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

[ProfTournesol]

Shock for the Hamburg car industry and especially for the employees: The car dealership Wichert has filed for bankruptcy proceedings with the district court in the middle, as court spokesman Kai Wantzen confirmed when asked by MOPO. Wichert is the largest VW dealership in the north and employs 1400 people at 23 locations in and around Hamburg. Business operations are initially to be maintained.
There will be a "self-administration procedure", which means that the management will continue to manage the company, together with a so-called "property manager", a lawyer appointed by the district court. The latter will now check whether Autohaus Wichert GmbH is over-indebted and / or insolvent and what are the prospects for continuing operations. A creditors' committee, in which, for example, bank representatives sit, is involved in drawing up a possible restructuring plan.
Autohaus Wichert in Hamburg since 1986
Hamburgers have bought their cars from the traditional company since 1986. Wichert is one of the most important car dealerships of the Volkswagen Group nationwide (Audi, Seat, Skoda, VW, VW commercial vehicles). In 2018, the dealership is said to have sold almost 18,000 vehicles, with sales of over 350 million euros, as reported by the industry service "kfz-Betrieb".
Autohaus Wichert: Turbo growth in 2019
Has the company grown too quickly? Particularly in 2019, Wichert had been vigorously focused on growth, taken over locations and employees of the insolvent competitor Autohaus Willy Tiedtke at the beginning of the year, and opened a 21,000-square-meter Audi terminal in November.


I believe this is just the beginning, more dealership closure will signal the shift to EVs.

Just one of the first of the large dealership shake-out, more will follow soon.

 

[ABCTG]

Shock for the Hamburg car industry and especially for the employees: The car dealership Wichert has filed for bankruptcy proceedings with the district court in the middle, as court spokesman Kai Wantzen confirmed when asked by MOPO. Wichert is the largest VW dealership in the north and employs 1400 people at 23 locations in and around Hamburg. Business operations are initially to be maintained.
There will be a "self-administration procedure", which means that the management will continue to manage the company, together with a so-called "property manager", a lawyer appointed by the district court. The latter will now check whether Autohaus Wichert GmbH is over-indebted and / or insolvent and what are the prospects for continuing operations. A creditors' committee, in which, for example, bank representatives sit, is involved in drawing up a possible restructuring plan.
Autohaus Wichert in Hamburg since 1986
Hamburgers have bought their cars from the traditional company since 1986. Wichert is one of the most important car dealerships of the Volkswagen Group nationwide (Audi, Seat, Skoda, VW, VW commercial vehicles). In 2018, the dealership is said to have sold almost 18,000 vehicles, with sales of over 350 million euros, as reported by the industry service "kfz-Betrieb".
Autohaus Wichert: Turbo growth in 2019
Has the company grown too quickly? Particularly in 2019, Wichert had been vigorously focused on growth, taken over locations and employees of the insolvent competitor Autohaus Willy Tiedtke at the beginning of the year, and opened a 21,000-square-meter Audi terminal in November.


I believe this is just the beginning, more dealership closure will signal the shift to EVs.

Hmm, seems like they over-extended.

Innovation and new technology shakes out the poorly run businesses first, who in turn will try and blame the new tech for their failings.

 

[StealthP3D]

I have felt like that since the big run up when I was able to turn a small investment into a very large return, not to mention my share appreciation. I more or less made myself take a break though to avoid overconfidence reverting my returns to the mean.

Exactly. I'm not a big options player normally, only when I see a super compelling opportunity. I did go in big last summer and fall and made a killing. Every option I bought (except the very first short-term call), was profitable and almost all of them were wildly profitable). I'm completely out now with no plans to get back in unless I see more super compelling values (which I really don't expect to see).

Of course, I still have all my shares!

 

[mejojo]

Ya. This is what I plan on doing. I don't think I can trade properly when I am overconfident.



Suffice to say, I cannot trade like you with such firm belief.



It's been like a dream. That and I completely divested my corp's supply chain away from China, an endeavor I started end of 2018 because of Trump's trade war. I want to smile about getting it right, but the images of crying girls who lost her mom and dad in Wuhan kept conflicting with the high.

I think I am on alert because it felt like winning the lottery and nothing good happens to lottery winners.

Plenty of good happens to lottery winners....it's just that the ones that turn out horribly is what makes the "news".

 

[woodisgood]

Plenty of good happens to lottery winners....it's just that the ones that turn out horribly is what makes the "news".

Rule #1 of winning the lottery successfully - don't tell anyone you won the lottery.

It may seem off-topic, but it's really not.

 

[Nocturnal]

Bear in mind that new features can be a little glitchy when they're first released. With a tight feedback loop they get improved over time (with more miles driven) and eventually become really good. But don't expect them to be amazing straight out of the gate. The general public may be underwhelmed initially and it will take time for them to appreciate how good it can be. With a better knowledge of how these things work, a smart investor could potentially use that time-lag to their advantage.

Yes. I think with my personal experience with the Model 3 early on and lots of time driving/studying features I'll be able to separate glitches and bugs from the core product.

If it's good I still expect the analyst community to say things like "well, it ran a stop sign in that video so it's junk", but I'll know (or not) that it drove itself for the entire trip before that point.

Rule #1 of winning the lottery successfully - don't tell anyone you won the lottery.

It may seem off-topic, but it's really not.

If TSLA goes like many of us suspect it won't be dissimilar to winning the lottery.

​

 

[gerebgraus]

I'm really happy for the folks that were able to turn pennies into millions playing options on the recent run-up. But in sharing your successful stories, please understand that there may be many new-to-options investors that will be tempted to duplicate your success, possibly with disastrous consequences. I'm not saying TSLA long calls won't be profitable in the future, or that there aren't very profitable ways to play options, but perhaps not quite to the extent in the way they have been where any novice could buy a call and turn a few hundred bucks into tens of thousands. Certainly the high premiums are part of preventing that kind of appreciation, but there will be other factors at play too.

There has been a very obvious and well-known increase in TSLA call options - options-writers stand to lose WAY too much in the coming years on these calls, and one way or another, they'll make sure the successes of TSLA call buyers is not sustainable.

Again to repeat; Probably most of the profit of the past calls came not from the increase in share price, but in the increase valuation of options. Specifically implied volatility was in the 30%-s couple month ago. (and in fact that is why I got into the options because at that time to me the increase in volatility was even more obvious than the increase in share price. Today the IV-s are over 50% for LEAPS. The iv will extremely unlikely to go for the LEAPS to the 60%. If Tesla goes up big fast return in options will be much better than return on stock price, but making 100 fold return in 3 month or even close to that is not in the cards even assuming the same rate of SP increase. (and that is unlikely as well.)

 

[Late2theGame]

I am starting to believe I have desensitized to TSLA. It appears to be the usual pattern with different numbers (SP, Volume, MMD, fade into the close). Maybe I'm missing something?

I do, however, remain very excited about Tesla

Welcome to TARC (TSLA Addicts Recovery Group)

PS: Change the axis on your ticker graph to exclude the overnight jumps - makes it look more exiting

 

[M3Rider]

I've been sitting out. I'm still a novice to options and my previous strategy (that gave me returns in the few thousand percent) of buying very cheap calls far out of the money (in the 6-12 month range) and waiting for SP to jump no longer seems viable.

I've considered selling a call covered by my trading shares but even that's too rich for my blood. Maybe....

Bitcoin, Amazon, Apple, Netflix all investments that I discounted or wasn't financially able to take advantage of. I promised myself I wouldn't make the same mistake with Tesla. So far so good.

I loved Amazon early on, and knew the IPhone would be a hit. Netflix didn't click for me until they started offering original programming. I discounted bitcoin early on as a "weird internet libertarian thing". Back then I could have just mined it with my PC and made a boatload. ​

I kept buying DITM on the way down from 850 to 705 to average down.

Bought 4 calls @$20k each to minimize the premium. End result was margin -$70k.

Waited to offload the 2 I bought at the worst price for minimal profit to de-risk for coronavirus.

Keeping the other 2 with a better price point until a more decent SP. Margin -$23k.

 

[woodisgood]

Again to repeat; Probably most of the profit of the past calls came not from the increase in share price, but in the increase valuation of options. Specifically implied volatility was in the 30%-s couple month ago. (and in fact that is why I got into the options because at that time to me the increase in volatility was even more obvious than the increase in share price. Today the IV-s are over 50% for LEAPS. The iv will extremely unlikely to go for the LEAPS to the 60%. If Tesla goes up big fast return in options will be much better than return on stock price, but making 100 fold return in 3 month or even close to that is not in the cards even assuming the same rate of SP increase. (and that is unlikely as well.)

Right, but these facts may elude people new to options. If they see "I turned 1k into 500k in a few weeks and I had never bought options before!" they may not understand how things are changing in the options market to prevent that in the future. It was a fleeting opportunity that many were able to capitalize on and I think that should be made clear.

I'm not advocating "protecting the ignorant," and everyone is responsible for their own investment actions. But at least on this forum, we can try to look out for one another just a little bit with our not-advice advice.

 

[Tslynk67]

This pattern will continue to work until it doesn’t.

I look to sell trading shares and a call on Monday & Tuesday, rebut the call when it dips enough to take a decent profit, then reset another on Wednesday/Thursday for end of week, rebut stock on Friday low.

It's a fairly new thing for me, but so far working well.

 

[Nocturnal]

I kept buying DITM on the way down from 850 to 705 to average down.

Bought 4 calls @$20k each to minimize the premium. End result was margin -$70k.

Waited to offload the 2 I bought at the worst price for minimal profit to de-risk for coronavirus.

Keeping the other 2 with a better price point until a more decent SP. Margin -$23k.
]

I'm still too new to feel comfortable with buying ITM. Part of that may be because I haven't reset my risk threshold. Formerly a big play was 1k, now it should be far higher but it still feels weird spending 10k on a bet.

 

[johnnybgood888]

No, but I do sometimes wonder if you're real

We will get to find out this June in Iceland!

 

[Cohiba]

I look to sell trading shares and a call on Monday & Tuesday, rebut the call when it dips enough to take a decent profit, then reset another on Wednesday/Thursday for end of week, rebut stock on Friday low.

It's a fairly new thing for me, but so far working well.

Did you have a look into trading Binck TurboXL? Its trading hours are between 8AM and 10PM Belgium time, which means you can take advantage of the entire pre-market trading time.

 

[KarenRei]

We will get to find out this June in Iceland!

Construction of the body should be complete by then.

 

[Rammstein]

This price action is sooo good. I’m getting my fix. The endorphins are flowing through me. Oh yeah!

 

[johnnybgood888]

I'm quite liking the price action the past 2 weeks since we raced up to the $960s and subsequently fell back into the low 700s. We have been filling all the gaps we missed on the meteoric rise to $960, which provides a much more stable floor for future appreciations. Also, psychologically, it's good to hang out in the 700-800s for a bit before we lift off again, as it provides new investors a mindset that TSLA is a $700+ stock and not $300-400s.

 

[sparcs]

Exclusive: Tesla in talks to use CATL's cobalt-free batteries in China-made cars - sources

I was under the impression that Lithium Iron Phosphate was old school tech that's not relevant for modern EVs.

Would it be beneficial for Tesla to use lithium iron phosphate to replace their 12V Lead Acid battery? Article could be bogus like many rumors, but trying to understand whether there are other ways this could work.

 

[Eugene Ash]

The thing I wonder about is the collapse of the dealership network. I watch AN stock price. There are a lot of moving pieces that can be used to make a “too big to fail” argument and sucking time and resources out of the national transition to better tech. Think of the impact to banking when millions of auto loans go under water and new loans dry up and all this on top of fossil fuel market going TU. It could get very Nissan-like as I see it.

[Traditional] Banking won't be affected, since the failing and risky loans are not held by them. There is a fair bit of packaging into bonds by Santaders of the world. Like 2008, but on a smaller scale. Loan duration has exceeded 60 months and moves up while consumers go deeper into automotive debt alongside with higer ASP which exceeded 37k$ in 2019. I would never buy a new ICE if i can get a model 3 for the same money. And now legacy car companies are ousborning their lineup too.

So what do scarce new car buyers prefer? Who has a spiral of death, and who is just begun a virtuous cycle?

tl;dr: car financing is getting expensive, frothy for risky segments and an average sales price of a new ICE car has reached a base model 3 price.

 

[StealthP3D]

Plenty of good happens to lottery winners....it's just that the ones that turn out horribly is what makes the "news".

It's shocking just how many horror stories there are as a percentage of those who win big.

Over 30% declare bankruptcy. Many people are not equipped to handle a large and sudden influx of cash. Something to consider for those who have recently made 50-100 (or more) times their original investment on TSLA options.