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

[Nocturnal]

One thing I'm sick of seeing is people saying that Ark's price target doesn't make sense if they keep selling to maintain their percentages. And sometimes those comments are coming from finance "journalists". Really people? That's rebalancing 101.

I suspect that almost all of the TSLA weak longs have bailed out during these last two high volume trading sessions. Meanwhile, strong longs are standing pat. These two factors should keep asked prices high and likely continuing to rise.

Right now Facebook is full of people bemoaning that they sold at 200, 300, 400, 600 etc. ​

 

[Sparky4life]

Have so much work to do, just can't stop watching the talking heads lose their minds on CNBC. Hilarious.

They literally can't come up with a fundamental reason why a company about to kill XOM, Toyota and Uber is worth $150B. Lol

I don’t get the argument that TSLA is overvalued. Facebook has a market cap of $600B. They make fake news. Google has a market cap of almost $1T. They make ads.

https://www.quora.com/Why-are-tech-companies-valued-so-highly

...Tech is inherently a series of temporary monopolies caused by being the first to invent something, combined with business models that seek out long term competitive advantage. In other industries, competitors emerge and reduce your margins, but in tech, by the time they've caught you you're on to something else.

Sound familiar? Tesla is not an automaker.

 

[sbradbury]

I wish I was a little more educated on how to protect gains. I've always just bought and held stock, and now here I am sitting on almost 500k of unrealized gains... wtf do I do?

I do not use margin, I don't need the money right now, and I'm under 40.

 

[ByeByeJohnny]

I trade options but accumulate shares. Elon has said he be the last to sell his shares. I’m standing with Elon.

Elon is in my will. He will get my stocks. Just trying to help future generations.

This of course assuming I don't blow it all on megayachts.

 

[Mad@gascar]

I couldn't place any trading order and couldn't view my stock holdings. There was even a notice message stating they knew of the problem and was working on fixing the problem.

I can confirm this. Couldn't log in for most of the day. Folks, if you don't want to be locked out of your account, don't use Merrill Edge. I'm done with them. Stock tanking? Need to sell in a hurry? Chances are you'll be out of luck, to the tune of "We are sorry, due to above-average traffic, our website is experiencing technical difficulties. Enjoy your losses! Thank you for being a valued Merrill Edge customer."

 

[Pezpunk]

This is getting intense! I have all my friends and family telling me to sell. Everyday they are telling me. I’m getting so sick and tried of it. Some of them are investment analysts so they think they know better. They say I’m not reading the other side (short side). I’m not selling though. Until they give me a legitimate reason why then I won’t be selling my core shares. Anyone else hearing about this from loved ones?

met some new co-workers a few weeks back; during the meeting it came out that I am the guy that drives the purple Tesla. They asked if i had any stock, I said yes...... (didn't say how much, haha), someone mentioned it was up to $450, and two of them blurted out, "DUDE, SELL!"

didn't take their advice, obviously. it's surprising the amount of investment advice strangers are willing to dispense, and the quality is almost as good as what you'd get from a professional TV analyst.

 

[Bobfitz1]

Done.

TMC is an incredible community Gave me insight to buy starting in 2012! Thanks to all.
Subscription done.

 

[Fact Checking]

Anybody recall that big buy of $800 Jun 21 Calls @ $16 for a total of about $1.8M

How's that trade workin' out?

Cheers!

Those calls are now worth around $303 - i.e. a 19-bagger. Nice trade!

 

[willow_hiller]

I wish I was a little more educated on how to protect gains. I've always just bought and held stock, and now here I am sitting on almost 500k of unrealized gains... wtf do I do?

I do not use margin, I don't need the money right now, and I'm under 40.

I've only ever traded paper options, but I imagine that for protecting unrealized gains, some protective puts are probably pretty cheap right now.

 

[Prunesquallor]

Nice calm trajectory now. About +$10/hr. Helps soothe the nerves.

 

[Derek Vinyard]

an anthym for the shorts !

 

[phantasms]

Can we invest in TeslaMotorsClub? I hear they've been getting a lot of supporting members lately.

 

[azaz]

need some advice....

have 116 TSLA shares I've accumulated over last 3 years that I intend to hold for 5+ years and also 20 2/28 1000 calls now up $180k and 13 3/20 1000c up ~140k that I bought a couple weeks for $8k total pre-earnings to play a possible squeeze.

trying to figure out my strategy from here, if it matters i'm young and jobless, tryna figure out my next path here in terms of long term gains and minimizing the tax hit and setting up my future

 

[phantasms]

Is it possible to convert TSLA into Teslas without a tax hit?

 

[kishdude]

I wish I was a little more educated on how to protect gains. I've always just bought and held stock, and now here I am sitting on almost 500k of unrealized gains... wtf do I do?

I do not use margin, I don't need the money right now, and I'm under 40.

This is fairly simple. If you want to protect your gains, buy some puts against your shares. It's just like insurance. The longer out the puts are the more expensive they are so the bigger premium you will have to pay. This will protect your gains and still give you more profits if the stock goes higher, but your downside risk is limited.

 

[DFibRL8R]

Oops.

Saudi Arabia fund dumped nearly all of its Tesla shares before the surge — CNBC

 

[trix]

Tesla ‘casino’ lures back famed short seller

Andrew Left is back. He never left.

 

[Fact Checking]

BTW I have a suspicion that Super Bowl adds by other car companies may have had the unintended effect of showing off just how much better and further ahead Tesla is. And all the players talking about their Teslas!

I agree 100%, I believe the Super Bowl legitimized Tesla to a very large percentage of the U.S. population, both as a future oriented company they can now buy premium products from, and as an investment target.

 

[gluu]

As for euphoria, here is my perspective.
I bought the majority of my TSLA position in Feb 2015, when the P/S ration was 8.06. I still use P/S as the primary guide to valuation for very high growth companies in which I strongly believe. I use it only as my price target, not my investment decision. At 8.06 I thought TSLA was a bargain. I still do. That would be $1115 per charge would consider selling only if P/S exceeded 15. That would be at $2076 today. Of course, The sales will be much higher when that happens because TSLA will continue to have naysayers. Thus I might well not sell even for 2,076. Were that to happen I would certainly look at alternatives.

Thanks for this. Why P/S vs P/Gross Profit or P/EBITDA or EBIT? Something needs to be said for the margins, with some kind of option pricing for TSLA's embedded call option on autonomy.

 

[Alphacrux]

FYI: Fidelity just increased their margin requirement on TSLA short puts due to 'increased volatility'.

I woke up this morning to find a margin call on my account of over $100K on my deep out of the money put positions (and a stock price that zoomed up a couple hundred dollars in the last two days) and went 'what the...?'

After calling them I found out that 'due to increased volatility', we have increased margin requirements on short TSLA puts from 25% to 82%!
Short put margin at Fidelity is calculated: $ requirement = 0.82 * 100 * stock price - out of the money amount + current premium * 100.

I fixed it by closing out a couple of positions (making a tidy profit) and sending in some extra cash. It's kind of crazy though because the puts were so deep out of the money (590 strike and below). So just be aware that brokerages can change requirements anytime they want at their whim, sometimes very significantly.

I forgot to ask them if their short call (naked call) margin requirements also increased. If so, bad for the short sellers...