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

[Troy]

Thank you Troy. I think you are 300 -400 low in Canada.
Cheers.

I would be happy with that. My est for Canada is completely based on the number of entries from Canada in my survey here.

 

[Cattledog]

The missing portion went into X2, X3, X4, X5 sales. There is no drop in total BMWs sold.

That's an unknown statement. Could be that Camry owners bought X2s and 3-series owners bought Model 3s.

 

[MartinAustin]

I feel like I am throwing a dead carcass to a shcool of Piranha, but here we go.

From Oilprice.com , 1 source for oil and energy news. Notice what is the breaking story on this site.

Report: Tesla Is Short Of Q3 Vehicle Delivery Target | OilPrice.com

It actually goes to show who the readers of Electrek are. The fossil fuel industry. I am sure they [Electrek] get money when other sites link to them... hence the bipolar headlines. InsideEVs appears to be succumbing to the same greed.

 

[Carl Raymond]

Is Model 3 supply constrained now or not ?

View attachment 461225

Elon replies to a three paragraph tweet, reinforcing the potential of summon to go viral and spread knowledge about Tesla.

I don’t think we can read anything into it regarding endorsing the accuracy of the three paragraphs.

The recently leaked email about 110k orders in a 100k quarter tells us pretty accurately where demand is at.

 

[elasalle]

Elon replies to a three paragraph tweet, reinforcing the potential of summon to go viral and spread knowledge about Tesla.

I don’t think we can read anything into it regarding endorsing the accuracy of the three paragraphs.

The recently leaked email about 110k orders in a 100k quarter tells us pretty accurately where demand is at.

110K orders was before V10. ...

 

[JRP3]

Interesting interview with Dan Blondal, CEO of Nano One Materials. Gets into some technical stuff on cathode powder production with easy to understand explanations for lay people, but also talks about Jeff Dahn's recent research and it's significance, and gives his opinions of the developing battery sector. A worthwhile watch.

 

[bhtooefr]

That itself is an amazing fact. Tesla has made it so much more efficient that it beats everyone in every category for mass production electric cars. You would think Nissan would have at least been there by now. And it also says the smart car is a very poor attempt.

The problem is the square hatchback shape causing a greatly increased drag coefficient... and the Smart makes it worse by being tall, and not long at all - more frontal area and less length to reduce the drag coefficient is a bad recipe.

The Hyundai Ioniq Electric and the Toyota Prius Prime (in charge depleting mode) both slightly beat the Model 3 on efficiency, but with much smaller batteries (28 kWh and 8.8 kWh respectively, IIRC), and as a result, much shorter all-electric range (although the Prius Prime is a PHEV and gets long range from its ICE). And, they both have streamlined fastback shapes like the Model 3. Nothing with an all-electric range range anywhere close to a Model 3 has efficiency anywhere close, though.

 

[Thekiwi]

Yes, the same method. My final S+X delivery estimate on 30 June 2019 here was 17,533 units compared to 17,722 actual deliveries. However, I have no idea if the accuracy will be as good this time.

Better to be conservative if unsure.

Out of interest, do you include Mexico deliveries in your USA figures or “Rest of APAC“?

 

[Steve m]

I was looking at BYND and its fails to delivers. BYND is on the Threshold Security list. BYND has 60 million shares but only 22 million in float. They had 11 fail to delivers in the 2nd half of August but the numbers are much larger the TSLA. While TSLA had a 600K shares fails, BYND had almost 3.5 million fail to cover shares. On Aug 15th BYND closed at 144.20 and on Aug 30th it closed at 167.63. So despite the 3.5 million shares that had fails to delivers BYND was up by 16%.

 

[RobStark]

That itself is an amazing fact. Tesla has made it so much more efficient that it beats everyone in every category for mass production electric cars. You would think Nissan would have at least been there by now. And it also says the smart car is a very poor attempt.

Hyundai Ioniq EV is the efficiency king at 136 combined MPGe, but not very good by other metrics

 

[RobStark]

Elon replies to a three paragraph tweet, reinforcing the potential of summon to go viral and spread knowledge about Tesla.

I don’t think we can read anything into it regarding endorsing the accuracy of the three paragraphs.

The recently leaked email about 110k orders in a 100k quarter tells us pretty accurately where demand is at.

It tells us about total Tesla demand, not model or trim demand.

Only nutjobs question demand for sub $40k Model 3s.

Model 3P and Model S remain question marks.

 

[acoste]

That's an unknown statement. Could be that Camry owners bought X2s and 3-series owners bought Model 3s.

BMW followed the US trend. People buy more SUVs these days.

 

[Carl Raymond]

Its not the speed. The speed is fine.

What is annoying traffic is the decision making. It stops randomly for random reasons. It also put itself in reverse and drive back and forth because the car doesn't make sharp enough turns until it's too late. The AI currently is no Half Life, it's on the level of Doom 1.

I would like to add that AI decision making is currently the Achilles heel that forces people into making interventions especially trying to exit off a highway during heavy traffic. The car just doesn't know what to do..it'll slow down and sometimes speed up..but can't seem to slow down enough to make the turn or speed up enough to make the turn. A lot of the time there will just be a car parallel to my car and obviously a slight speed up would solve the issue.

Falls into the same category as observing the low price of TSLA and the lack of students marching in Texas.

As long as CAGR is high, COGS is falling, the count of people marching is climbing, the next version of autopilot is better, I’m happy.

Where we are is where we are. What matters is the rate and direction of improvement/change, and it’s all good.

 

[Paracelsus]

Another huge reason to think Jeremy Clarkson of Top Gear is white trash:

Former Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson calls activist Greta Thunberg a 'spoilt brat'

(Elon has already gone after Jeremy in the past for bad behavior.........against Tesla and EV's in general)

 

[hacer]

From the SEC data on fails to deliver 2nd half of August 2019

20190815 88160R101 TSLA 43041 TESLA INC COM STK (DE) 219.62
20190816 88160R101 TSLA 54297 TESLA INC COM STK (DE) 215.64
20190819 88160R101 TSLA 25687 TESLA INC COM STK (DE) 219.94
20190820 88160R101 TSLA 93490 TESLA INC COM STK (DE) 226.83
20190821 88160R101 TSLA 21323 TESLA INC COM STK (DE) 225.86
20190822 88160R101 TSLA 7655 TESLA INC COM STK (DE) 220.83
20190823 88160R101 TSLA 85210 TESLA INC COM STK (DE) 222.15
20190826 88160R101 TSLA 720 TESLA INC COM STK (DE) 211.4
20190827 88160R101 TSLA 250337 TESLA INC COM STK (DE) 215
20190828 88160R101 TSLA 6167 TESLA INC COM STK (DE) 214.08
20190829 88160R101 TSLA 12843 TESLA INC COM STK (DE) 215.59
20190830 88160R101 TSLA 1196 TESLA INC COM STK (DE) 221.71



for a total of 601966 shares so 2% of the short interest in 2 weeks of data.
...

You can't add those numbers together - they are already cumulative totals of outstanding fails. (At least this is what FINRA tells the SEC it is). Thus on Aug 26th the total of all previously sold but still undelivered past the settlement date TSLA shares that FINRA admitted to was 720 shares.

I do find the FINRA daily information on short volume quite interesting. If you integrate it between NASDAQ reports of total short interest from 8/30 to 9/13 you find that 8,139,009 shares were sold short during that period but the short interest declined by 860,698 shares during the period. This means that 8,999,707 short shares were covered during the same period. However the total trading volume only had a grand total of 12,967,593 actual longs shares having been sold over this period (total of all sales NOT marked as short sales). Thus there could only have been a grand total of 3,967,886 shares actually purchased long and held during this same period which is a mere 7.7% of the trading volume during the period. The stock price soared from $229.15 to $246.96 as a result.

Welcome to the wacky world of greater than 50% of all sales being short sales. Needless to say one thing this means is that a large fraction of the buying from the short sellers comes from (theoretically previous) shorts covering. It makes me wonder about whether there is a game played (by non-market makers) to effectively have naked shorts by near-simultaneous shorting and covering (rolling forward the required delivery date). There isn't really a punishment for an FTD that doesn't last too long so once the "ball is in the air" they can keep putting off borrowing of the shares indefinitely by creating new shorts at the same time they cover the old ones such that the delivery is permanently pushed into the future 3 days at a time. Not something a retail investor could do, but hedge funds probably can if they're a member of the exchange.

Also worth noting that FINRA explicitly shows the SHO exempt short sales (the market maker naked shorts) too. During that period they were only responsible for 236,147 shares of naked short sales, or 0.88% of all short sales.

This all assumes you don't think FINRA is cooking the books. Personally I'm skeptical because of that magical period when there were no FTDs at all which lasted much, much longer than any other stock in history with over 1 million shares per day daily volume. I think that was just a mistake where their cooking methodology accidentally left a poo stain.

 

[TNEVol]

Yeah. The SEC has been broken and ineffective during the tenure of the past several administrations. No one should get their hopes up about that changing with a new administration.

Elizabeth Warren

 

[Steve m]

You can't add those numbers together - they are already cumulative totals of outstanding fails. (At least this is what FINRA tells the SEC it is). Thus on Aug 26th the total of all previously sold but still undelivered past the settlement date TSLA shares that FINRA admitted to was 720 shares.

I do find the FINRA daily information on short volume quite interesting. If you integrate it between NASDAQ reports of total short interest from 8/30 to 9/13 you find that 8,139,009 shares were sold short during that period but the short interest declined by 860,698 shares during the period. This means that 8,999,707 short shares were covered during the same period. However the total trading volume only had a grand total of 12,967,593 actual longs shares having been sold over this period (total of all sales NOT marked as short sales). Thus there could only have been a grand total of 3,967,886 shares actually purchased long and held during this same period which is a mere 7.7% of the trading volume during the period. The stock price soared from $229.15 to $246.96 as a result.

Welcome to the wacky world of greater than 50% of all sales being short sales. Needless to say one thing this means is that a large fraction of the buying from the short sellers comes from (theoretically previous) shorts covering. It makes me wonder about whether there is a game played (by non-market makers) to effectively have naked shorts by near-simultaneous shorting and covering (rolling forward the required delivery date). There isn't really a punishment for an FTD that doesn't last too long so once the "ball is in the air" they can keep putting off borrowing of the shares indefinitely by creating new shorts at the same time they cover the old ones such that the delivery is permanently pushed into the future 3 days at a time. Not something a retail investor could do, but hedge funds probably can if they're a member of the exchange.

Also worth noting that FINRA explicitly shows the SHO exempt short sales (the market maker naked shorts) too. During that period they were only responsible for 236,147 shares of naked short sales, or 0.88% of all short sales.

This all assumes you don't think FINRA is cooking the books. Personally I'm skeptical because of that magical period when there were no FTDs at all which lasted much, much longer than any other stock in history with over 1 million shares per day daily volume. I think that was just a mistake where their cooking methodology accidentally left a poo stain.

Yes these are the aggregate number of shares that are still un-delivered

How about looking at the delta each day?

We do know if a stock is on the list where the total aggregate fail to delivers exceeds 0.5% of the total amount of the stock for 5 days.

Tesla not being on that list indicates that the eventually most of these fail to delivers do get completed.

 

[Carl Raymond]

Another huge reason to think Jeremy Clarkson of Top Gear is white trash:

Former Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson calls activist Greta Thunberg a 'spoilt brat'

(Elon has already gone after Jeremy in the past for bad behavior.........against Tesla and EV's in general)

Jeremy can call the helpline.

 

[Intl Professor]

Elizabeth Warren

I would like to see her go after the SEC for all the progressive reasons, but. A Warren presidency is going to have a lot to do and we won't know for some time what its priorities will be. Watch the outcome of the platform struggles at the convention. They are resolved after a lot of special pleading and are notoriously ignored in content once the new administration settles in. The Dems believe in government and largely take a more practical approach than the more "principled" (aka, ideological) Reeps. Example: the Priebus report on reaching out to Hispanics was ignored.

Her darling is the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau where she will assuredly make sure its freedom is unleashed. Concern about SEC is consumer protection, for sure, but there is a mountain of a structural problem: the disparity between government salary schedules and working in the private sector. Change that and you change the world, but how do you do it?

Edit: We could learn a lot from the British and French in how they prepare public servants for administrative leadership positions.

 

[VValleyEV]

Holy Moly, thanks for pointing that out.

I did my small part and posted the following:

>>>>>
I encourage those who have commented negatively to dig just a little deeper. The total lifecycle of EVs produces far less emissions than gasoline-based vehicles. You can cherry pick data to attempt to show otherwise, but that picture stands throughout the world and is getting better. One of the places has shown dramatic progress is in the US: our energy utilities are moving away from coal big-time: 39% of production was coal-based in 2014, and that had gone down to 27% in 2018.

Note that the EV you purchase today continues to produce lower and lower emissions each year as the utilities get cleaner, whereas your gasoline-powered car emissions remain the same at best or more likely get worse. Also consider that there are far fewer parts in an EV drivetrain, requiring way less maintenance than a gasoline-powered engine and transmission.

Here are two very good sources:
1. The big global picture
Factcheck: How electric vehicles help to tackle climate change

2. A nice overview of how the picture has getting better in the US, with a nice color-coded map, much better than words:
New Data Show Electric Vehicles Continue to Get Cleaner

>>>>>

I scanned the responses to my comment post on yahoo news. I am sad to report that the responses are not encouraging. The usual collection of rants about socialism and totalitarianism being the only goals of the Climate Change Activists, claims that CC is a hoax with the above as the goal, EVs just make things worse, etc.

Here is a typical one:
“Producing an electric car means you now have one more car on the roads, not one car with better economy. If you don't crush your old car what have you accomplished?”
(I did respond but have low expectations for a real dialog)

My favorite:
“Well Rollin Manure, I really dont give a damn about you or your electric damn vehicles”.
(My first name is Rollin. I politely asked him if he was making a point).

Is the yahoo news audience typical? I sure hope not but would not be surprised if it is.

Sigh.