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

[Zero CO2]

the list of bloomberg journalists hit pieces on tesla vs mike bloomberg being good for tesla

The article is about Mike Bloomberg as presidential candidate ...so I stand by my disagree in this context... Bloomberg is pro environment big time and was a great Mayor in my estimation

I agree in terms of Bloomberg Financial News
Bloomberg plan would make all new U.S. cars electric by 2035

 

[davepsilon]

I found it interesting that Troy is estimating 7.7k US produced vehicles sold in China in Q1 (2.4k S/X & 5.3k M3).
His total Fremont/GF3 China sales range is 15.7k - 20.7k units. That's more than I was expecting.
View attachment 501716

More than you were expecting Troy to say or more than you are expecting for delivery?

 

[steak&chicken]

I know I keep talking about Adam Jonas but I finally found the story I read about Jonas forecast for 2020 Tesla deliveries he made in early 2016. In his research report he published on Feb 1, 2016, Jonas said he expected Tesla total unit deliveries to be 246,000 by 2020. This was in contrast to 500,000 company own guidance for 2020. Jonas didn't believe Tesla would hit 500,000 units until 2025. So he lowered his price target at the time from $450 to $333. This was on Feb 1, 2016.

Tesla Projected To Hit 2020 Unit Guidance...By 2025

We're now in 2020. We can now look back and see how accurate Adam Jonas forecast model was back in 2016. Tesla delivered 245,240 vehicles in 2018, two years ahead of Adam Jonas schedule. Tesla will likely deliver 500,000 vehicles this year in 2020, five years ahead of Adam Jonas projection for 2025. Tesla is doing what they said they would do. Adam Jonas, not so much.

So let me get this straight. Adam Jonas had $333 price target on Tesla back in Feb 2016 after Tesla barely delivered 50,000 cars in 2015. Now in Jan 2020, he has $360 price target after raising it from $250 after Tesla delivered 367,200 cars in 2019. Could this dude be anymore wrong? Why is anyone listening to this bozo? Why should we trust his new forecast to 2030 when he was so wrong before? It's not like the old days before the internet where people couldn't search what you said and your history. Internet knows and records all. Bozo analysts can no longer hide after making stupid wrong calls.

 

[hacer]

Watch TSLAQ try to take TSLA down (TSLAQ is the big bully-looking guy):

Plus TSLAQ gets kicked in the balls!

 

[ammulder]

So there's been a lot of talk about how analysts value Robotaxis and Tesla Energy at zero.

I can't figure out any reasonable way to estimate Robotaxis. The time frame is unknown, the uptake is unknown (both in terms of owners willing to put their cars on the network and riders willing to use the network), the economics are unknown (other than Elon's guesstimates)... I saw Dave Lee critique Cathie Wood's Robotaxi estimate, but I can't say that I have any more confidence in Dave's numbers than in Cathie's.

But Tesla Energy... are there numbers for Tesla Energy for Q1-Q3 this year? I haven't tried reading their SEC filings yet. If we get numbers for 2019, and then we put a guesstimated date on Elon's prediction that Energy could grow to be as large as Automobiles, maybe we can take a stab at filling in the gap and see what that would suggest in terms of earnings from Energy over the next few years. At least it would be a somewhat educated guess.

Has someone done that yet?

 

[lklundin]

Where did you hear about the Buffett rumour?

@FactChecking is Warren Buffett?

 

[StealthP3D]

the avg broker may not react until the next business day. i suppose some may auto-liquidate AH or in dark pools. depends on what the broker agreement says..

Every broker agreement I've ever seen said something to the effect of "and we will proceed at our own discretion - it depends on how we are feeling that day, and what will benefit us the most".

 

[Opus BC fan]

OT
I read somewhere that Warren Buffett was buying TSLA, people tell me this is a big deal. I'm not sure who said it, but they are well respected and knowledgable about these things. Since it is so important, I think it should be discussed in all the Tesla forums and financial news outlets. When the media starts talking about it, I can cite them as a source also. Just saying...


/s

 

[Unpilot]

Apologies for the erroneous SP forecast. It seems the crystal ball needs calibration due to the move and being in a new time zone.

Working on that now.

Carry on with weekend OT.

 

[VValleyEV]

I have a feeling Tesla will release new software that will make accidental acceleration more difficult. Maybe force creep mode on or take away the ability to make the car come to a full stop with one pedal driving . Basically if your feet is off the brake, and P is not engaged, the car will move. This will force you to have the feet on the brake, or put it in P when your feet is off the brake to have a full stop. ICE cars have been doing this for years and changing it probably screws with some people's routine.

No, this will not happen.

What you suggest is eliminating a big EV safety advantage, especially Tesla’s implementation, in a wrong-headed pursuit of a non-existent “accidental acceleration” issue.

 

[jerry33]

OT
I read somewhere that Warren Buffett was buying TSLA, people tell me this is a big deal.

While Buffet buying Tesla shares is technically possible, Buffet put in legislation that would have prevented Tesla from having Service Centres in Texas. That clause got removed from the legislation, but certainly Buffet is no Tesla fan.

 

[Prunesquallor]

While Buffet buying Tesla shares is technically possible, Buffet put in legislation that would have prevented Tesla from having Service Centres in Texas. That clause got removed from the legislation, but certainly Buffet is no Tesla fan.

It wasn’t clear to me that BH was responsible for that little section that was bad for Tesla. Not sure what their motivation would be. The main purpose of the amendment was to let BH circumvent the existing restrictions.

I bet the offending language was slipped in there by TADA.

But you may be right, I have no proof.

 

[jerry33]

It wasn’t clear to me that BH was responsible for that little section that was bad for Tesla. Not sure what their motivation would be I bet that was slipped in there by TADA.

But you may be right, I have no proof.

The motivation was that Buffet has (had?) a large stake in BYD motors, a potential Tesla competitor).

 

[ggr]

So this would be inexperienced options traders not closing deep in the money calls and getting exercised, without having enough cash and margin to exercise, right?

In that case they face an instant margin call, and their (rather unhappy) broker would attempt to reduce the overnight and weekend holding risks of the shares received. Since they are only getting the shares on Saturday, but know the excercises on Friday 5:30 PM already, they'd want to go short a matching number of TSLA shares late Friday.

Those call option holders would then get the cash from the after hours fire sale, with poor execution.

@Curt Renz, @ggr, is this the likely procedure in this case?

Another possibility is for brokers to wait until the next trading day (Tuesday next week) to liquidate the margin called account - but then they'd be carrying the stock over the weekend - which is an extra risk for them.

An interesting scenario is if Buffett announces a stake in Tesla over the weekend and the TSLA price gaps to $1,000 on Tuesday, the call option holder would miss out on those gains with a Friday liquidation. Can the broker legally liquidate on Friday already, which is technically before the options contracts transfer the shares?

(I found your wording to be a bit confusing at first, so I'm going to first restate what I understand.)

I, inexperienced trader, had a contract for $500 strike call options at close on Friday. You said "deep in the money" but the worst case is actually near closing price, because I now buy 100 shares of TSLA for $500 each. If I don't have $50,000 liquid in my account then yes, margin call hits over the weekend. But you always have some time to arrange to satisfy the margin call. My broker (ETrade) usually gives me three trading days to figure it out. One of the ways to meet the margin call is to wire funds from somewhere else, and this always takes a couple of days, and settlement of trades takes time too (although the margin account ignores this and assumes trades are going to work). So they won't do anything on Monday (or Tuesday in this case since Monday is a holiday). That's me I'm talking about, they know I'm good for it, because it has happened a number of times, and I have plenty of capital to meet the call by liquidating other stock, not to mention liquidating the actual TSLA stock I just bought. Now if I had an account worth only a couple of thousand, including that call, they might react differently, and I can't speak for other brokers. In my case, if I have spare cash somewhere else I would try to bring it in. Otherwise I'd just sell (some of) the stock on the first trading day. I guess it is a magnitude thing, if I had 100 contracts ($5M!) they might react differently to me too... but I would definitely have reduced that before close.

You mentioned "Deep in the money" and the incentive to exercise (or hold until automatically exercised) those calls is to get a lower cost basis in the account. This implies that you intend to keep them, so presumably you have the money to do that and won't get a margin call. Or maybe you sell half and keep half. Selling the stock at the next opportunity has the same US tax consequence as selling the option on Friday would have had. Note that recently, the stock has always opened higher after the weekend; if I had $510 calls last week I'd have definitely held them rather than take the $0.50 around closing time, hoping to sell the stock for $520 on Tuesday. (I'd probably put in a limit order over the weekend in case I accidentally slept in, but my aim would be to wake early for market open to evaluate what I thought would happen. I know I have to sell, but I still want it to be to my best advantage. This might be TMI.)

A gap up is not going to be a problem. A sufficiently large gap up would actually nullify the margin call, as the value of the stock would eventually be enough to cover the margin maintenance requirement. The real worry is that the stock goes back down, and you end up owing more than you can cover, when the options would have just expired if it happened on Friday.

 

[ggr]

Mod: I couldn't sort out the purely political versus commercial Bloomberg posts. This is a reminder that politics goes elsewhere. --ggr

 

[MABMAB]

OT
I read somewhere that Warren Buffett was buying TSLA, people tell me this is a big deal. I'm not sure who said it, but they are well respected and knowledgable about these things. Since it is so important, I think it should be discussed in all the Tesla forums and financial news outlets. When the media starts talking about it, I can cite them as a source also. Just saying...


/s

I just read the same thing somewhere...

 

[M3Rider]

I would expect Tesla to provide car logs immediately and put the investigation to rest quickly.
Any reasons Tesla would hold off on sharing the data with the govt? Is it possible they wouldn’t have logs from all or most of the cars?

I believe Tesla would not have logs, unless they were contacted by owner right after the issue and the owner asked to investigate.

I had myself a "reduced power" message/incident and just rebooted and didn't not contact Tesla.

When I had a service appointment with them over a month later on a different subject, I asked them if they could provide details on what happened back then and they said no, the logs only stick around for the latest 2-3 weeks. I forgot the exact length of time.

But if shorts collected rumors about unintended acceleration for several years and then passed on to NHTSA, then no, Tesla will not have this data.

 

[lklundin]

In case anyone needs a good laugh, they can take a look a this screenshot from an Audi etron,
MissCYBRTRK on Twitter

 

[sparcs]

Didn't the Tesla Daily Podcast with Alex Potter indicate that there is a trove of registration data in China in mandarin?

I wish we could get access to that data to gauge progress on the Tesla ramp. That's one place where large groups have an information advantage over retail. I imagine we will get info on progress in the Q4 report/call so we won't be too far behind.

Discussion starts at around the 31 minute mark for reference:

 

[JRP3]

Jordan John Szeliga was arrested on Jan 8 for reckless driving while test-driving a Tesla in Troy (Photo: Oakland County Jail)

"A Lake Orion man is facing multiple charges after allegedly going 130 mph while test-driving a Tesla."
"As they searched for the vehicle, police received more calls that the Tesla was racing down Big Beaver Road in Troy and doing doughnuts in a parking lot located at 755 W. Big Beaver Road, according to WDIV."
Lake Orion man arrested after taking Tesla on 130-mph test drive on I-75

Posted just because the picture is funny.