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

[Prunesquallor]

By far the most important thing I got out of this Washington Post article is the news that a Washington Post employee now owns a Tesla Model 3.

Why is this significant?

Because, as we all know, coverage of Tesla and EVs in major media has not been very good in the past ten years, and I’ve argued that one reason for that could simply be that the editors and reporters in the major media have little to no first-hand, day-in, day-out ownership experience with Tesla cars. One of the best things that could happen to journalism’s coverage of Tesla and EVs is for more and more journalists to own them.

This one guy is a tiny single data point but still, it gives me hope for the future of media coverage of EVs and Tesla: if nothing else it means there’s a Tesla in the parking lot at the Post and maybe he takes folks out to lunch from time to time, or talks up the car and encourages colleagues to get one. It’s all good.

I would say it a bit differently. Not only is there an employee that owns and enjoys his Tesla, the WaPo editorial board allowed a (mostly) positive article to be published in their Sunday edition. (Bezos’ new gigaphilanthropy regarding climate change amelioration may play in?)

 

[sparcs]

Groundbreaking in a couple weeks in Germany? @GF4Tesla..️️.build #GigaBerlin. on Twitter

local mayor had similar expectations: Giga Berlin/GF4 Factory Discussion

 

[Maitri982]

September 11, 2001, two planes took down the World Trade Center. SP went down 11.6% in a week. The week after it began to rally all the way into 2002. 3000 Americans died that day and war was imminent. Thats more than nCoVid 2019 killed in 2 months. SP 500 just went down 13% last week. The media is getting out of control.

war is good for the economy in many cases. Viruses causing people to stop buying stuff and for schools, businesses and even cities to shut down is not. That’s the difference.

and...this is global phenomenon...so global economic impact. I told y’all...keep your dry powder.

 

[StealthP3D]

Stepping back to look at the general trend is always a good idea, the daily price changes are just noise. But if we did this then the thread would be much more boring, as we all enjoy the ticker tape parade.

Oh, I completely agree! It's entertaining to watch the drama around TSLA share price on a daily basis.

The problem I was referring to is long-term longs taking it so seriously! As if a move down is a bad omen for Tesla's future. Or a sharp move in the other direction needs to be protected against the opposite. Taking it too seriously will cause premature aging on the way down and on the way up. TSLA might visit the $500's (or not). But when it's done trawling the bottom it's going to shoot up fast enough to make your head spin. No one knows when, until it does. If you want to trade that kind of volatility, volatility that is almost entirely unrelated to your actual investment, go ahead. Plenty do, that's why it's so volatile and one reason why there is so much false and misleading information released. It's better odds than any casino (if you just close your eyes and throw a dart) and if I needed the money I would probably grind away at it and do better than throwing a dart. You had better know what you're doing because many don't. If you don't have a knack for it, you will either lose money or make less than you would if you simply deployed the capital long and did nothing.

 

[LJS22]

Groundbreaking in a couple weeks in Germany? @GF4Tesla..️️.build #GigaBerlin. on Twitter

Musk seems really tied up recently. His daily twitter presence has gone down. It would be cool if he is at each Gigafactory groundbreaking and opening though!

 

[StealthP3D]

and...this is global phenomenon...so global economic impact. I told y’all...keep your dry powder.

If you are going to say "told you so" you have to tell us when to buy. Because every time I bought below Friday's close it caused my cost basis to go way up! If you don't give us a shout-out with a big fat buy signal, then I'm going to be telling you "told you so" when we're at $4000.

 

[dha]

Futures down sharply: Real-Time Stock Indices Futures

 

[dc_h]

Where were you during the 2009 Avian Flu?
One's reaction to the Coronavirus ranges from calmness to great concern. I'm in the calmness camp for now.

The 2009 Avian Flu Statistics:
10–20% of the global population (700–1400 million people) contracted the illness.
Fatalities were about 150,000–575,000 people.
The WHO declared it a pandemic.

Governments may not be prepared but Organizations are
I worked for a global Pharma company at the time and we activated our disaster preparedness plan. We increased our inventory on hand from 6 weeks to 4 months and many of our suppliers did the same. We ensured that we had back-up suppliers in different continents and our suppliers did the same. We wanted to ensure that the supply chain remained intact in case of any temporary shortages. The company implemented other measures such as some minor travel bans, distributing 10 masks and 100 gloves to each employee (we had 60,000 globally), etc.

9 months later we terminated our Avian Flu preparedness program as we saw no impact to our business. Actually, the only cost to our business was the cost of the preparedness plan itself which tied up our cash flow in excess inventory.

Perhaps the Cornavirus is different, but for now I am going to reamin calm knowing that organizations around the world are activating their preparedness plans and we will move on with life as we did with the 2009 Avian Flu. Just think about it? 10%-20% of the global population contracted the Avian Flu and up to 575m deaths. That death count is sad and I don't want to diminish that but for most of us life went on.

Spot on, but you meant Swine Flu. I had an employee on patient zero flight from Mexico. He was sick as a dog, but recovered fine. Swine was harder on the young then Corona appears to be. I think corona will likely be less virulent in the USA and economically impactful then China and now Iran. Smoking rates, medical care and general living conditions should reduce impact in the USA vs less developed countries with large urban populations. Actual infection and mortality rates vs economic impact can also be very divergent.
for Tesla in Q1, I don’t see much impact. 2 weeks lost Shanghai production and maybe some end of Q delivery impact regionally. They seem to be mobilizing home deliveries to take the virus out of play.
It’s way too early to write the history of the impact. There are some good models, but none perfect. Real world data is also corrupted by uptight governments trying to avoid embarrassment, which has made this worse in China and Iran where it’s now taking off.
For this quarter Model Y deliveries and home delivery will offset any potential impact to revenue and earnings. I think Q1 will look like Q2 or Q3 2019 plus 5000 Model Y deliveries with and ASP ~$65,000.

 

[Dare]

Is it me or are all of those non Tesla auto show cars mostly uninteresting and uninspiring? I don’t mind the looks of the Mach E, and the Taycan is a beautiful car, but other than that I don’t see many offerings that are compelling.

 

[Dare]

Futures down sharply: Real-Time Stock Indices Futures

More bargain shopping.

 

[HG Wells]

Is it me or are all of those non Tesla auto show cars mostly uninteresting and uninspiring? I don’t mind the looks of the Mach E, and the Taycan is a beautiful car, but other than that I don’t see many offerings that are compelling.

Well, they do have one thing on Tesla.
A few more colors.

 

[lafrisbee]

Seven seaters have proven to be more popular. I have a large family, so the 5 seater just wasn’t an option right now.

I got a view on this that you won't like but all the others of us will....
If I had so many orders of one type that I knew it was going to take a long long time before I could do the orders for the next type I'd send the people that ordered an email knowing full well all of them would still want the 7-seater. It would set me up to look OK and for them to feel comfortable because I cautioned them that they would need to "wait" for the 7-seater.

 

[Maitri982]

If you are going to say "told you so" you have to tell us when to buy. Because every time I bought below Friday's close it caused my cost basis to go way up! If you don't give us a shout-out with a big fat buy signal, then I'm going to be telling you "told you so" when we're at $4000.

I didn’t claim I could pick exact bottom...so your challenge is silly, but my intent was to say the market reaction to this virus is not done yet.

BTW... I post most of my trades. I have sold none of my shares and have sold puts at $450 strike. I have held $85 puts as downward protection for some time.

 

[BornToFly]

With testing in the US limited, until recently, to only people that were in contact with an infected person, and cases popping up now in strange places like care facilities, I'm wondering if the virus hasn't been here for a while, undiagnosed. I wonder if sick people were just assumed to have had the flu a couple weeks ago. We might have a rapid increase in cases now that they are testing more liberally, and then data that shows lower death rate than previously thought. Hopefully the fear subsides soon.

 

[MC3OZ]

This is a real long shot, so don't take it too seriously....

Does anyone think Maxwell tech could improve Sodium Ion batteries?

Sodium-ion battery - Wikipedia

Hard carbon's sodium storage was discovered by Stevens and Dahn in 2000.

If Maxwell Tech can perhaps make an Anode similar to Hard Carbon via some other process, it might be relevant....

From the Dahn talk it look liked he was working on MNC 811 with Lithium-ion and a bit of added NaPO2F2, that is a completely different research path...

Wikipedia doesn't highlight the major downside of Sodium-ion batteries, presumably there is a problem somewhere that must be solved.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

With testing in the US limited, until recently, to only people that were in contact with an infected person, and cases popping up now in strange places like care facilities, I'm wondering if the virus hasn't been here for a while, undiagnosed. I wonder if sick people were just assumed to have had the flu a couple weeks ago. We might have a rapid increase in cases, and then data that does lower death rate than previously thought. Hopefully the fear subsides soon.

It's certainly not strange for it to pop up at care facilities.

Care facilities have the most vulnerable populations grouped together and coming into direct and indirect contact with a number of people who either work with vulnerable populations or who can afford to and do travel.

 

[Prunesquallor]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/loca...6bec64-5981-11ea-9b35-def5a027d470_story.html

Never heard of it before, but article regarding “EasyMile” low-speed autonomous shuttles.

To paraphrase General Beringer from War Games, “In my considered opinion, your new autonomous taxi sucks”.

 

[wipster]

...Toronto International Car Show Report 3 (last one)

Honda had the clarity (also available - not really- in a hydrogen variant) and nothing else.View attachment 516828

BMW had the Mini-e displayed prominently and the i3 (which is to be discontinued) but the main booth was particularly void of EVs except tucked at the back was this X3 plug in hybrid. Due next year...
View attachment 516829

Other notables. Mitsubishi had a plug in hybrid. Jeep had nothing (should be in the dinosaur section but they are differentiated by brand). Nissan had a huge wall with 'zero emissions' in huge letters and exactly 1 EV (the Leaf) in the booth. In fairness they have been improving the Leaf incrementally over the years but it was still a sea of ICE vehicles in the booth.

Tesla
Again Tesla was down stairs in the 'Exotica' section surrounded by Alfa Romeo, Lotus and the like.
View attachment 516830 Observations:

• Lowest key booth at the show. They could hardly have tried less.
• Booth was crowded.
• No Model Y! This is amazing seeing as first deliveries will be within a month of the show ending. They are trying really hard NOT to sell the Y. Model 3 anyone?
• Staff was knowledgeable of course but not heavy on the sales.
• Line up to get into the 3.
• Most under 30 know about Tesla. Everyone under 20 does.
• A few families dragged to the booth by their kids.
• X doors still continue to awe people.

Irony moment 1. Physically exactly opposite the Tesla booth was a pair of classic performance cars:
View attachment 516833
Every few hours they would dim the lights, start these cars, and to great fanfare rev the engines (to a plume of smoke despite the ducting) to incredibly loud noise levels. Across the sat the Performance S in silent smug contemplation.

Irony moment 2. Reflecting on the map I could not help but notice disruption Tesla is causing. Check out the show map:
View attachment 516835
I shaded the big 3 in in yellow. As of March 1 the market cap of 'tiny' Tesla was $122B. GM, Chrysler and Ford combined was $87B. Wonder what this map will look like in 5 or 10 years? The market believes it will be different.

Finally this was in the Ford booth:
View attachment 516837
It is still an amazing piece of engineering but just seems ridiculous now.

I believe that one of the next 3 years will see a big change in attitude and focus from the incumbents but there was no sign of it this year. They need to sell what they have I guess. Can they change in time?

Thank you for taking the time to take these pictures and report on what your observations were at the show. I know all of us sincerely appreciate your efforts! If it were a required report for a college course, I would give you an A+ along with extra points for the excellent commentary!

 

[printf42]

By far the most important thing I got out of this Washington Post article is the news that a Washington Post employee now owns a Tesla Model 3.

Why is this significant?

Because, as we all know, coverage of Tesla and EVs in major media has not been very good in the past ten years, and I’ve argued that one reason for that could simply be that the editors and reporters in the major media have little to no first-hand, day-in, day-out ownership experience with Tesla cars. One of the best things that could happen to journalism’s coverage of Tesla and EVs is for more and more journalists to own them.

This one guy is a tiny single data point but still, it gives me hope for the future of media coverage of EVs and Tesla: if nothing else it means there’s a Tesla in the parking lot at the Post and maybe he takes folks out to lunch from time to time, or talks up the car and encourages colleagues to get one. It’s all good.

Very much agree this might be the turning point of general media tone about Tesla.

Media had always been accusing the next generation for being wasted and hopeless, until that generation is old enough to become reporters, then they start to say their generation is the backbone of the country, and start to accuse the next next generation.

Same might have been happening to Tesla, once reporters start to realize they can afford a Tesla themselves now, they might go get one and become a Tesla owner, that would change their perception 180 degrees.

Of cause this assumes the reporters really do hate Tesla themselves, and were not just bashing Tesla because they are paid to do it.

 

[KSilver2000]

More bargain shopping.

Right now is just a measly 10% off sale that they’re running.

Should wait longer given the situation at hand. (Or buy options). Super Tuesday can also hurt.

Are we going to get a rate cut tonight that was priced in Friday, or is the markets going to be disappointed by the inaction tomorrow?