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

[Off Shore]

If Tesla has 80% US market share and making money hand over fist with robotaxi it will be broken up and it won't be politically difficult.

SpaceX is dominating mostly foreign competition. US politicians are happy about that and SpaceX doesn't operate on foreign territory.

Historically, space/NASA is only about ~15% of Boeing's revenue. SpaceX isn't killing Boeing. Boeing is committing suicide.

NB Don't disagree with the Boeing committing suicide part.

 

[Fact Checking]

Getting a bit OT for this thread, so I'll try to be brief: Iceland has a company named deCODE Genetics, which was designed around doing whole-population genetic studies for disease modeling, so the company has been repurposed into doing randomized sampling of the population to look for COVID-19 in people who are not suspect cases - just the general public. They found the disease in around 1% of the general population over a period of a couple weeks (reported 1 week ago) - an implied per-capita rate twentyfold that of the country's official diagnoses at the time of reporting (which in turn has involved one of the most aggressive testing regimes in the world). Over half had no symptoms whatsoever, and the rest, generally just a minor cold.

In an experiment which started several weeks ago, Italy tested the entire town of Vò in a series of rounds and successfully eradicated the disease from the town. Again, this is one of the few cases of experiments of testing of the general population rather than suspect cases. 3% of the population was determined as infected during the first round. 50-75% of them were entirely asymptomatic. Most of the rest had only minor cold symptoms and did not suspect that they had the disease. During the study, asymptomatic cases usually remained asymptomatic, and most minor cases remained minor.

The net picture is that the disease was already widespread even several weeks ago; that people with no symptoms whatsoever are the majority; and of those with symptoms, symptoms so minor that people don't get tested are by far the most common. To match with the death rate (as severe cases almost always get tested), a widespread disease in the population implies a low IFR (infection fatality rate), and implies that places with overloaded medical systems are overloaded not because the disease sends a large percent of its victims to the hospital, but because a large percent of the population has already gotten infected. This implies that the disease will tend to play itself out sooner.

As mentioned, the other study I mentioned (still preliminary) estimated that Wuhan hit a 19% infection rate at its peak, and that the disease had a non-time-delay IFR of 0,04% and a time-delay IFR of 0,12%. They also found (as others have) that the disease is highly prone to nosocomical transmission (spread inside hospitals and clinics, generally by staff) - that is to say, prone to spread to the most vulnerable of patients. I.e. that stamping out nosocomical transmission is one of the most important steps that can be done. Both Wuhan and Lombardy had extensive problems with nosocomical transmission before the severity of the situation was realized.

ED: Well, so much for trying to be brief...

I'd like to ask our hard working modeators to spare @KarenRei's Covid-19 comment with a "weekend" or "high quality" exception - I believe the implications are huge if true. (I can also confirm that I had this same impression, just by looking at the daily new infections data.)It already was VERY RELUCTANTLY allowed...this one FINAL TIME...to remain. All readers can expect no more; they are, however, put on laert that if they do not ALSO assiduously read relevant OTHER THREADS then they are not making good use of TMC as a resource.

Legendary angel inventor (and Tesla bull) Chamath Palihapitiya made similar points in this fantastic interview:

Watch CNBC's full interview with Social Capital CEO Chamath Palihapitiya​

He quantified the probability of Covid-19 being already widespread in the U.S. with no or mild symptoms at "higher than 30%" - which would allow a V-shape recovery.

I'd still like to urge caution: the economic data in the U.S. is going to start deteriorating rapidly, starting next week: unemployment claims on Tuesday are expected to be catastrophically high.

I have no idea how far low the biggest market participants intend to drive macros, to which TSLA is going to correlate, so be careful. If the big players are still loaded up with SPY puts then I'd expect some fireworks next week.

There's also the chance that Trump is going to "delay" economic data release and/or shut down the markets.

 

[jerry33]

Does anyone have a link to that tweet? The Twitter search interface is atrociously bad, and they are explicitly keeping Google from crawling all tweets effectively.

Elon has always talked about Battery Day as Battery Day, and Company Day as Company Day. There's no reason to think that he would use two different names for the same event any more than he would use Model X and Model S to mean the same car. I don't disagree that with the current situation the two events could be combined, but I wouldn't place any bets on it.

 

[Fact Checking]

Elon has always talked about Battery Day as Battery Day, and Company Day as Company Day. There's no reason to think that he would use two different names for the same event any more than he would use Model X and Model S to mean the same car. I don't disagree that with the current situation the two events could be combined, but I wouldn't place any bets on it.

I only saw a single tweet from Elon where he talked about "Company Day", which is why I'm super confused.

 

[Unpilot]

I'd like to ask our hard working modeators to spare @KarenRei's Covid-19 comment with a "weekend" or "high quality" exception - I believe the implications are huge if true. (I can also confirm that I had this same impression, just by looking at the daily new infections data.)

Legendary angel inventor (and Tesla bull) Chamath Palihapitiya made similar points in this fantastic interview:

Watch CNBC's full interview with Social Capital CEO Chamath Palihapitiya​

He quantified the probability of Covid-19 being already widespread in the U.S. with no or mild symptoms at "higher than 30%" - which would allow a V-shape recovery.

I'd still like to urge caution: the economic data in the U.S. is going to start deteriorating rapidly, starting next week: unemployment claims on Tuesday are expected to be catastrophically high.

I have no idea how far the biggest market participants intend to drive macros, to which TSLA is going to correlate, so be careful. If the big players are still loaded up with SPY puts then I'd expect some fireworks next week.

There's also the chance that Trump is going to "delay" economic data release and/or shut down the markets.

I second this motion.
The other forums (not TMC based) I look at have descended into political bickering.
It is refreshing to read post's devoid of the nonsense that so often clutters forum's up.

 

[Skryll]

Good luck to them taking over a company that was headed towards financial trouble even before this crisis started.

There is value in the brand and maybe still the quality of the interior and sound dampening engineering. Throw out the legacy drive train, design a new platform for EV, and this may just be able to be turned into another winner. Doesn't have to have to be as cutting edge and lean as Tesla to be viable.

 

[transpondster]

The price of oil recovered super fast in 2008, despite a deep recession and not nearly enough of a stimulus:

Note how the price of oil doubled from the lows of $30 to beyond $60 within 2-3 months - and oil was arguably in a bubble in early 2008.

and lets not forget how different crude chart looks in €
Crude Oil (petroleum); Dated Brent - Monthly Price (Euro per Barrel) - Commodity Prices - Price Charts, Data, and News - IndexMundi

 

[Pezpunk]

Scott Adams agrees with me:
Scott Adams on Twitter
View attachment 523766 View attachment 523767 View attachment 523768 View attachment 523769

yikes, and you think that helps your position? Scott Adams is a moron and seriously human garbage.

 

[kbM3]

I don't think there's a consensus. Elon first announced "Battery Investor Day", then in a tweet he announced:

Elon Musk on Twitter

"Tesla April company talk will be from our Giga New York factory, where we make SolarGlass & several other products. Will also offer customer & media tours."​

There has been no clarification on whether this is the Battery Investor Day - I initially assumed it was, because Elon references this as something already mentioned - and Battery Day was the only previous announcement.

I don't agree with those who say that there will definitely be two events. We don't know.

​

My impression, which was strengthened with an article or comment that I read, is that the Company talk is really just Tesla’s annual meeting for employees (which obviously will be cancelled or moved online). It’s just confusing in that he opened up tours at Giga Buffalo in conjunction.

My 2 cents for what it’s worth.

 

[CorneliusXX]

yikes, and you think that helps your position? Scott Adams is a moron and seriously human garbage.

He picked trump earlier and with more conviction than most based on what he saw as the voting public's behavioural reaction at his rallies and in the news. His Dilbert comics are arguably based on behavioural reactions too.

I don't know much about him personally but he does appear to have relatively strong skillset in understanding behavioural reactions.

 

[keydiver]

Elon Musk: Should Have 1000 Ventilators Next Week, + 250,000 N95 Masks For Hospitals Tomorrow — CleanTechnica Exclusive | CleanTechnica
"We have" != "We made". But where's he getting them from?

My guess: CHINA. He has the connections, and they love him. Hopefully this will result in some good PR.

 

[JRP3]

Elon Musk: Should Have 1000 Ventilators Next Week, + 250,000 N95 Masks For Hospitals Tomorrow — CleanTechnica Exclusive | CleanTechnica

By Zack Shahan

'I reached out to Musk for clarification on that topic and he replied that, “We have 250k N95 masks. Aiming to start distributing those to hospitals tomorrow night. Should have over 1000 ventilators by next week.”'

Looks like he’s really doing it.

edit: "We have" != "We made". But where's he getting them from?

Que the bears: "Elon musk has been hoarding masks!!!"

 

[j6Lpi429@3j]

Nice close up of a tesla in the trailer for the new series of billions: (at 0.16)

Because nothing says awesome power better right? Who needs advertising when the product is this desirable

 

[Fobble]

Kudlow says coronavirus relief package worth more than $2 trillion
Kudlow says coronavirus relief package worth more than $2 trillion

 

[Right_Said_Fred]

I second this motion.
The other forums (not TMC based) I look at have descended into political bickering.
It is refreshing to read post's devoid of the nonsense that so often clutters forum's up.

I left that post by Karen, as requested by a few people. But this community immediately makes you regret such a decision by starting a discussion about that post. And then this thread becomes the corona thread again... That discussion can now be found and continued in the Coronavirus thread.

The coronavirus thread was created for a reason and it is easy to find. But apparantly some posters want a larger audience for what they have to say and keep on using the main thread. It isn’t flattering.

 

[Mo City]

Kudlow says coronavirus relief package worth more than $2 trillion
Kudlow says coronavirus relief package w more than $2 trillion

The market will like this a lot and the bump should be more than temporary.

I think.

 

[TheTalkingMule]

I second this motion.
The other forums (not TMC based) I look at have descended into political bickering.
It is refreshing to read post's devoid of the nonsense that so often clutters forum's up.

There's a coronavirus thread directly adjacent to this one! How hard is this?

 

[JRP3]

However, even he dithered to lock down the city and highlighting liquor stores to keep open is foolhardy.

I think many liquor stores stock food items as well, that may be the reasoning.

 

[Fact Checking]

He picked trump earlier and with more conviction than most based on what he saw as the voting public's behavioural reaction at his rallies and in the news. His Dilbert comics are arguably based on behavioural reactions too.

I don't know much about him personally but he does appear to have relatively strong skillset in understanding behavioural reactions.

The problem is, Scott Adams' politics is to get Trump reelected, but his argument in that tweet chain supports that too, in a convenient fashion.

I'd be trusting his opinion more if it was against his politics, such as Paul Krugman recently arguing for a big stimulus in the current situation, while he argued against the 2 trillion dollars Trump Stimulus of 2017:

Paul Krugman on Twitter

"Normally I have very high regard for Pelosi, but she made a big mistake last week by vetoing proposals for aggressive stimulus — plans which Trump is apparently now adopting. Dems could have been ahead on this issue; they need to up their game."​

 

[PlaidCPA]

an tell you from living in San Francisco that pretty much every contractor is still out there working. There are tons of houses near me undergoing renovations.

Tim Higgins/WSJ editors with a front page article titled to scar Musk:
“Elon Musk’s Defiance in the Time of Coronavirus”

Elon Musk’s Defiance in the Time of Coronavirus

Journalism continues to disappoint.

This article is a double edged sword. Readers of WSJ are not the panicky toilet paper, lysol, doomsday scenario folks. Majority of readers follow markets, own businesses and employ people. In my opinion these readers agree with Musk that panic is indeed causing a disproportionate economic harm than the virus, lockdown and economic halt.

I spend alot of time with local (Tampa FL) small business folks and the consensus on the virus is drastically different than what is portrayed in the media.

WSJ hit piece on Musk will resonate with some panicky crowds, but it will also resonate with reasonable folks who are having trouble finding a center of gravity that has a pragmatic view on the whole Coronavirus situation. Musk is that center now.