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

[Foghat]

Solar and wind curtailment reached record levels in 2019, says AEMO | RenewEconomy

This solar farm has to switch off every second day due to negative prices | RenewEconomy

This provides some indication of the market for energy storage batteries.... not just time shifting electricity into the evening peak, but charging the battery when prices are negative and discharging when prices are higher...

So often when prices are negative during the day, there may still be high prices during the evening peak.....

And if batteries can contribute to "system strength" they can keep RE running as a higher percentage of the grid...... this last part is a bit like FSD ... it needs to be proven to work, then the regulators need to be happy...

What happens to the economy when all transport stops fueling at the gas pump and starts fueling up at the outlet?

Is the most valuable global commodity oil and gas at that point?

Or does it become the KWh?

Will Exxon, Aramco, etc...be able to block out the sun and prevent this global value transition?

Tesla is on a path to become a “juggernaut” of disruption on the entire global economic fabric as we know it. And it won’t be linear.

 

[MC3OZ]

What happens to the economy when all transport stops fueling at the gas pump and starts fueling up at the outlet?

Is the most valuable global commodity oil and gas at that point?

Or does it become the KWh?

Will Exxon, Aramco, etc...be able to block out the sun and prevent this global value transition?

Tesla is on a path to become a “juggernaut” of disruption on the entire global economic fabric as we know it. And it won’t be linear.

I totally agree with your post, long term there are no economic or technical impediments to 100% sustainable energy and transport.....

 

[Buckminster]

Electric Vehicle Freedom Act risks IONITY style sticker shock in USA - Electrek

This will be a huge mistake for the US - another nail in the non-Tesla coffin.

 

[CorneliusXX]

WSJ Subscription required:
The Agony of the Tesla Bears: $8.4 Billion of Losses in Five Weeks

Summary:

• Fred Lande closed his short position at a loss: "Someone could go buy a brand new Toyota Camry with the loss that I took,” said Mr. Lande, who frequently trades for his personal account and runs a chat room for retail stock traders.
• “Oh damn, I got my butt kicked,” was the thinking, said Robert Majteles, a private investor who rode Tesla’s swings up and down for years before being forced to close out his bearish position last week. “It’s the biggest set of losses that I’ve ever taken in 20 years.”
• Tesla has become one of the most popular stocks to trade ever.
• "Bears point to how Tesla has never posted an annual profit and has previously missed numerous financial and production targets. They note Mr. Musk’s penchant for overstatement, including an infamous 2018 episode in which he claimed to have lined up funding for a buyout, leading to a Securities and Exchange Commission settlement that temporarily stripped him of his chairmanship. They say other car companies will likely catch up to Tesla’s strides in electric vehicles"
• "Mr. Chanos, who said Tesla’s recent profits can be attributed to its sales of tax credits, rather than earnings from car sales, said he won’t end his short positions despite recent deep losses. People close to the matter said his bearish Tesla position amounts to about 2% of his firm’s portfolio."
• "Other funds burned by Tesla’s rally include Lakewood Capital Management and David Einhorn’s Greenlight Capital, The Wall Street Journal has reported."
• "Amy Wu Silverman, a managing director at RBC Capital Markets who recommends derivatives trades to clients, said she has been fielding calls from clients trying to predict how high the stock might go. “There’s obviously a cult identity around” the company, Ms. Wu Silverman said. She has personally bought bearish put options on the stock, contracts that have sunk in value as the stock has continued its climb. “Tesla is my widowmaker,” she said.

Yes, thank heaven that naked short selling was banned:

View attachment 509744

Seriously, I'm starting to wonder about those chickens. Did they go out for a pack of smokes?

 

[Kuhz]

So what are the predictions for tomorrow? Green on GF3 reopening or red on basically no improving virus (or any other) news?

 

[Fredneck]

It would be equally correct to say "You have to admit TSLA is a stock that you can lose money on either by betting it goes up or by betting it goes down."

When I believe the overall trend of a stock is up, I don't like to bet on it going down. It's better to have the fundamental movement direction on your side if you are going to try to time a stock. Which I think is a bad idea to begin with for reasons I've previously laid out.

There is no overall trend to Tesla stock. Q1 results can tank the stock if they fall short. I don't recall the expected results at the moment, but with the issues in China it is sounding like that at least will deviate from what was expected.

I sold the last of my long term capital gains holdings at $911 (no significance to the number, pure coincidence, lol). I'm wishing I had sold the rest of it. At that price it would have paid its own taxes. I'm convinced $900 is very over priced. I'm looking for values below $500 if any bad news comes out. It won't take much.

 

[FrankSG]

I am sure the French and German governments will be happy to see Tesla take 80% plus EU automotive market share.

The Japanese government will be happy to see Tesla take 80% plus Japanese automotive market share.

The Chinese government will be happy to see Tesla take 80% plus Chinese automotive market share.

Thats how things work in the real world.

What are they going to do about it? They're already too late. They cannot stop the inevitable. Tesla will be the biggest car manufacturer in the EV future, the only question is by how large a margin.

Car companies that fully embrace the inevitable EV future today (Volkswagen) have a chance to play a role in the car industry of the future, but the vast majority is still of the opinion that EVs are some kind of joke, and they will not survive the next decade (BMW, most Japanese manufacturers).

You can only do so much to protect your national industries. If German/French/Japanese EVs are only going to be a couple of thousand $s more expensive than a Tesla, you can slap on some tariffs and suddenly your national prides stand a chance. But what about software/info-tainment? What about safety? What about the dealer networks? What about the dying ICE businesses? What about battery supply chain? Governments can't magically make a TWh of EV batteries appear to save their car industries.

Looking at Toyota's trajectory, Japan's car industry is already pretty much screwed in my opinion. Combine that with Japan's population implosion, and I'm indeed very worried for their economy going forward.

Also don't forget about the autonomy part. If Tesla solves autonomy in the next couple of years, that's another major existential threat to the French, German, Japanese, and Chinese car industries.

 

[Fredneck]

This directly contradicts what you posted earlier. I almost replied to that post, but when I read it carefully you always said "value" (in the earlier post) and even though it sounded like you meant either stock price or market cap I couldn't argue with it.

Stock buybacks work because they are legal insider trading. The company knows (or at least hopes that they know) where the business is going, and if they think it is currently undervalued, buying back shares increases the stock price and yield for the shareholders who don't sell, not necessarily immediately, but in the short to medium term as the company performs better and the stock price presumably reacts. The alternative would be to issue dividends. This also reduces the cash available for deployment, but immediately reduces the stock price by the amount of the dividend. Is this really better?

I gave it more thought, meaning at some point when my mind had nothing else to do like sitting on the throne, and I realized it is as I originally stated. The company is worth some market cap with X amount of cash. If the cash is spent to buy back stock the total value of the company is reduced by the amount of cash spent. The share price should not change as the remaining shares now equal the new value of the stock at the same price per share.

Extreme example. Market cap = $2 billion with $1 billion in cash. Buy back $1 billion in stock and now the company is worth $1 billion. Remaining stock (half the original number of shares) is still priced the same.

Someone said the price of the stock is set by the earnings ratio. So after the buyback the market cap is some multiple of the earnings which has not changed. But before the buyback the market cap had to be the amount set by the earnings, PLUS the value of the cash, i.e. $2 billion, otherwise someone would buy the entire company, take the $1 billion in cash and sell the company off again at the same price.

 

[Fredneck]

so when do you get back in? $350?

Don't know how low it might go. I certainly didn't expect to see >$200 after buying around $300 and didn't expect to see >$900 after selling some at $520.

Nothing wrong with taking profit at times you don't think will be seen again in the near future. I'd like to buy again somewhere below $520 and that may well happen. We'll see.

 

[FrankSG]

So what are the predictions for tomorrow? Green on GF3 reopening or red on basically no improving virus (or any other) news?

Hard to predict with accuracy, but I think there's some chance we'll see $1,200, or even $1,500 this week.

@ReflexFunds posted some numbers. They had some caveats, but they showed that MMs might be holding less shares for delta hedging after Wednesday's close compared to Friday the 31st's close, yet SP appreciated ~15%, so it seems like the float has contracted even further (net increase in # of shares held by longs).

It's also pretty clear to me that @Artful Dodger is correct about heavy manipulations having occurred last week. He theorized MMs may have sold short as much as 2M+ shares, which they will have to buy back at some point.

It also seems very possible that some shorts jumped back on around Tuesday following Andrew Left's announcement that he went short TSLA once again.

All in all, it could shape up to be an even more explosive week than the last. The slight positive news about Giga Shanghai reopening should help, but we'll see what happens.

 

[Fact Checking]

My resolution this year, is to focus my Tesla narrative on the positive aspects of sustainable transportation and renewable energy. As an example my boss likes to tell me that EVs are powered by coal-fired electrical generation and dirtier than internal combustion engines.

Btw., even that claim is false: even if an EV is charged from 100% coal electricity, this still cuts pollution dramatically.

The reason is that internal combustion engines are much less efficient, less than 20% of extracted crude oil energy is transformed into kinetic energy, and they cannot recover ~10% of that energy via regenerative braking either, plus they also create much worse local pollution.

I.e. even that cherry picked example is based on a blatant lie.

 

[Fredneck]

I’ve been in and out of some Tesla shares, but I bought first at 30 a share and have stayed invested since then. regarding getting in and out on other stocks I have 3 lessons. I sold MCI and saved a few thousand dollars. I patted myself on the back. I sold a few thousand dollars with of Apple about the same time. I thought I was very wise. The 200 shares would have become 5600 shares at 300 or so a share. It was hard to see any advantage apple had, other then Steve Jobs. Looking at Tesla today, it has a visionary leader and is much more like 2009 apple then 1998 apple. So the lesson to me is to not worry about Tuesday’s or Adam Jonas or other bumps in the road. If someone builds a mousetrap even close to Tesla, I’ll unload some shares. In the meantime, I’ll watch the show and enjoy the ride.

I get what you are saying. But the Tesla share price is much more complex than just Tesla building cars and selling them. Tesla continues to borrow money to grow and that creates debt which must be paid every quarter. If something beyond Tesla's control prevents them from selling all the cars they make or making the number of cars they need to sell to make the loan payments, they burn cash. The Corona virus is an example of things beyond their control. If they have to close the Shanghai factory for a few weeks, what does that do to their profits and price?

I'm not forecasting disaster for Tesla. I'm just trying to point out that presently the pricing of the stock is very emotionally driven and so can vary a lot over simple matters. The recent run up to $900+ is a great example. I'd hate to be someone who bought at that price. It will be a while before they feel good about that.

 

[Fredneck]

Btw., even that claim is false: even if an EV is charged from 100% coal electricity, this still cuts pollution dramatically.

The reason is that internal combustion engines are much less efficient, less than 20% of extracted crude oil energy is transformed into kinetic energy, and they cannot recover ~10% of that energy via regenerative braking either, plus they also create much worse local pollution.

I.e. even that cherry picked example is based on a blatant lie.

If you actually look at the end to end numbers you will find EVs are not much more efficient than ICE when the entire process from end to end is considered. EVs have generally good efficiency in the CAR. But the rest of the system ends up being about the same as ICE. Much of the problem is the limitations of thermodynamics. If you start from an energy source that requires combustion to make heat, you get maybe 25% of the energy available to move the auto whether you burn it in an ICE or burn it in a power plant, ship it over transmission lines, run it through power supplies and then in and back out of a battery that may or may not be very cold when you want to use it.

The only real advantage EVs have is that they can be powered from nukes or renewables which release no carbon.

 

[Fredneck]

I must confess I did kind of the same thing: sold 25 @ 530 & 537 respectively, hedged a bit to the downside because AFK for the day (at a loss), bought some more other speculative ETF's, and today re-bought the 50 tsla with a little cash to spare.

This was only a portion of my holdings and timing is crucial (to my loss) but I was a little nervous and low on cash. Advice: Don't be.

Sometimes luck is on your side.

By definition luck is always luck and has nothing to do with investing for profit. I have complete confidence that I can buy TSLA at $300 or less and make a profit in a year or two. At $500 I am less confident. At $900 I'm ready to short. It will be around a decade for TSLA to make the sort of money that will justify a $900 price tag. That's a bit too long to justify spending the money now. I think Kramer is saying $900 is a good price to buy, but then he has already invested, no?

 

[Cat Checking]

Can somebody give me a list of the top 10 contributors of this forum (People who are very knowledgeable about Tesla/TSLA) The rest of the people on this forum I'm going to ignore. I don't want to waste my time going through pages with no helpful/useful information. Thanks

 

[StealthP3D]

People keep forgetting what the goals of Tesla and SpaceX are. It isn't profit, it is to get the world off fossil fuel and get a backup world. For these goals, profit is necessary but not the actual goal itself.

I believe Tesla remaining focussed like a laser on their primary goal (the transition to sustainable energy and transport) is a primary reason why they will be incredibly profitable! Chasing down the next dollar of profit only works well in the short-term. Having a long-term view will lead to bigger profits. Much bigger.

 

[CorneliusXX]

He’ll keep them happy by building state of the art gigafactories in their countries while innovating new technologies and taking over German firms like Grohmann and rewarding the workforce with stock options.

I think this is one of Elon's greatest strengths. He has a way of preaching the cause in a way that brings people along with him. The Chinese get to design a car for the global market and to show off their construction and manufacturing prowess. The Germans get applauded for their engineering skills. You can see how it makes people want to give their time and money to progressing the mission.

 

[Pezpunk]

You want to see Teslas, just go somewhere wealthy. The Tesla concentration is like 50% in Newport Beach.

in northern Virginia (which has Fairfax and Loudoun counties, two of the top three richest counties in the US, plus Arlington, Falls Church, and Prince William County which are all also in the top 20) you can't turn your head without seeing a Tesla or two.

 

[StealthP3D]

There is no overall trend to Tesla stock.

When I said, "When I believe the overall trend of a stock is up, I don't like to bet on it going down. It's better to have the fundamental movement direction on your side if you are going to try to time a stock.", perhaps I should have specified "overall long-term trend" because Tesla definitely has that going for them as they have shown over the last decade and their plans going forward. Of course, that is not guaranteed even if some believe it to be. But the fact that its not guaranteed doesn't negate my comments about preferring to avoid trying to time a stock (by shorting it) when that stock's long-term trend is rapid growth. In other words, don't fight the current.

I sold the last of my long term capital gains holdings at $911 (no significance to the number, pure coincidence, lol). I'm wishing I had sold the rest of it. At that price it would have paid its own taxes. I'm convinced $900 is very over priced. I'm looking for values below $500 if any bad news comes out.

It's always possible for bad news to slow or reverse capital appreciation of TSLA stock but I wouldn't want to bet that its a sure thing or that I could properly time it if it does happen.

 

[FrankSG]

Can somebody give me a list of the top 10 contributors of this forum (People who are very knowledgeable about Tesla/TSLA) The rest of the people on this forum I'm going to ignore. I don't want to waste my time going through pages with no helpful/useful information. Thanks

There are so many, but this really depends on exactly what type of information you're interested in.

@Papafox for a detailed recap of every trading day.
@The Accountant for insights from an experienced accountant
@EVNow & @luvb2b for great financial models
@ReflexFunds for super valuable in-depth research about topics that I don't see discussed elsewhere
@Fact Checking is one of my favorites
@Artful Dodger posted something awesome about manipulations the other day, and has been updating the forum on VWAP recently

There are many other amazing posters on this forum that are just as, if not more, incredible than these contributors, but that post about topics that I am personally less interested in.

There isn't really a "top 10 contributors of TMC", it all depends on what you're looking for. Everybody's contributions are valuable in some way.