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

[StealthP3D]

Q3 was good Q4 should be good/great.

What is everyone’s opinion for Q1 though? Will China be cranking out new cars to help offset for seasonality?

I would be surprised if China could offset natural automobile seasonality. But it would be a mistake to think TSLA will continue to be valued on the basis of quarter to quarter profits. People are looking at the business model, is it viable. If the answer is "yes" the stock goes up. Well, that's obviously an oversimplification...

The good thing is Q1 2019 was terrible (well, not really but the numbers looked bad primarily due to the transition to worldwide sales). So Q1 2020 should look very good in comparison, especially considering they will probably have a lot of growth expenses that get costed in that period. The important numbers in Q1 are China production and sales and gross margins. I'm thinking if the first quarter of China sales have positive gross margins the stock will climb to a new trading range.

 

[StealthP3D]

You will still have valuation arguments then though of course.

That's funny because that's as certain as the sun rising in the morning!

 

[NakedLong]

Yeah, it sure "seems" sensible.

That's why most individual investors have such terrible returns. They miss out on the largest gains. One thing I've noticed over the years is that a stock can go a lot higher than you ever thought possible. And it can do the same on the downside. It would be sensible to sell whenever you thought it might go down substantially if you were amazingly accurate in your ability to forecast future stock price movements. It's a pretty rare person that can do this. Those that can turn from poor into millionaires and from millionaires into billionaires very quickly. Most of the rest just have poor overall returns and would better off in a mutual fund.

Missing out on unexpected upsides is devasting to portfolio performance.

I was kicking myself a bit never swing trading the 250 to 350 range from 2017 to 2019. I came to the conclusion to hold 90% so that I don't miss out on the eventual tsunami of gains which most longs foresee, and use the other 10% to try and swing trade ranges to add to my position. So far I have not really had a chance to do any swing trading because I already have maxed out the amount of stock I'm comfortable buying in Tesla, and the price has been so obviously depressed for so long. As a bullish investor, I'm expecting the stock to follow Ark's thesis of 600-6000, so my idea behind swing trading is to try and maximise the stock I hold in Tesla before they reach FSD.

 

[theschnell]

Record option volume in Tesla as sentiment swings to bullish extreme : options

Saw this morning, couldn't respond until now. This is depressing. Stop buying calls people! It puts market makers on the same side as the shorts, and they have a lot of money. If you believe in the company, buy shares. If you're here to gamble, you'll lose. The market makers always win over the long term. Yes they lost with the surprise ER, but they're making it all back by selling everyone a bunch of calls and holding the stock back.

This is an oversimplified view, in that market makers can also buy shares to hedge their sold call positions, but I'm convinced that most of the time they push the stock down (or up) as necessary to hit that max pain number, or move the max pain number by selling more options higher on the curve.

My point is, if you want to gamble with a few options that's fine, but if that's a primary way of "investing" in TSLA, you're going to lose and the money you lost is an actual loss, not a paper loss like many of us experienced who held stock through the lows but never sold.

 

[VValleyEV]

I was confused, because 45 minutes from now is when it normally opens for me.

Then I re-read your post and realized you weren't talking about US daylight savings time, but European. Yes, most of Europe uses daylight savings time... but not all, and I'm in the "not all" section

It'd be totally pointless here. We lose 6 1/2 minutes of daylight per day this time of year. The "gain" would be gone after just nine days.

LOL, something in common between Arizona and Iceland. Here in northern Arizona we call it “Mountain Stranded Time”. We moved here from California, and I must say I don’t miss the clock-changing folderol. And I get it, this is one place where daylight hours in the morning are more valuable than those in the evening.

 

[Zero CO2]

Yeah, it sure "seems" sensible.

That's why most individual investors have such terrible returns. They miss out on the largest gains. One thing I've noticed over the years is that a stock can go a lot higher than you ever thought possible. And it can do the same on the downside. It would be sensible to sell whenever you thought it might go down substantially if you were amazingly accurate in your ability to forecast future stock price movements. It's a pretty rare person that can do this. Those that can turn from poor into millionaires and from millionaires into billionaires very quickly. Most of the rest just have poor overall returns and would better off in a mutual fund.

Missing out on unexpected upsides is devasting to portfolio performance.

See Bogle's books on Mutual Funds he cranks out the numbers to prove these points about market timing ...

 

[StarFoxisDown!]

Good thing macros are up big today because the stock has seemed to lost most of its strength and momentum. Maybe we'll see it resume it's rise later in the week but its flatlined now and I would expect some down days coming.....if the old tesla pattern continues. Hopefully it doesn't

Edit: And as soon as I say that we drop into the red. Yep momentum is gone now

 

[Artful Dodger]

Okay, so what happened?

 

[Huskyf]

What's going on ??? RED RED RED

 

[Zaxxon]

Okay, so what happened?

The opposite of what happened during the first hour of trading.

That'll be $0.05.

 

[Zero CO2]

I disagree - it's the opposite actually. Profit-taking of a company growing as fast as Tesla is actually a sign of greed and fear. The desire to "lock-in" gains by selling is the number one beginner investor mistake.

There are valid reasons to take profits (tax reasons, portfolio balancing, etc) but the fact that it has sudden gains is not a good reason. Quite the opposite in my experience. A growth stock that jumps to a new trading level is actually a good point to buy more - not sell.

This is a great point and when i was a "green" investor I did this exact thing with Apple and sold half my position ...due to all the FUD spread about the iphone killers ...and my fear they were right
i am not making the same mistake with Tesla... Apple

 

[EVNow]

150k shares per minute dumped for 3 minutes.

 

[mongo]

Okay, so what happened?

Well, 157k, 146k, and 143k share sold per minute in a 3 minute span per Yahoo.

500k share sell limit order fat fingered as market? (or sell vs buy)?

MMD?

And now GREEN. ish...

 

[Remus]

That's what separates the good investors from the bad. It's an art, not a science. I doubled my position at $184 because I decided TSLA was a winner, not a loser. If you disagree, time to exit. But I'm riding this most innovative company unless I see fundamental developments that I just don't like.

I apologise if I sounded offensive. Wasn't meant to. I found it hard to follow these "general rules"

 

[StarFoxisDown!]

Feels like wall st has essentially been watching over the past 2 hours to see if the buying volume has dried up and as soon as they felt it had, started pushing it down .

Imagine a day when just because there's not major buying volume that the stock doesn't always have to be manipulated down

 

[RoadsterPlease]

Sorry guys, took some more profit, sold around 2/3 of my shares today. Not because I don't believe in the stock anymore, but because we will retest 300 before we cross at 420 next year. We just went up too high too fast since wednesday. If battery investor day will announce a breakthrough in cell manufacturing I'll buy every single share back.

 

[StealthP3D]

Okay, so what happened?

What happened is the stock manipulators just told you where today's trading floor is ($325). There is probably a bunch of buy limit orders sitting at $325 that they didn't want to take out.

 

[humbaba]

What just happened?

If it were profit taking the sales would have been spread out over time so as to not exceed buying interest and realize the most return on the investment.

If someone wanted to short a company for profit because they believed the company was a fraud, structurally unprofitable, whatever, they would quietly short in low volume to build a large position before the crash came, then they would cash out when the stock price crashed. This is the classic sell high/buy low strategy.

But when your purpose is to harm a company's valuation you short sell in high volume during periods of relatively low transactions to overwhelm buy interest and drive the stock price down. If this combines with other factors it can create a significant drop and allow swing trading to build profit for continued shorting. But even without other factors it can disrupt momentum and cause a stock to be priced lower than the market otherwise would.

 

[KarenRei]

As a reminder to people, this was the shape of the Q3 short squeeze last year - up to the macro burst that popped it. The cursor is centred on the last day of trading before the ER came out.

 

[goinfraftw]

As a reminder to people, this was the shape of the Q3 short squeeze last year - up to the macro burst that popped it. The cursor is centred on the last day of trading before the ER came out.

View attachment 470791

With such a heavily manipulated stock, the Andrea James tweet about ignoring the day-to-day seems resoundingly important. Namely - just look at the deliveries and earnings reports, look at big macro trends, ignore what's being said, and invest wisely and for the long-term.

Paris Climate Accord. Paris Climate Accord. Paris Climate Accord.