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

[jbcarioca]

Tax issues are local and your new fancy accountant knows more loopholes for rich ppl.

I forgot to mention, it automatically came to my mind that what you are suggesting has huge tax implications which is why I mentioned accountant.

If you have the resources necessary a tax attorney/CPA/CA will be worth the added expense. These days both together are much better than either one alone. In some of our cases people have multiple countries also, which make the attorney/accountant combination an essential investment. FWIW, I have survived tax audits in several jurisdictions and have never paid anything at all other than time and attorney fees. Such things as carried interest etc seem accessible only to billionaires but that is not true. Many of the best tools are matters of definition.

This is not advice, one needs to find good ones, and that is not at all easy. Alumni support groups are valuable if you have them. Anybody who advertises or goes on broadcast is unlikely to be a good choice. It is essential to check out the record of success in tax court cases too, as a contingency risk avoidance tactic.

 

[MC3OZ]

I'm curious what people think the timeframe for FSD is now we have more info on dojo/their reengineering of their NNs. Elon said by 10 years FSD will be a commodity and all auto players will have it. About 6 months ago some people on this forum were saying it is 10 years out. Personally I expected it in about 2-3 years, 6 months ago, and still like those timelines.

Well Tesla were reasonably confident when they held Autonomy Day....

Elon is confident and specifically mentioned when they have the right base, customers will be impressed by the rate of progress.

Specifically that is what i expect a burst of progress in the next 6-12 months that gets us to 99.99%, then it is a matter of training and a long slow grind to regulatory approval...

So 99.99% by the end of this year, 99.9999% with regulatory approval 2-3 years later.

Once things come together and we get to 99.99% I don't think we will see significant regressions, there will just be edge cases and conservative regulators to overcome...

Obviously Elon and the Tesla team know a lot more than we do, my confidence is based of their confidence, and my confidence in their knowledge of the problem..

When customer express a lack of doubt, that is based on regressions and what appears to be the rate of progress, not on a detailed knowledge of what the Tesla team are doing and why they are doing it.

People also rightly conclude that this is a difficult problem, but the Tesla team have years of experience, and have been working on it for years, they know the problem......

We have also a a few shake ups in the FSD team, with senior staff leaving an a change of direction, this I assume is Elon sensing the approach is wrong and fine tuning the team and the approach.... I'm thinking 3rd time lucky or if this is the wrong direction the shake up would have happened by now... The opposite seems true, they seem increasingly confident in their approach...

 

[sparcs]

Elon Musk on Twitter

This tweet aged well. Elon really is late with everything. I will cut him some slack this one time.

 

[Right_Said_Fred]

The list of EVs sold in Norway in January is available:

View attachment 506611

Check the source link for the complete list. Some interesting models:

Tesla Model X: 20
Tesla Model S: 10
Porsche Taycan: 7
Mercedes EQC: 65
Jaguar i-pace: 126

Source: Registreringer av nye elbiler i Norge

Shorties on twitter are running with these numbers (and Anton will likely publish some drivel about it on SA). But this is what virtually zero supply does to Tesla sales. And it looks like Audi has been saving up orders for 2020 to be able to use the sales to avoid EU penalties.

 

[Dan Detweiler]

I'm curious what people think the timeframe for FSD is now we have more info on dojo/their reengineering of their NNs. Elon said by 10 years FSD will be a commodity and all auto players will have it. About 6 months ago some people on this forum were saying it is 10 years out. Personally I expected it in about 2-3 years, 6 months ago, and still like those timelines.

 

[Words of HABIT]

Congratulations Elon, Tesla and TSLA longs on an amazing first month of 2020...

...and on the last six months.

For comparisons in the above graphs, OEMs are browns, Tech are blues and Oil/Gas are Purples.

Current Tesla Market CapL $117B.
This would place Tesla in position #61 of the S&P500. See here: S&P 500 Companies - S&P 500 Index Components by Market Cap
Take a good look at the list. I see Tesla joining in a top #30 rank come April or July at the latest.

Will I ever sell my TSLA? Of course. However, not until retirement in three to 13 years (depending how long I still like my job) and only at a rate of 1/40th to 1/30 of my shares per year. This is a keeper. TSLA is my only holding period. If you could only invest in one company for the remainder of your life, which company would that be? This multi-generational party is just getting started. This is the start of the tipping point to a much better and brighter and greener future for all of us.

 

[jbcarioca]

Weekend OT:

Honda has been promising a Hondajet rollout for decades, and its no closer today than it was in the 90s. Honda fancies themselves as an engine company that makes cars. Hondajet is a pet project that is trying to enter a very tiny market (VLJs) and failing.

...Elon's main point was that their is a shortage of excellent engineers, and where should Tesla spend its human capital? Short answer: not on airplanes. That includes the regulatory effort to get a new airframe with new propulsion certified in under the 3 main regulatory regimes worldwide. Its just low return work compared to Tesla's upcoming opportunities.

Cheers!

Sometimes some spectacularly ignorant posts happen from otherwise thoughtful people:
HondaJet | Official Site of Honda Corporate Jet Aircraft
As a longtime (sadly, now former) pilot and aircraft owner/operator I know the Hondajet personally. Everyone knowledgeable I know shares my opinion that it is quite advanced and innovative in a seriously slow-to-innovate industry. Only avionics has advanced for GA.

Your ultimate point is mostly what Elon has said a few times. Factually, the real impediment to investment in anything aviation related is scale. Were the scale large enough major innovation would be easier to justify. The regulatory issues are more consequential today than ever before because the entire industry has tried to evade rules, often with honorable intent, but evasion corrupts, and successful evasion Breda contempt. That is the lesson of Boeing.

We should be fully aware that all the same negatives apply much more in space than they do for aircraft. Thus, the obvious example: SpaceX. Every single negative that applies to aircraft applies more to rocketry.

So, despite Elon’s protestations, if he saw a sound reason to disintermediation the commercial aircraft market he certainly is well equipped to do so. The engineering base is closely analogous to the Hawthorne/PV/Long Beach talent pool. The huge opportunities are in propulsion systems, materials, controls and maintenance. Were the time available and the talent also we can be assured that we’d see marvels. Imagine transformation of predictive analytics to automate most maintenance checks. Imagine aerodynamics done originally rather than recycling ancient airfoil designs.

I do not suggest this is something he’ll do. I am positive that as an operator of Falcon and Gulfstream he is acutely aware of how hidebound the industry is today. The majority of SpaceX Hawthorne engineers had origin with Northrop, McD/Douglas, Hughes etc. Those people knew tradition and successfully upended with SpaceX.

Doing the impossible and/or wildly improbable is Elon’s history, from zip2 until today. No wonder when he likes:
Infinite Improbability Drive

 

[Prunesquallor]

I wonder why they are so pessimistic?

Unfortunately, even their most optimistic bull case will fail to get me to billionaire status.

Dude, you need more shares.

Me, too.

 

[j6Lpi429@3j]

the masters of free advertising:
Ask the Athletes: Hottest new car in NFL: Tesla

 

[JohnnyEnglish]

I wouldn't have thought so, but with Elon, who the heck knows? It is possible they are using some of Gigafactory Nevada to produce their own cells (ie. independent of Panasonic).

Actually, it is very likely they already have a prototype cell line operating somewhere. So where would they do that? Nevada is an obvious location. And considering how good Elon is at getting people to optimize physical space (we've seen it at Fremont, and the SpaceX Hawthorne location is incredibly dense for what it does), I have no doubt they could squeeze in a prototype line or even a half decent sized production line in at Nevada.

So, reasonable to think? Yes. Probable? Need more data...

Lathrop a possibility for a prototype line?

 

[jerry33]

Why pay off mortgage? No more interest to deduct? Would be last thing for me to pay down.

Because paying off your mortgage gets you about double the interest rate. That is if you have a 5% rate on the mortgage you would have to get 10% on an investment to break even. So it depends on how good your investments are. (Other than TSLA, I've not had a lot of luck with investments, and not having a mortgage payment is a real life-saver.) The interest deduction is just a deduction, not a tax credit. $1500/year deduction doesn't make a big dent in the taxes.

 

[Prunesquallor]

...
I agree with Cathie Wood's team that if TSLA valuation included FSD potential, then fair value in the 5-year timeframe would probably be in the $1,500-$15,000 range.
...

I really look forward to ARK releasing their model. My nerdy little fingers are just itching to fool around with the probabilities they assigned to the major variables. For example, their $1500 bear case could correspond to a scenario where there is 1) low probability of autonomy by 2024, 2) moderate probability of efficient factory construction (similar to Shanghai numbers) and 3) low probability of margins exceeding 25% (no Wright’s law). This would be similar to ARK's “Factory Builder” scenario.

For the pessimistic Factory Builder scenario, ARK assigns 2024 probabilities of 30% for achieving autonomy, 50% efficient factories and 20% for margin improvement. The Prunesquallor scenario would be more like 30%, 70% and 80%. That would be more like the ARK “High-Functioning EV Company” scenario with resulting 2024 SP of over $3000.

 

[AudubonB]

I know, right?

View attachment 506596

Cheers!

Yaaaah, but Dodger, you’d give my posts about a goldfish dying “Informative”.

 

[jerry33]

Brilliant engineers know the difference between a death march and a challenge.

Failure should not be the only outcome.

 

[jerry33]

If you have the resources necessary a tax attorney/CPA/CA will be worth the added expense.

Even if you don't, it's still a good idea.

 

[AudubonB]

January recap for a ...once prominent...hedge fund:

Greenlight....Red Light!

 

[sparcs]

Einhorn’s Greenlight Hedge Funds Start Year With 7.6% Drop

"Greenlight Capital fell 7.6% across the funds in January, according to an investor update on Friday"

Einhorn must have been out in the backyard lighting money on fire.

 

[rsm287]

The cumulative probability column shows the likelihood that the stock will/will not reach a certain price target. For example, according to their model, there’s a 57% chance that the stock price will go above $2,500 and a corresponding 43% chance that it will be at or below $2,500

It’s what let them construct their probability distribution graph. They changed the scaling from 0-100 to 0-50-0 to let them build their bear case (SP at which there is a 25% probability of being at that level or worse) and bull case (SP at which there is a 25% probability of being at that level or higher).

Thanks to you both for the explanation. Makes sense now. I'm usually pretty good at maths, but never studied statistics and so I didn't get the terminology!

 

[JustMe]

really? what are you wearing?

As you can see - only a leaf

 

[nativewolf]

Sometimes some spectacularly ignorant posts happen from otherwise thoughtful people:
HondaJet | Official Site of Honda Corporate Jet Aircraft
As a longtime (sadly, now former) pilot and aircraft owner/operator I know the Hondajet personally. Everyone knowledgeable I know shares my opinion that it is quite advanced and innovative in a seriously slow-to-innovate industry. Only avionics has advanced for GA.

Your ultimate point is mostly what Elon has said a few times. Factually, the real impediment to investment in anything aviation related is scale. Were the scale large enough major innovation would be easier to justify. The regulatory issues are more consequential today than ever before because the entire industry has tried to evade rules, often with honorable intent, but evasion corrupts, and successful evasion Breda contempt. That is the lesson of Boeing.

We should be fully aware that all the same negatives apply much more in space than they do for aircraft. Thus, the obvious example: SpaceX. Every single negative that applies to aircraft applies more to rocketry.

So, despite Elon’s protestations, if he saw a sound reason to disintermediation the commercial aircraft market he certainly is well equipped to do so. The engineering base is closely analogous to the Hawthorne/PV/Long Beach talent pool. The huge opportunities are in propulsion systems, materials, controls and maintenance. Were the time available and the talent also we can be assured that we’d see marvels. Imagine transformation of predictive analytics to automate most maintenance checks. Imagine aerodynamics done originally rather than recycling ancient airfoil designs.

I do not suggest this is something he’ll do. I am positive that as an operator of Falcon and Gulfstream he is acutely aware of how hidebound the industry is today. The majority of SpaceX Hawthorne engineers had origin with Northrop, McD/Douglas, Hughes etc. Those people knew tradition and successfully upended with SpaceX.

Doing the impossible and/or wildly improbable is Elon’s history, from zip2 until today. No wonder when he likes:
Infinite Improbability Drive

@jbcarioca to your point there is clearly opportunity in flight. It solves many of the transportation challenges that Elon has sought to address with Tesla and Boring.

Home - Lilium

Is to my eyes one of the most interesting flight startups. I could see this being a very serious competitor to self driving taxis and the need for tunnels. It is an infant company in a field of many competitors. Truthfully I am surprised that Elon and Tesla are not doing something related. SpaceX has aerospace talent and Tesla has the battery management talent. Anyhow flight is clearly a competitor to driving and likely better for the environment (roads are terrible).