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

[30seconds]

Go inform yourselves of the potential impact to lives and our acute response health capabilities before commenting that it’s not a big deal for a bunch of 20-40 yr olds to spread this disease.

Some of best health care in the US is already being shut down due to this disease.

Go research what would happen to you if you need to go to the hospital tonight in Seattle or NYC.

What if your dad has a heart attack? What if your mom slips and breaks a hip? Do you think it’s business as usual there?

This is what’s going to happen across the entire US if it isn’t shut down.

Or go see if you can find some common ground with your Uncle who thinks that climate change is a big hoax no matter what all those “scientists” say

 

[Evoforce]

I ordered some at $450 right at close today but cancelled it moments later because I heard the rumor of Plant closing. Sounds like it will not. Let's see where prices are tomorrow!

 

[FrankSG]

Jeez... Elon Musk telling his employees that they can stay at home if they feel uncomfortable or ill but he will still be coming to work regardless.

Refers to Covid-19 as a form of the common cold.

This is to be honest reaching the point where I am having to completely recalibrate my prior assessment of the man.

Woow, first time ever I've wished there was a SUPER-ULTRA-DISAGREE button on this forum.

Elon is known for basing his plans and opinions on fundamental insights from first principle thinking. I'm not saying he's perfect and we should blindly trust him, but I bet his opinion on the virus, as with anything, is based on first principle thinking, and therefore should receive a fair bit of credibility.

Also, don't forget you're basing your opinion of Elon's opinion not directly on Elon's words, but on articles written about his words that have been taken out of context. Elon's true words and thoughts will have been conveyed better by some articles than others.

 

[UnknownSoldier]

Futures hit limit up. It's only day 2 of this week and it's already a wild ride.

If we get a nice little rally Tuesday, I'll take some more puts.

 

[TheTalkingMule]

Where was all this posting when we were losing 4k Americans to flu 25 months ago? Keeping factories open with 20-50 year olds handling highly automated machinery is perfectly fine.

What we need is militant testing.

 

[Juhoru]

please read the research, I beg you, you will understand why it is necessary to shut down society once it has reached the level in the community that covid19 has here.

Would love to, where is it? You don't have to beg, just give a link.

Pretty sure the research azaz is referring to (or at least part of it) I just posted a link in the coronavirus thread.

Can you give the link? I tried going through the forums and all I found was one thread and I didn't see a post from you in there (or a link to research).
When I try to google "covid19 research" I get a ton of university sites with all sorts of research. Is some of those the research you guys are talking about?

 

[Evoforce]

I can't help it, I have to rebut your fear-mongering.

Panic isn't necessary to perform prudent acts.

PANIC is BAD.

Agreed! Reasonable and prudent action.....not panic! Panic is not reasonable or prudent..

 

[Singer3000]

Fremont might or might not escape this shut down instruction. But one has to think any reprieve will prove temporary. The same hard restrictions being put in place on Europe will end up being rolled out in the US too, it’s just a matter of time.

If this is a month long shutdown then Tesla will roll with the punches and be well placed to benefit relative to competitors. Tesla execs might say in private in a few years they “had a good war”.

However if these restrictions are going to be required on a localised roll-on-roll-off basis until there’s a vaccine, then this is potentially as much an existential threat for Tesla as for every other business. Or more specifically for its equity value. Most of the operation will still stand of course.

Yesterday prior to open I said $450 was perhaps a drip-buy price. I now think you need your head examining if you buy with any significance in the 400s. But different views is what makes a market I suppose.

 

[UnknownSoldier]

Buying anything is probably a fools errand right now. We don't know where the bottom is and I'm not an expert juggler who can catch falling knives with perfect timing.

I'll stick with these puts. They work until they don't!

 

[StealthP3D]

I wonder if Elon is keeping the retail stores open? That would be stupid

Disagree. That is the distribution channel for parts and service. Unless you are only talking about the "boutique" stores with neither parts or service.

 

[LJS22]

Go inform yourselves of the potential impact to lives and our acute response health capabilities before commenting that it’s not a big deal for a bunch of 20-40 yr olds to spread this disease.

Some of best health care in the US is already being shut down due to this disease.

Go research what would happen to you if you need to go to the hospital tonight in Seattle or NYC.

What if your dad has a heart attack? What if your mom slips and breaks a hip? Do you think it’s business as usual there?

This is what’s going to happen across the entire US if it isn’t shut down.

Or go see if you can find some common ground with your Uncle who thinks that climate change is a big hoax no matter what all those “scientists” say

To be fair we’ve chosen this course of action. We are throwing money at the problem, companies in every industry will be seeking a bailout, theres job loss, home loss, transportation loss are all on the table for many people. The virus could be gone soon and we are going to be dealing with it’s effects for years to come. But as it stands we are shutting down the country to slow the virus.

Hospitals being overrun is simply what happens when there’s a pandemic. Panic creates fear and if you feel ill at all you are going to want to be checked.

I guess my point is we are doing the “right” thing by slowing the spread, but doing that is going to test your infrastructure and our hospitals knew they wouldn’t be prepared for something like this. It seems like we are creating our own problems and proceeding to complain about it after the fact.

maybe there wasn’t a right answer in any of this, but we’ll get to live with the results and hopefully be more prepared next time

 

[StealthP3D]

Buying anything is probably a fools errand right now. We don't know where the bottom is and I'm not an expert juggler who can catch falling knives with perfect timing.

This is one of those situations where evenly spaced buys can work wonders for a long-term portfolio. Because no one can pick the exact bottom.

 

[mickle]

I can't help it, I have to rebut your fear-mongering.

Panic isn't necessary to perform prudent acts.

PANIC is BAD.

 

[LJS22]

Buying anything is probably a fools errand right now. We don't know where the bottom is and I'm not an expert juggler who can catch falling knives with perfect timing.

I'll stick with these puts. They work until they don't!

I’d like to see a couple green trading days in a row before putting much more in. Even then I’m not sure what companies come out of this somewhat clean and which ones are damaged goods. It will be a reshuffling of the deck.

 

[Singer3000]

Woow, first time ever I've wished there was a SUPER-ULTRA-DISAGREE button on this forum.

Elon is known for basing his plans and opinions on fundamental insights from first principle thinking. I'm not saying he's perfect and we should blindly trust him, but I bet his opinion on the virus, as with anything, is based on first principle thinking, and therefore should receive a fair bit of credibility.

Also, don't forget you're basing your opinion of Elon's opinion not directly on Elon's words, but on articles written about his words that have been taken out of context. Elon's true words and thoughts will have been conveyed better by some articles than others.

I have read his tweets. I have read the quoted paragraphs from his email. It’s clear that electrical & aeronautical engineer / business magnet Elon Musk thinks he knows better than the world’s leading virologists and healthcare policy practitioners. Why should we be giving him any credibility at all on this?

I have to be honest. He is showing a side of him that is unbecoming. It’s the same side that saw him hire a PI against the guy in Thailand. The same side that reportedly saw him fire people who disagreed with his Model 3 production strategy, that came within a whisker of bankrupting the firm. “Funding secured” and all existing shareholders can stay invested.

Given the existential economic threat potentially posed by this crisis, this is by far the most concerning blind spot I’ve seen from him. What do the Chinese government make of his interventions? Are they dumb too? What about his workers, many of whom will lose loved ones before this is out? What long term damage is he doing to his reputation and by extension Tesla’s brand?

Anyway I’ll dive back to real life, other forums and a bit of the corona thread now. This thread has become useful only to gauge the ongoing normalcy bias and denial prevalent among the TSLA retail community.

 

[SteveG3]

That's a very irresponsible story written and published by Fred Lambert. I know most of us have come to terms with the fact that he's not a real journalist but most of the world probably doesn't know that yet.

Let's look at the conflicting statements:



and:



Basically, it's unprofessional to say they are "apparently planning to defy a shutdown order" while admitting it's unclear whether they have an exemption. And they fail to mention the possibility that the order contains a built-in exemption for autos (acting as if they would need to be granted an exemption).

The whole thing is written with the obvious intention of slamming Tesla without having enough information to support their original claim that it looks like Tesla is defying the order.

It seems to me that we can all agree that Teslas are cars and need a supply of auto parts. Most of those parts come from Fremont or Nevada (depending upon the part). They are actually manufactured in these two locations and shipped to Tesla delivery and service centers. I would like to know how shutting either one of these facilities would comply with the goal of maintaining a supply of auto parts (when it comes to Tesla cars). You can't get Tesla parts at a Ford or GM dealership and, with very few exceptions, you can't get parts for a Tesla from third parties. If your car is in an accident and needs a new body panel, it will come from the Fremont plant.

It doesn't take a genius journalist to realize the Fremont plant must remain in at least partial operation (along with Tesla delivery and service centers) in order to maintain a supply of Tesla parts. Like all modern businesses, they maintain a JIT (just in time) inventory system (instead of stockpiling huge amounts of spare parts in warehouses).

The presses must roll!

LA Times story out from Russ Mitchell

"Alameda County has declared Tesla an “essential business” that is allowed to remain in operation, according to a county spokesman.

What’s essential about automobile manufacturing in the midst of a viral pandemic? “That’s a good question,” said spokesman Ray Kelly, promising more information would be forthcoming. “We’re in uncharted waters right now.”"

Stay home if you want, Musk tells Tesla workers as Fremont plant stays open

County spokesperson said that Tesla is part of the exempted critical business group. Tesla is not defying anything.

Electrek, Fred, once again
[scratch that before mods move my post ; ) ]


Could some of you who have not been shadow banned by on Electrek inform him of this error and request that he retract his "story." Tweet, post on Electrek, let's pull down this false story that the rest of the press is very likely to pile onto.

 

[Eugene Ash]

At this stage of the black swan event. Everyone is just waiting for the first big corp to announce a bankruptcy in order to know where the vulnerable industry is. The fact that the fed fired the bazook QE and the unprecedented 1.5 Trillion repo liquidity means very likely that some large entity is confronting debt payment crisis. Which is reasonable consider how the supply chain has been basically frozen since January. Someone should've declared bankruptcy by now.

Unfortunately, I don't have any inside info on who it is.

Repo facility can be used by banks to quickly turn treasuries into a short term loan, providing liquidity almost instantly. Previously it was not necessary, because banks could and *were willing* to lend to each other for a small fee, then suddenly that willingness evaporated, resulting in unheard of overnight interest rates. FED came in, downplayed it, said it was transitory, establishing a 80B repo facility, which is, if I recall it right, has been >4mo since then. Now we're up to 1500B. FED can't send a company a check to help their payroll struggle, they rely on Banks to do that [edit: provide a loan]. The problem, is - it is not a particularly fast mechanism, and not the most willing. So FED can't really cure fiscal and policy side. They can provide a great lake of water, but horses would be forced to drink from straws (loans) via locked up streams (banks). [Edit: P.S. Unless policymakers dig a wide trench (e.g. "helicopter money", [at least temporary] universal income, debt rollover, incl. mortgages...)

 

[hobbes]

Shouldn´t it be doable for Elon to set up corona testing for employees? This would look better and at the same time insure people don´t get sick and out of work in the end.

 

[SteveG3]

I'm more than a little ambivalent about Fremont running while the bulk of the county is shut down.

I suspect there might be more risk in Fremont plugging along and that leading to one or more developments that are turned into a flood of media stories that try to heavily reframe this as Tesla/Musk 'egomaniac' 'monsters' (the media won't necessarily have any interest in including the facts that the county made the decision or that Musk said that employees can make their own decisions on this).

above might have more risk in it than simply shuttering Fremont for 3 weeks

beyond "optics' potentially being 'weaponized' by the media, additional risks include-

key person risk: Elon obviously the most glaring... but, think about Karpathy, Jerome, etc.

then of course, the fundamental risk of diminishing the potential efficacy of the whole intent of the county 3 week shutdown

 

[sparcs]

Shouldn´t it be doable for Elon to set up corona testing for employees? This would look better and at the same time insure people don´t get sick and out of work in the end.

This is automatic. Massive testing campaign over the whole country rolling out now. I posted the latest in the other thread about thermo fisher.

The most important thing they could do is reassure employees at the factory with regular sanitization, masks and gloves. Similar to how they are operating Giga Shanghai. Maybe that is already being done though. All factories, retail, restaurants in the USA are going to have to start adapting very quickly to reassure employees and customers.