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

[UncaNed]

Top strikes are $2850, which is too low for me, would like to see some $4000's offered

Has anyone noticed how well my post below has aged?:

Just called my brokerage requesting they ask the Chicago Board Options Exchange to offer a 17 JUN 2022 $2,500 strike option (sort of a lower-price class of option, if you will) . They said to check the option chain Monday to see if that happened. I figure this will make it easier for somebody of modest means to buy a later-expiring LEAP.

Coincidentally, while I was on hold I saw that they just added a $2,100 strike option for that expiration. I'm not keen on the stock split, though I really love the idea of making it easier for the little guy - a poorer investor class - to invest...

Indeed, a week later all the new strikes up to $2,850 appeared. Coincidence? I think not!

 

[Captkerosene]

Not possible. Even uber-bulls like Ron Barron would immediately sell all his shares as fast as practical somewhere well below $100K. And so would other large

Do you have any idea what that would make the market cap?

A company that had dozens of factories spitting out smart robots with computer vision that were a direct replacement for human labor at one tenth the cost?

 

[vikings123]

FOMO is real, just saw this twitter post from a very well liked investor who has 61K followers. Is Monday here yet?

“One of my biggest mistakes -

not investing in $TSLA at $40/share in early 2013”!

https://twitter.com/saxena_puru/status/1282455323714834434?s=21

 

[mekberg]

Some day you will know if your choice was the right thing or not. I have always been more afraid of not seizing the moment at the right time and taking advantage of the big opportunity than I have of actual failure of some decision or action. I never want to be the sad guy that always says if only I would have done this or that. I am playing the long game because the possible and even probable outcome will be life changing, but I am in a position that I can afford to do that. You have to assess for yourself where you are, where you want to be, and what is the best and most probable way of achieving your desired outcome. It’s hard and can require some real soul searching, but I think it’s helpful to imagine your life based on possible and probable outcomes and then be decisive and deliberate in what you choose to do.

TL;DR “I am not throwing away my shot.”

 

[Jovian]

Elon seems to be in great spirits on Grimes' instagram live. #bullish

Elon on Grime’s Instagram Live : elonmusk

 

[HG Wells]

It's enough for Elon to buy the entire solar system from God.

GEE, I already bought it, but God never deposited the check.

 

[Quesder]

hi guys, this is a real news about the flood in China (sorry its language is Chinese). I think this should affect the deliveries in China, and impact NIO's delivery as well.

鄱陽湖防汛 進入戰時狀態
截至7月12日午時，洪災已造成大陸27省3789萬人受災，直接經濟損失達822億（人民幣，下同）
Up to July 12 noon, flood has affected 37.89 million people in 27 provinces, and caused 822 RMB financial loss.

 

[Artful Dodger]

I'm wondering why Tesla doesn't lower the price of the Model 3 in the same way they lowered the price of the Model Y.

You mean, why did Tesla wait to lower the Model Y price by $3K like they did for Model 3 in May 24th? And 5K each for S/X on the same day?

Tesla cuts prices across lineup, Model 3 now starts at $37,990 - Electrek

 

[CyberDutchie]

I generally agree.

July 22: Earnings reported. Confirmation of GAAP profit will increase S&P 500 addition positioning starting in After Hours.

Sept 15: Battery Day. My expectation is that just as Tesla described the details of the FSD chip (HW3) on that day AND announced that it was already in cars produced weeks earlier, Tesla will continue to avoid Osbourning and whatever battery tech they announce will already be in cars produced weeks earlier.

S&P 500 Announcement. I'm expecting this in Sept. The S&P 500 Index Committee does a "reconstitution" typically every quarter, but they skipped March 2020 and then just did one last month (June). CNBC Quadruple Witching. The next such event is scheduled to take effect after market close on Sept 18, 2020 (S&P Calendar spreadsheet). I'm guessing that the Committee might want to combine these two events into one, since both will have a large effect on the weightings of stocks in the index and they wouldn't want to have two such events close to one another.

Looking at S&P search for "join S&P 500", there are about 5-6 actual (not business) days from official press release announcement until additions take effect. So, that makes a likely S&P announcement for inclusion of Tesla around Sept 12-13. Which is before Shareholder Meeting/Battery Day.

EDIT: Lessmog pointed out that Shareholder Mtg/Battery Day is actually Sept 22. That changes my stock trading ideas, as S&P 500 inclusion and effect should be already baked in by then. Could be we get the rush on announcement for 5 days, then down after inclusion, and then up again on all the cool tech from Battery Day. Hmm.

Hmm, I even wonder if Tesla on purpose moved out the date to September 22. It would be the best scenario for the stock price to have battery day after S&P inclusion has happened. The battery day tech announcement will cancel out the inevitable pullback after S&P inclusion.

 

[Unpilot]

You mean, why did Tesla wait to lower the Model Y price by $3K like they did for Model 3 in May 24th? And 5K each for S/X on the same day?

Tesla cuts prices across lineup, Model 3 now starts at $37,990 - Electrek

Because of a demand issue...duh/S

 

[Singuy]

hi guys, this is a real news about the flood in China (sorry its language is Chinese). I think this should affect the deliveries in China, and impact NIO's delivery as well.

鄱陽湖防汛 進入戰時狀態
截至7月12日午時，洪災已造成大陸27省3789萬人受災，直接經濟損失達822億（人民幣，下同）
Up to July 12 noon, flood has affected 37.89 million people in 27 provinces, and caused 822 RMB financial loss.

It's over, game over man game over! The flood affects 2.6% of the population.

 

[Open Interest]

Are any of you longtime hodlers still accumulating at this level? I want to, given the promise of future earnings, but it is very hard to buy when earlier purchases were so much less expensive.

 

[Krugerrand]

I live in Alameda County and some cities are pushing back with this order. Maybe they got some balls watching Elon do it to the County back in May? No way Elon allows another shutdown to the factory.

5 Cities Push Back After Alameda County Suspends Outdoor Dining

Yep, that is true. I had booked reservations two weeks earlier for an outdoor dinner event for yesterday (Saturday) and literally Friday night the county changed the order. I had purchased insurance, so I wasn’t concerned but disappointed as it would be the first social outing for my spouse and I since this whole COVID thing happened.

We were informed 30mins before the event started that it would go on against county order. So we went. Masks, temp checks, questionnaire, metal detector, social distancing throughout, could not leave our table, all disposable dishes/cutlery etc...

We found it pretty stressful and not nearly as enjoyable as we’d hoped. One couple brought their newborn!!!!! That I thought was not smart.

Anyway, we have no desire to do that again any time soon. We do miss going to the movie theater, which we did often. We liked to go on off days and off times, back row, middle and many times were either alone in the theater or with just a few others. See, I’ve been training for this my whole life.

 

[Singuy]

hi guys, this is a real news about the flood in China (sorry its language is Chinese). I think this should affect the deliveries in China, and impact NIO's delivery as well.

鄱陽湖防汛 進入戰時狀態
截至7月12日午時，洪災已造成大陸27省3789萬人受災，直接經濟損失達822億（人民幣，下同）
Up to July 12 noon, flood has affected 37.89 million people in 27 provinces, and caused 822 RMB financial loss.

So Tesla sells was 0.6% of total china car sales for June. When you you apply 2.6% of the population affected, Tesla will lose about 2.26 car deliveries unless a delivery center is flooded. This is assuming July is also suppose to be 14500ish.

 

[ggr]

hi guys, this is a real news about the flood in China (sorry its language is Chinese). I think this should affect the deliveries in China, and impact NIO's delivery as well.

鄱陽湖防汛 進入戰時狀態
截至7月12日午時，洪災已造成大陸27省3789萬人受災，直接經濟損失達822億（人民幣，下同）
Up to July 12 noon, flood has affected 37.89 million people in 27 provinces, and caused 822 RMB financial loss.

3% of the population and mostly rural. Not much effect I wouldn't think.

 

[FrankSG]

Just had a long phone call, I was part way through posting this:-

I was just watching "Jeff Bezos Is VERY Scared Of Elon Musk's Tesla" by Awesome Finance -

I haven't finished it - but first idea is good. Could Tesla become a rival to Amazon as a logistics company with FSD electric Semi.

A little while before, I'd been reading/re-reading many of @FrankSG blog posts over the previous FEW HOURS.

Then my brain clicked -

Tesla's Data

1. Million cars sending video & data to Tesla.
2. Soon millions.
3. Ability to create own FSD chips / architecture
4. Huge dojo FSD training and other data needs
5. Artificial Intelligence

Potential to offer data services to rival AWS (Amazon)?

Then the other aspect - new person from Apple Pay.

Could we be looking at a few more disruptive things?

Banking services - unfinished business from Paypal days (Elon didn't want to sell Paypal - he wantd to continue developments).

Compute/AI/data services? AWS rival.

Logistics?

Online retail linked to the logistics/Apple pay person? Completely replacing Amazon.

Some sort of currency/payment system seems quite likely if Tesla solves full autonomy. Full autonomy will allow them to at least gain huge market share in the mobility as a service market, perhaps completely dominate it. The amount of money that will flow through the Tesla Network ecosystem is absurd, and should give Tesla a gateway into launching its own payment/bank/financial services something.

I believe somebody asked if the autopilot chips could be used as AWS data centers during either the autonomy day or the shareholder's meeting last year. Elon didn't seem to be too interested, but said there "could perhaps be some sort of angle there". This might also be pretty difficult, because with FSD there will likely be very high utilization of Tesla's vehicles and its hardware chips, which is also why I don't think V2G will be that big long term, and only interesting until full autonomy is here. Autobidder does seem great, but more so for distributed powerwalls, powerpacks, and megapacks.

I doubt they'll compete with Amazon's actual website and selling of goods any time soon, if ever, but for sure Tesla is on track to be the king of all forms of mobility over roads, perhaps also many other forms of terrestrial transportation.

 

[dhrivnak]

Ok, this is way too long but since it's still the weekend and the discussions are all over the place anyway, I'll combine the story telling how I got into Tesla with an actual need for advice. All numbers in usd to make it easier.

tl/dr at the end.

I'm 50+. I have about $2k in my bank account and not much income at the moment because the virus wiped out the industry I'm in for now. Although that is slowly improving. Live in Scandinavia so no need to save for healthcare and in a decade or so I'll have basic retirement enough for rent and food but not much else. No other savings. Nobody knows I have this investment. Not even the girlfriend. No need to support anyone but myself. I don't think I've made much more than $30k in a year ever. Personally choice. Work as little as possibly. Travel a lot. Work with what I want instead of what pays well. Not quite a hippie but I've been called that.

I now have 200 shares. Might not sound like much to many of you but I had zero savings two years ago and had never owned a single stock. I unexpectedly had $15k which I somehow managed to turn into 200 shares in 18 months. Mostly through multipliers (see below) and one successful sell high/buy low. Another sell/buy almost ended badly so I'm not touching my shares again. They are for a better/earlier retirement now.

I now also have over $50k in these 5x multipliers. Bought these latest ones when the stock was at around $1k. Starting to get really nervous for when I'm gonna exit these. All this talk about $2-2,5k in the short term is not helping. They'll be worth something like $125k at $2000 and $250k+ at $2500

Taxes is not an issue.

So far I've been treating this as a big gamble. If it works, it works. If it don’t, I'm not really much worse of. That's beginning to change though. Even if the share price falls 50% I'll still have ten times what I started with.

At the same time I have zero other savings, still all in on Tesla, so I can't really justify converting these to more Tesla shares even though that would probably be the smart thing in the long run.

I know I've been extremely lucky. Not only that Tesla existed but also that I somehow made mostly correct assumptions about when to buy/sell. Had I had those original $15k at any other time the last 10 years I would have needed them for daily life. Wouldn't even have thought of investing. And if I had invested in Tesla at any time before early 2019, I would have gotten out because I would have needed the money. I know for certain that I will not get a second chance making an investment this profitable.

The only thing that wasn't luck was that I actually studied full time for almost three weeks before deciding where to invest. The idea was that I needed something that gave me 10-20 times the money over 5-10 years to really make an impact. I looked into and could have bought something in solar/wind or even mining for minerals needed for batteries etc. Looked into 3D printing and robots. But I couldn't find one company that stood out and was the likely winner. The whole sectors wouldn't explode enough. I needed to find the winner in a winning sector and go all in. My first choice was SpaceX. Spent a day reading up before I realized there was no way to invest.

For some reason I hadn't really thought of cars, but SpaceX led me to Tesla. Spent a week reading and watching videos before buying in. Loved the cars but in the end it was the energy part that made me decide. Strangely enough for a different reason I had had a brief interest in batteries a few years earlier when a relative was getting solar for their summerhouse which is why I have a 2016 registration here. Had totally forgotten about that when I tried to register again in 2019.

My original plan with my first 50 shares was to hold for 5-10 years and if everything worked out perfectly the stock goes to $5-10k. Could I really have $2 million in Tsla with little else though? The exchange rate fluctuations alone could be over $10k many days. That would be tough.

Great problem to have and it might never happen. Tesla might stall. Not sure why but anything can happen. Hey, I got rich (kinda), for awhile at least, who would have thought.

What would you do? Sell the multipliers tomorrow morning? Take the $50k? If I don't and we go down to $1400 it'll be $25k instead. Hold until July 22? When it might be worth $250k or whatever. Potentially make another round of, for me, life changing money? I probably know the correct answer is sell some and keep some but for the first time I feel this is for real. It might not be enough for an island, unless it's really small, but it would be enough for me.

I am obviously not afraid to play the odds but the stakes are getting high. If I sell or not, it'll feel like forever until earnings report arrives though.

tl/dr. Made some money. No idea what to do.

You can always sell half lock in some nice solid gains. And if the rise continues you have a surprising upside. If it drops a lot, then you still have your locked in gains.

 

[Jovian]

hi guys, this is a real news about the flood in China (sorry its language is Chinese). I think this should affect the deliveries in China, and impact NIO's delivery as well.

鄱陽湖防汛 進入戰時狀態
截至7月12日午時，洪災已造成大陸27省3789萬人受災，直接經濟損失達822億（人民幣，下同）
Up to July 12 noon, flood has affected 37.89 million people in 27 provinces, and caused 822 RMB financial loss.

I asked a YouTuber (Jason Yang) who does drones shots of the Shanghai factory if flooding has affected the factory, and he said "almost no effect".

Whether it affects delivery centers, I have no idea.

 

[FrankSG]

Ok, this is way too long but since it's still the weekend and the discussions are all over the place anyway, I'll combine the story telling how I got into Tesla with an actual need for advice. All numbers in usd to make it easier.

tl/dr at the end.

I'm 50+. I have about $2k in my bank account and not much income at the moment because the virus wiped out the industry I'm in for now. Although that is slowly improving. Live in Scandinavia so no need to save for healthcare and in a decade or so I'll have basic retirement enough for rent and food but not much else. No other savings. Nobody knows I have this investment. Not even the girlfriend. No need to support anyone but myself. I don't think I've made much more than $30k in a year ever. Personally choice. Work as little as possibly. Travel a lot. Work with what I want instead of what pays well. Not quite a hippie but I've been called that.

I now have 200 shares. Might not sound like much to many of you but I had zero savings two years ago and had never owned a single stock. I unexpectedly had $15k which I somehow managed to turn into 200 shares in 18 months. Mostly through multipliers (see below) and one successful sell high/buy low. Another sell/buy almost ended badly so I'm not touching my shares again. They are for a better/earlier retirement now.

I now also have over $50k in these 5x multipliers. Bought these latest ones when the stock was at around $1k. Starting to get really nervous for when I'm gonna exit these. All this talk about $2-2,5k in the short term is not helping. They'll be worth something like $125k at $2000 and $250k+ at $2500

Taxes is not an issue.

So far I've been treating this as a big gamble. If it works, it works. If it don’t, I'm not really much worse of. That's beginning to change though. Even if the share price falls 50% I'll still have ten times what I started with.

At the same time I have zero other savings, still all in on Tesla, so I can't really justify converting these to more Tesla shares even though that would probably be the smart thing in the long run.

I know I've been extremely lucky. Not only that Tesla existed but also that I somehow made mostly correct assumptions about when to buy/sell. Had I had those original $15k at any other time the last 10 years I would have needed them for daily life. Wouldn't even have thought of investing. And if I had invested in Tesla at any time before early 2019, I would have gotten out because I would have needed the money. I know for certain that I will not get a second chance making an investment this profitable.

The only thing that wasn't luck was that I actually studied full time for almost three weeks before deciding where to invest. The idea was that I needed something that gave me 10-20 times the money over 5-10 years to really make an impact. I looked into and could have bought something in solar/wind or even mining for minerals needed for batteries etc. Looked into 3D printing and robots. But I couldn't find one company that stood out and was the likely winner. The whole sectors wouldn't explode enough. I needed to find the winner in a winning sector and go all in. My first choice was SpaceX. Spent a day reading up before I realized there was no way to invest.

For some reason I hadn't really thought of cars, but SpaceX led me to Tesla. Spent a week reading and watching videos before buying in. Loved the cars but in the end it was the energy part that made me decide. Strangely enough for a different reason I had had a brief interest in batteries a few years earlier when a relative was getting solar for their summerhouse which is why I have a 2016 registration here. Had totally forgotten about that when I tried to register again in 2019.

My original plan with my first 50 shares was to hold for 5-10 years and if everything worked out perfectly the stock goes to $5-10k. Could I really have $2 million in Tsla with little else though? The exchange rate fluctuations alone could be over $10k many days. That would be tough.

Great problem to have and it might never happen. Tesla might stall. Not sure why but anything can happen. Hey, I got rich (kinda), for awhile at least, who would have thought.

What would you do? Sell the multipliers tomorrow morning? Take the $50k? If I don't and we go down to $1400 it'll be $25k instead. Hold until July 22? When it might be worth $250k or whatever. Potentially make another round of, for me, life changing money? I probably know the correct answer is sell some and keep some but for the first time I feel this is for real. It might not be enough for an island, unless it's really small, but it would be enough for me.

I am obviously not afraid to play the odds but the stakes are getting high. If I sell or not, it'll feel like forever until earnings report arrives though.

tl/dr. Made some money. No idea what to do.

Only you can make these decisions.

But with that being said, the most important thing to be aware of is your own goals. Is there are certain amount of money that would allow you to not worry about having an income anymore? If so, how important is it to you to get to this goal? How big a deal would having 50% of this goal be? Etc.

By 5x multipliers, I assume you mean options. Holding onto options that expire in just 10 trading days and are by the sounds of it ~15% of your entire net worth is very risky, especially when you don't currently have an income. TSLA does seem to be in an upwards trajectory, and perhaps it will go up more by then, but who knows. It sounds like you're holding 2 or 3 options? Personally, I'm skeptical about my ability to predict what happens in the short term, so wagering 15% of my net worth on that is not something I'd want to do. But your goals and risk tolerances may be different than mine, and it's quite possible that selling part of them or all of them now will leave money on the table.

In the end, the only person who can make these decisions is you.

 

[Words of HABIT]

Usually TSLAQ or many "analysts" say that Tesla lowers price because of demand issues... etc.

But from a Tesla mission statement POV, it's never Tesla's idea to keep things out of people's reach and profit from that. So as their production cost and things get ironed out, they drop their price by the magnitude of their saving while maintaining an acceptable profit margin within TSLA.

And from a business perspective, I also see them doing this to eliminate the competitions (to be).

If Tesla is selling the most advanced EV on market for X amount of dollars, and you are looking to introduce another EV, what can you charge the consumer? If you are going to sell it for more, you better have a lot more than Tesla's offering, and if you are going to sell it for less, how much profit can you get? And these are the simple questions that any VC or investors would ask during a pitch. If you don't have a viable answer, there'd be no deal. No funding, no competition.

And it makes perfect sense too even taking Tesla's mission statement. Because EV is different than cars. Foxconn (yes, the one that builds iPhone for AAPL) announced a while back IIRC that they would enter the EV game by assembling them together. That's how different EV is to cars.

But Tesla wouldn't want too many "amateur" (for lack of a better word) on the market tainting the EV image.

@Oveeus, I disagreed with your post. Tesla's mission is to acceslerate the world's transition to sustainable energy. Tesla wants other EV companies to succeed. We need more than Tesla to change the world. The more EV cars on the road, the better for Tesla and the better for humanity, as each EV will replace an ICE.