benjamin Franta and Geoffrey Supran

I assume everyone knows this here, but yo be sure....MIT has basically become a climate denial PR firm after David Koch cut them a $110M check.

 

[LJS22]

MIT is full of good research Solution for remotely monitoring oil wells wins MIT $100K

On a more serious note: The fossil fuel industry's invisible colonization of academia | Benjamin Franta and Geoffrey Supran

Lol that’s a million dollar app not a $100k. MIT is getting ripped off.

but with some people taking profits on the stock recently I wonder how many have just thought “eh I’ll get a new 380 mile Model S with the money” this is like a beautiful circle where TSLA has funded more Tesla!
Seriously though I was looking at Model S and it’s back ordered for 7-10 weeks. Everything use to be 1-2 weeks

 

[Ocelot]

cnbc is about as irrelevant as coal and kiernan is leading the way in the driver seat, shifting into 5th

i believe he’s an MIT guy too,
just goes to show not everyone can be ‘enlightened’ regardless the pedigree

Yes...’Never confuse education with wisdom’

Good idea. I reflected and here is what I concluded:

1) Andrea James presented facts. Experience driving Tesla cars is not required to present many Tesla facts that are valuable, nor to make the presenter worth listening to. For example, I have never driven a Tesla car but I know that Tesla cars have won dozens of industry awards, from MotorTrend's "ultimate" Car of the Year to AUTO BILD's Golden Steering Wheel, and that Tesla has the highest car-owner satisfaction rating in Consumer Reports history.

2) "Oppositional stances" against Tesla often present misinformation or ignorance. I tend to ignore people who repeatedly present such statements because they offer no value, not because they are oppositional.

3) I have time to read TMC only sporadically, but I am unaware of anyone being banned for disagreeing. I have seen some people disappear after their misinformation was promptly and thoroughly debunked and they apparently gave up, but not because they "have been removed."

4) I therefore reject as false equivalence your implication that TMC and TSLAQ are similar "echo chambers."

1. Those so called “facts” are an accumulation of subjectivity. Just saying. You can also point out the other side of that coin...Bob Lutz , columnist for car and driver , ex Top tier positions of all the previous big three says Tesla’s suck , and the company is non profitable losing money on every car made...etc.
My point is kinda irrelevant, as is yours. Yes you can gleam circumstantial, tangential evidence leading to support form any multitude of varying viewpoints. But how many people invested after trying the product for the first time? Direct experience gives you direct evidence. Investing in a product based company while not using the product or experiencing it, seems obvious you would have less information available to you, than someone else who has access to all the information you have PLUS. To be frank, if someone is telling me to for sure invest in TSLA, rhymes off every award it’s won, and projections, but when I ask them what’s the car like to Drive?..and they respond...”never been in one” , in my eyes they have lost credibility. It’s like recommending movies based on oscars , but you have never actually seen it. Weird.

2. Ok.

3. Maybe go look for the model x guy, who said it was going to be delayed. Ran out of this town, harshly. He was proven to be correct. Not saying he was banned..but there are many who have both supported and at points questioned Tesla who have disappeared, but alas there is no transparency on these issues on this board either way, for better or worse.

4. I disagree with this conclusion. Maybe scroll back the last 500 pages and calculate the pro vs negative tesla posts. Of course there will be bias, as it’s a Tesla message board, but to deny this bias, is a disservice to investors, and potentially leaves people vulnerable (eg. GTAT, contrarian investment board).

Long, since 2012.

Peace.

 

[KarenRei]

Man I don’t know how to deal with my TESLA shares now. I wishED I had sold it at $434 then it dropped to $411. I wished I had sold it at $496 and then it dropped to $473. I wished I had sold it at $546 and then it dropped to $538

I sold some MSFT shares today and got $10000. I don’t knn no ow whether it is a good point to buy more TSLA shares, although I believe $600 is not a problem. Or maybe $4000 in 5 years?

For everyone who's too worried about drops and thinking about selling (or not buying) because of their potential, even though they think the stock has a lot more upside than downside... just hedge, so you can stop worrying and get back to investing. Worried about a drop below, say, $500 in the short term, or $400 by the summer, or whatnot? A put hedge for these costs the value of several percent of the shares they cover. Don't want to give up a couple percent of your shares to pay for it? Fund it by selling a call, capping the upside in order to protect your downside. If you're wrong about needing the put hedge, you've given a fellow put-selling bull money. If you're wrong about selling a call to fund your hedge and the stock exceeds that value, a fellow call-buying bull has made the excess money.

I don't see the need for people to fret about downward movements here. If you're worried about them and it's keeping you out of a stock that you want to be in, hedge. That's what hedging is for. Very common tool among professional investors (including PIF and their 5% stake in Tesla)

Lol that’s a million dollar app not a $100k. MIT is getting ripped off.

but with some people taking profits on the stock recently I wonder how many have just thought “eh I’ll get a new 380 mile Model S with the money” this is like a beautiful circle where TSLA has funded more Tesla!
Seriously though I was looking at Model S and it’s back ordered for 7-10 weeks. Everything use to be 1-2 weeks

Europe sold out of S/X in early December of last year. All remaining S/X orders got pushed off to Q1, just like the 3s did.

I'm quite pleased by how much S/X demand has been steadily rising.

 

[StealthP3D]

4. I disagree with this conclusion. Maybe scroll back the last 500 pages and calculate the pro vs negative tesla posts. Of course there will be bias, as it’s a Tesla message board, but to deny this bias, is a disservice to investors, and potentially leaves people vulnerable (eg. GTAT, contrarian investment board).

You equate positiveness with bias. That is a false equivalence.

Saying Teslas have a longer range than other EV's does not demonstrate bias, it's a fact. Same with a lot of Tesla traits that are positive that are discussed here. Yet you claim that positive Tesla posts are evidence of bias. It's not biased if the facts support it.

What are we supposed to say? That Nissan or Toyota are just as likely to lead the EV revolution as Tesla? Now that would be bias!

 

[NicoV]

Hardball: for those tired of losing

P.S. Watch thru the video for the cat-fight between the 2 'Squelch Box' hosts (starts with the 'carbon' trigger word at about 8:45): "DON'T INTERRUPT ME!" -- that's not a Talking head, that's a Cement-head. And that's somebody who's panicking as they slowly come to realize they picked the losing side. I friggin' luv'd it!

Wow. This is a MUST WATCH fragment.

I’ve always believed that capitalism would be part of the problem until the moment it was part of the solution. This day, with Larry Fink publicly stating that he (or his financial firepower) wants to be part of the solution (because it makes financially sense to be part of the solution, not because of some dogmatic world view), may well be the tipping point that changes our future from a doomsday Mad Max/Waterworld situation to something where we actually have a decent environment that may be as good as the one my grand-grandparents lived in.

Collectively, we always seem think that were we want to be in the future is not possible because the necessary infrastructure is not there, forgetting that on the way to that future, that infrastructure will be built out because it makes financial sense to invest in that future. As an example, when the Flemish government announced their ‘man-on-the-moon’ kind of project to switch the unidirectional cable network to a bidirectional internet enabled cable network allowing such things like video-on-demand, we all laughed at that, making back-of-the-envelope calculations showing a ridiculous amount of transatlantic bandwidth that would be needed. We all know how that ended (Netflix/youtube anyone?).
It only takes a sufficiently large party (in this case BlackRock) saying ‘Let’s do this!’ to also change the narrative and mindset of the other big investors. Untill yesterday, they probably discussed environmental issues at coctail parties, concluding with that one lone soul investing in sustainable projects with ‘Yeah, but you’re an idealist, we just want to make money’. From today on, the discussion will be about how investing in sustainable projects will make them money just like Larry Fink.
Remember, in a group of lemmings there’s always the one in front that determines the direction.

 

[Tslynk67]

Thomas Thornton
@TommyThornton
I just doubled my $TSLA short.

9:47 AM · Jan 14, 2020·TweetDeck

You can dress a troll in a suit, but it's still a troll.

 

[TradingInvest]

For everyone who's too worried about drops and thinking about selling (or not buying) because of their potential, even though they think the stock has a lot more upside than downside... just hedge, so you can stop worrying and get back to investing. Worried about a drop below, say, $500 in the short term, or $400 by the summer, or whatnot? A put hedge for these costs the value of several percent of the shares they cover. Don't want to give up a couple percent of your shares to pay for it? Fund it by selling a call, capping the upside in order to protect your downside. If you're wrong about needing the put hedge, you've given a fellow put-selling bull money. If you're wrong about selling a call to fund your hedge and the stock exceeds that value, a fellow call-buying bull has made the excess money.

I don't see the need for people to fret about downward movements here. If you're worried about them and it's keeping you out of a stock that you want to be in, hedge. That's what hedging is for. Very common tool among professional investors (including PIF and their 5% stake in Tesla)

Europe sold out of S/X in early December of last year. All remaining S/X orders got pushed off to Q1, just like the 3s did.

I'm quite pleased by how much S/X demand has been steadily rising.

This is my approach: I don't want my shares to be called away. So I don't sell covered calls. My hedge is to accumulate cash as much as I can, if there is a big drop, I transfer money to my account and buy more. If the drop is really scary, I buy calls.

 

[avoigt]

MIC reportedly can have a GM of 40% or even above. This is no surprise for many here I believe who are educated about the ability from Tesla to lower costs and drive margin up in china.

For the market this will over time turn out to be a huge surprise. Also with every month passing by the level of SW related SaaS as pointed out by Ark invest several times does increase with margin in the SW business that are extremely high.

This year, in particular in 2H, I expect that this truth will be visible for people who are investors but don't really understand the business model of Tesla and get why the today valuation is actually and still cheap regardless of if the SP will go up or down near term.

Tesla's China-made Model 3 will be a cash cow for the automaker as margins set to improve even more

 

[KarenRei]

You can dress a troll in a suit, but it's still a troll.

 

[KarenRei]

This is my approach: I don't want my shares to be called away. So I don't sell covered calls. My hedge is to accumulate cash as much as I can, if there is a big drop, I transfer money to my account and buy more. If the drop is really scary, I buy calls.

Relying on their being a drop to below your sale price is a risky strategy. Lots of people thought a big drop was imminent at $400. Then $450. Then $500... Heck, Ross Gerber sold at $200

If you hedge to a particular price, but instead of going down you keep shooting up.... good! That means you made money! Just several percent less than you would have had you not hedged (without sold calls paying for it), same amount (just with a profit cap) if it's funded by sold calls. Taking cash out is only the better option, financially, if it's only a mild decline or flatlining on average. The "profit cap" on taking out cash is $0 profit on that cash. You don't have to actually let the shares get recalled if you sell calls to fund a hedge; you can always buy the calls back with part of your profits from the stock rising.

But that's definitely the right strategy to increase leverage when prices are low and decrease it when high. It's only the nuance on how is best to decrease leverage - sale vs. hedging - that I bring up.

 

[Runarbt]

This is my approach: I don't want my shares to be called away. So I don't sell covered calls. My hedge is to accumulate cash as much as I can, if there is a big drop, I transfer money to my account and buy more. If the drop is really scary, I buy calls.

Sell puts instead of just waiting for a drop. If the drop never come, you will still get paid by the shorts..

If the drop come, you will get shares assigned..at an extra discount, paid by shorts.

in my book thats a win-win

 

[WarpedOne]

Hedging smedging... buy and go away.

 

[Fact Checking]

MIC reportedly can have a GM of 40% or even above. This is no surprise for many here I believe who are educated about the ability from Tesla to lower costs and drive margin up in china.

For the market this will over time turn out to be a huge surprise. Also with every month passing by the level of SW related SaaS as pointed out by Ark invest several times does increase with margin in the SW business that are extremely high.

This year, in particular in 2H, I expect that this truth will be visible for people who are investors but don't really understand the business model of Tesla and get why the today valuation is actually and still cheap regardless of if the SP will go up or down near term.

Tesla's China-made Model 3 will be a cash cow for the automaker as margins set to improve even more

This is an important development, so let me quote the source:

"A new report by equity research firm suggests that Tesla’s gross margin for Made-in-China (MIC) Model 3 could increase to 40 percent or even higher, and with higher profit margins, the electric car manufacturer can create the conditions that will further help stimulate sales in the country."​

IMO there was circumstantial evidence already that Tesla was 100% happy with the MIC Model 3's margins:

• the lack of any "early adapters pay a premium" games
• Tesla delayed 1,000 MIC deliveries from Q4 to Q1, to be able to pass a price cut to customers
  
• Tesla passed through 100% of all government incentives to customers by rounds of MIC price cuts
• they are not raising prices despite being sold out for much of Q1

IMO part of this is marketing and demand management, but another big part is that the MIC margins are coming in better than expected, due to:

• De-escalation in the trade war,
• higher baseline production in Fremont (which improves the economies of scale for the MIC Model 3 as well, which shares all parts with the MIF (Made in Fremont) Model 3,
• lightning fast ramp-up at GF3 (which reduces early overhead/inefficiencies of low production)
• A super accommodating regulatory and government policy environment. China really means business that they want to transition 100% of all new car sales to EVs by 2030, and this means an aggressive program that will shift about 10% of demand in every year in this decade over to EVs, about 2.5 million new units need to be sold every year.

 

[lklundin]

So, to get to $6000 in 5 years, assuming 261 trading days per year:
Initial value 537.89
Number of periods 1305
Future compounded value 6000
Compound growth rate 0.184988%

So tomorrow, if we don't increase by $0.968202, that is, above $538.85, the shorts will say "Cathie Wood is wrong!". On the other hand, above 538.86, we can say she was conservative!

Edit: I initially misplaced the decimal point on my calculator, thought we had to get nearly $10...

With the daily swings it may be useful to look at somewhat longer periods. Starting with SP at 540$:

For the SP to reach 6k $ in 255 weeks, it would need a weekly growth of 0.95%.

For the SP to reach 6k $ in 60 months, it would need a monthly growth of 4.1%.

For the SP to reach 6k $ in 20 quarters, it would need a quarterly growth of 12.8%.

For the SP to reach 6k $ in 5 years, it would need a yearly growth of 62%.

 

[Fact Checking]

Relying on their being a drop to below your sale price is a risky strategy. Lots of people thought a big drop was imminent at $400. Then $450. Then $500... Heck, Ross Gerber sold at $200

If you hedge to a particular price, but instead of going down you keep shooting up.... good! That means you made money! Just several percent less than you would have had you not hedged (without sold calls paying for it), same amount (just with a profit cap) if it's funded by sold calls. Taking cash out is only the better option, financially, if it's only a mild decline or flatlining on average. The "profit cap" on taking out cash is $0 profit on that cash. You don't have to actually let the shares get recalled; you can always buy the call back with part of your profits from the stock rising.

But that's definitely the right strategy to increase leverage when prices are low and decrease it when high. It's only the nuance on how is best to decrease leverage - sale vs. hedging - that I bring up.

Everyone dabbling in options and trying to phase the lottery ticket approach over into a more structured wealth management and wealth protection strategy, while intending to maintain higher leverage than "buy and hold", should print out all of @KarenRei's posts on this topic, frame them and hang them on the wall as reminders.

 

[avoigt]

Good to hear finally someone from the Analysts community acknowledging he has been wrong about Tesla

 

[JBRR]

Conference Schedule of Sessions, Talks, and Events at NVIDIA GTC 2020

The Autopilot Behind Autopilot: Machine Learning Infrastructure at Tesla
Between march 23-26th.

Tim Zaman, ML Infrastructure Engineering Manager, Tesla

There are almost half a million Teslas with self-driving capability driving around the world. Our cars continuously improve themselves: they are gathering data while they continuously receive our latest models through over-the-air updates, to provide customers with an ever-safer and more autonomous commute. We'll share our experiences in creating the kitchen where autopilot is created and explain how we keep the machine-learning infrastructure low-maintenance, efficient, and lightning fast — yet user-friendly. That's a requirement for those who want to operate at the state of the art, near the unknown.

Primary Topic: Autonomous Vehicles
Topics: Autonomous Machines, Deep Learning - Use Cases & Success Stories, Deep Learning Training at Scale, Frameworks (DL and non-DL) / Libraries / Runtimes, Computer Vision / Intelligent Video Analytics / Video & Image Processing, Data Center / Cloud Infrastructure Hardware & Software, HPC & AI, Performance Optimization & Profiling, Autonomous Vehicles
Industry Segment: Automotive / Transportation
Session Type: Talk
Audience Level: Intermediate Technical


h/t Planned talk at Nvidia's GTC 2020 (late March): "The Autopilot Behind Autopilot: Machine Learning Infrastructure at Tesla" : TeslaAutonomy

 

[Fact Checking]

This just in: Tesla China has asked publicly for input from China designers and non-designers to design a "made in China" Tesla model with Chinese design elements:

特拉风T☰SLA mania on Twitter

Interesting is the third picture they provided:

Which looks like a small form factor hatchback - broadly along the lines of my speculation here:

While you are right that they didn't share any specifics, it doesn't take a great leap of faith to come to the obvious conclusion:

• "Model 2" is thought to be Tesla's lower end car, although I think they'll call it the "Model 1".
• China EV policies are shaping up to be like Norway was 10 years ago: exceedingly advantageous EV-friendly policies pushed by the government. Only that Norway's annual car sales are 0.15m, while China's is 25.7m, or 170 times larger (in units).
• The main problem with China is that due to the lower purchase power of Chinese citizens the average new car price is a fraction of that of western car ASPs.
• A smaller Tesla in the $20k-$30k price range (below 150,000¥ is ~$21k USD, 200,000¥ is ~$29k) would address a far larger portion of the Chinese market: with a "Tesla stretch" about a third of all Chinese car buyers could afford a Tesla Model 1, and in 5 years that might be 50% of the market or higher if China continues to increase in the purchase power of their citizens.
• The numbers: average Chinese worker income was around 90,000¥ in 2019, but there was an about 10% growth in recent years - so annual income might be above 200,000¥ for families by the time the Model 1 arrives. Most middle class people buy cars where the ASP is about equal to their annual family income - that's a big psychological barrier to cross. So an entry price for the Model 1 of 150,000¥ would be able to capture close to half of all Chinese consumers, in about 3 years from now.
  
• China is IMO the natural market to prototype the Model 1 in. They might even end up exporting it to Europe and to the U.S. - just like "Made in Japan" became a seal of quality, an "iPhone made in China" was accepted by consumers and a "Tesla made in China" will be accepted as well IMO.
• Elon wanted to signal it to China that Tesla is treating their China factory not as a carbon-copy, work-for-hire assembly factory location like most of the German carmakers are doing, but as a prime location that is a peer of Fremont and GF4, with R&D and original product development as well. This attracts talent and helps China's long term policy goals.
  
• Finally, this is exactly what the Chinese political leadership wanted to see happen when they invited Tesla to China: to create an Apple-alike phenomenon and to pull up their automotive sector. The "Tesla Effect", imported into China. Cleaner air, dominance in yet another industry and detaching themselves from crude oil suppliers are the icing on the cake.

So yes, I think Model 1 development will be done in China and for China, but the 3 years time frame Elon mentioned is probably true as well. You are also right that much of this is conjecture - but IMO it's pretty much the only conclusion one can arrive at.

Note that I've edited my original comment from "Model 4" to "Model 1": four is an unlucky number in Chinese culture.

Alternatively they might also name it "Model 7" - or not use any numbering at all.