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

[gerebgraus]

I'd rather trump did not get directly involved with tesla. the USA is a country bitterly divided, especially in election year. Making owning/buying a tesla, or its stock a tribal issue is never a good idea. A love of great cars, and protecting the environment should never become a left/right issue.
I hope elon realises this.

I do not think that it is Elon. Elon is clearly closer to the left on the environment and closer to the right on handling the epidemic. (it is bizarre that a virus is political issue, but it is. Yes. Everybody is crazy. ) So Kernen, and Santelli, who were automatically against Tesla because environmentalism is a left hoax suddenly change side and become pro Tesla because Democrats decided in their infinite wisdom that the Coronavirus will kill all of us unless we stop the economy and Musk does not buy that and he is right.

 

[Artful Dodger]

I'd rather trump did not get directly involved with tesla. the USA is a country bitterly divided, especially in election year. Making owning/buying a tesla, or its stock a tribal issue is never a good idea. A love of great cars, and protecting the environment should never become a left/right issue.
I hope elon realises this.

You do realize that there is now an actual chance that the US Federal EV Tax Credit could be reinstated, right? Likely only for 'Made in Texas' models though... (I kid, but hey!)

 

[SO16]

Disagree. No matter how stupid you think somebody may be, that's not a reason to be happy when they won't buy your product anymore. Tesla is in the business of moving product, not cultivating virtuous supporters at the cost of sales.

People have been given the facts if they want to know about them. It doesn’t take that much effort to find out the situation. If people are not convinced after that, that’s their problem. Tesla and Elon should not waste too much time on them.

 

[JRP3]

It doesn’t take that much effort to find out what the actual situation is.

Musk's messaging was emotional and provoked an emotional response. The core of what he was saying was lost in the noise, that's why it was wrong.

 

[PeterJA]

You need to price in a fair bit of bankruptcy risk to get SP down below the $200's, which I don't see as a concern. Given your arguments, I assume you feel Tesla is fairly priced/undervalued at its current $150B market cap? And you justify it with qualitative arguments like "a detailed plan for world domination"? I'd be happy to see the valuation model you've formed your opinion on, otherwise your rudimentary analysis...what goes up must keep going up...seems no less flawed than mine...

If you care to provide anything of substance, I'd be interested in hearing your opinion on the near-term risks I laid out in my original post and why they don't threaten a drop over the summer.

Here is my analysis: What goes up keeps going up if the company keeps kicking ass.

Yes, my justification is qualitative, because I'm invested in TSLA for the longterm. I don't have a quantitative valuation model for Tesla years from now, but I have seen some from folks such as @FrankSG and ARK Invest. All I know for sure is TSLA is gonna be much much higher when millions of Tesla cars and trucks bankrupt most other automakers, millions of robotaxis are gushing cash to Tesla, millions of networked batteries and solar roofs are gushing cash to Tesla for grid services, and god-knows-what other world-dominating innovations from this company surprise us. I don't need to know whether the stock will be a 10-bagger or 100-bagger. It doesn't affect my decision to buy and hold.

I think nobody who understands Tesla knows what a fair valuation is right now. But everybody knows the stock is eventually going to the moon. Traders are just playing games on the way up, trying to pick up pennies from the volatility, or get in lower thanks to shorts or some short-term concern. Each downswing is a self-fulfilling prophesy: folks like @Curt Renz think everyone else will sell on some bad news, so they sell and the prophesy comes true. Experienced folks like Curt can do great that way, but I'm less confident of guessing the bottom, and my shares are in a taxable account. The price would need to cut in half (again) for me to get in lower.

The "near-term risks" you laid out are not risks to me, but opportunities to buy more. If the stock swings to $350 again, I will thank Jesus, Mary and Allah, but as @StealthP3D said, I'm not gonna risk betting on that downswing by selling shares now.

 

[feigen66]

Ars has been publishing covid scare stories non stop. Of course the comments are going to be against Tesla. Doesn’t mean much.

These are the demographic who could comfortably work from home. They will be the last ones feel the pain. We are a month away exhaust all the treasury reserve. Wait and see.

Western States Pact asking federal government for $1 trillion

 

[SO16]

Musk's messaging was emotional and provoked an emotional response. The core of what he was saying was lost in the noise, that's why it was wrong.

Yes he could have done a better job getting the message across. Would him being more articulate matter in 6 months? Unlikely.

 

[jhm]

Look who entered the mud pit lol...problem is alameda might do the exact opposite just to spite the orange one.

View attachment 541028

This does not help.

Edit, referring to the meddling of the Trump.

 

[Artful Dodger]

Buy an electric bicycle

Sweet. More customers, bigger base:

Elon Musk says Tesla might make an electric bike | BusinessInsider

Cheers!

 

[JRP3]

Yes he could have done a better job getting the message across. Would him being more articulate matter in 6 months? Unlikely.

I expect some will harbor long lasting hostility. It didn't have to go down this way.

 

[printf42]

Not sure it’s already mentioned or everyone kind of assumed:
实探特斯拉上海工厂：生产正在有序进行 新获40亿贷款用于二期建设
Appears GF3 already resumed normal production.

Not expecting MSM to cover this, since the GF3 halt news title is still in my news feed.

 

[Tslynk67]

I wasn't going to bother posting about options today because it seemed pretty obvious but this is interesting. PUTs are not selling. CALLs are. Is this a gamble by THEM that the SP will come down?
Or is this the buyers realizing there is no point in buying PUTs at these prices?

View attachment 541033

Some idiot bought one off me yesterday

 

[Captkerosene]

There are two different markets: one is for Tesla the car, and the other is for TSLA the stock. Not only has EM opened up half the country to owning the car, he's opened up half the country to owning the stock.

 

[ZeApelido]

I expect some will harbor long lasting hostility. It didn't have to go down this way.

Yes. Folks shouldn't act as if liberals are necessarily taking offense to the factory opening up - they are most certainly taking offense to Elon repeatedly bringing up pseudoscience.

He could have taking the same course without appealing to ignorance. This would have still gained him conservative fans without alienating people who respect science.

 

[Prunesquallor]

Weak MMD. Stock shooting up. Upper BB in danger.

 

[LN1_Casey]

Sweet. More customers, bigger base:

Elon Musk says Tesla might make an electric bike | BusinessInsider

Cheers!

"There was some people in the studio who wanted to make a scooter, but I was like, 'Uh, no,'"

As a motorcycle rider, I approve, Lol.

Though it does make me wonder if Tesla does make a Bike in the future, would it or will it regardless make their Tesla AP move over for bikes who are splitting traffic? Last I knew, they didn't.

 

[jerry33]

Once Alameda County gives Tesla the official go ahead I expect Elon will tweet that he no longer believes Tesla is overvalued. That or a Battery Day announcement could come any time now.

Musk never said Tesla was over-valued, he said the share price is too high. That's not the same thing. I take that to mean that it's too high for a beginning investor--unless they are with a brokerage that allows fractional shares.

 

[Artful Dodger]

Disagree. No matter how stupid you think somebody may be, that's not a reason to be happy when they won't buy your product anymore. Tesla is in the business of moving product, not cultivating virtuous supporters at the cost of sales.

Elon's done it before:

Elon Musk to critic: No Tesla for you! | Money.CNN.com (Feb 2016)

Bottom line is, there are some customers you just don't want. Let'em go elsewhere to be unsatisfied, since that's their nature.

 

[feigen66]

Musk's messaging was emotional and provoked an emotional response. The core of what he was saying was lost in the noise, that's why it was wrong.

Our brain is not biological wired for logical thinking.
Eloni ismaximizing emotional memory since that's the most effective way to reach amass audiences:
Emotional memory - Scholarpedia

Our pages of discussion on Elon's tweet alone is the evidence. It's pretty rational really if you realize how human brain is structured. Elon's Neuralink is dedicated to neuron manipulation. He must have studied this.

An integrated brain-machine interface platform with thousands of channels

 

[StealthP3D]

This makes it very difficult to parse out which of his tweets are strategic and which are emotional rants. Many are both.

My view is that Musk is the greatest and most brilliant businessman of our lifetime. He is also an absolute master of using the new medium of Twitter, for various purposes. But, he could be even more effective if he better controlled his propensity to publicly rant, particularly on days when he is in a dark mood.

You are assuming you can tell which posts help his cause and which harm it. That puts you on a pedestal above the puppeteer that is pulling the strings.

Please note that I'm not saying he is perfect and can't improve, we all can. What I'm saying is that his posts need to appear emotional in order to be effective and the net effects of his posts are complex and difficult to determine. A post that might appear to you as an unrestrained emotional outburst might be his most effective post. The process by which humans tend to form opinions is not as simple or as rational as you appear to believe. Elon understands this and uses it to his advantage. For you to say his rant is harmful to his goals fails to consider that he may know more than you and be able to see more deeply. Because he is not perfect some of his attempts to control the narrative will fall flat. Therefore we must take the good with the bad, but to claim that you can tell which is which (and that the bad was not a strategic error but an unrestrained emotional outburst) might be displaying a good amount of over-confidence in your own abilities to understand what is really going on, compared to the proven results of the master.

Discipline is tied very closely to success. To claim otherwise ignores that it's basically unheard of to have a long string of incredible successes without an unusual amount of self-discipline. At some point, as the successes stack up, it becomes untenable to attribute them to luck or good fortune. His achievements prove his discipline. That's how closely amazing achievement and self-discipline are tied together.

If a particularly crazy rant causes him to slide 2 steps backward (but potentially allows him to progress 3 steps forward, in time), he will accept that tradeoff. His first principles thinking demands that he take it. And he knows that time tends to heal all wounds while progress tends to build upon progress. So a certain amount of risk-taking is in order. It's not a science - it's an art.