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

[Tslynk67]

If their goal really is to avoid front-running and an artificial inflation of the SP, that would be the way to do it. Would it really be possible without any leaks?

I don not believe this is legal, it would be insider trading, essentially.

But what do I know.

 

[OrthoSurg]

Nice! Personally, my proudest achievement is that I have successfully predicted 11 of the last 9 bottoms.

Cheers!

This is the first bottom I buy, but I bought 4 times before it reached the bottom. :X
Next time I guess I’ll buy when ARK buys, sell when Tesla does a capital raise. Lol

 

[Knightshade]

You were comparing EVs to ICE cars on the topic of million mile batteries.

I was comparing the useful lifespan of a vehicle versus the amount of miles on average people put on a vehicle before selling it.

The type of powertrain isn't relevant there- I've seen no evidence people keep either type anywhere NEAR the average lifespan of the powertrain (or even half that lifespan).

You're starting to sound like Gordon Johnson now insisting we can ONLY ever compared Tesla to another EV.

Nobody needs an EV either. Your point?

...what? I was pointing out the existing battery already has a lifespan more than 4, nearly 5, times longer than the average new car buyer owns a car.

This isn't a "well, I don't NEED another taco" this is literally "giving them a taco they'll never eat"

They aren't going to use the lifepan from 100k-200k on average (and the second owner isn't gonna use the 250-450k range either). So adding EVEN MOAR lifespan doesn't appear to help anybody in the first couple decades the thing exists.

This idea of need is based on your own subjective idea of what people need.

No, it's based on facts about the amount of miles people drive in a year on average.

Facts! try them sometime!

Unless it's not. You're applying your own peculiar values to everyone.

Again, not person values- facts and math.

You seem opposed to them for some reason.

To whom?

To anybody.

Something like 99% of all vehicles go to a junkyard well before 450,000 miles.

So they're already junk in less than the life of the current battery

The original owner, on average, dumped the car before it even got to 1/4 of the life of the current battery.

So you continue to fail to make a case for any value add, outside of an advertising slogan for a company that doesn't advertise, in going from 450k life to 1000k life.


Which is probably why Tesla ignored the existing million mile battery from CATL.

Since "million mile" doesn't add value.

Cheaper to make, and faster/easier to make, do.

Which are the 2 major things I expect from what they show on BD.

If it's also rated for more cycles- cool. But nobody really cares about JUST that.

If they did CATL would have customers for thiers.

Nearly all vehicles last longer than their owners drive them, and their second or third owners might drive them, but it's still important in marketing for the first buyer. It's important for competition

Then why did nobody want CATLs "million mile" batteries?

HINT: It's because JUST being able to say million mile isn't important to any of the things you think it is.

, just as it's important to know that the Model 3 is the safest car ever tested by the NHTSA. It doesn't mean we *need* that

Now who is applying their own peculiar values?

"Safest car" is a massive immediate value add to a vehicle you're gonna drive for years.

"Will still have a good battery 20 years after it's been resold multiple times since your original purchase" not so much in comparison.

The fact that the tech exists is itself of value.

Obviously not- since nobody was interested in buying the existing one announced a while back.

It's only when there's OTHER benefits (again- specifically, that it's CHEAPER and/or FASTER/EASIER TO MAKE IN VOLUME) that anyone cares.


Tesla sales aren't being held back, at all by the fact their batteries are "only" rated for 450,000 miles.

They are being held back by:

1) Inability to produce enough batteries to meet demand
and
2) Inability to lower costs enough to make them more affordable.

Million mile fixes neither.

Do these people work?

Of course they do. They just work nearer work than you personally.

You seem to have a LOT of trouble undertsanding your PERSONAL situation it not typical nationally.

This doesn't sound remotely accurate

And yet- it is accurate.

I provided you sources for actual studies with actual data proving it.

The fact YOU PERSONALLY live and work someplace with a long commute is irrelevant to the facts of national averages.

though I understand some jobs allow people to stay close to home. Many people have a commute

Yes they do.

Though on average it's significantly shorter than your personal one as shown by the sourced data you've been provided.


If you refuse to accept sourced facts I don't see much point in continuing the discussion.

Even if if we grant your figure, it makes zero sense considering the ranges that EV companies are after. Why do we need more range than 322 miles in a Model 3 LR AWD?

Because occasionally people like to drive somewhere on vacation. And don't always want to own a second car (or rent one) to be able to.


But yes, on a practical level, APART from road trips, 322 miles is way way more than enough for daily driving use.

Another way we know that?

Nissan sold a ton of Leafs when they had MUCH MUCH LESS range than 322 miles.

Ditto VW and the e-golf.

(for that matter Tesla themselves sold plenty of older S, and newer 3/SR/SR+ with ranges in the low to mid 200s- plus all the other current EVs in that range like the Bolt, Niro, etc)


Because those ranges are more than enough for the majority of daily driving in the US based on actual data from US drivers.

Not everybody of course- but the majority easily.

(Again MOST daily drives were TEN MILES OR LESS).

Why do smaller EVs with poor ranges do so poorly in sales

Dude.

Prior to this year the best selling EV of all time (as in most total # sold worldwide) was....

The Nissan Leaf.

Which has had pretty crap range for most of its life.

(the Model 3 finally passed it in roughly February 2020).

,Why does range-anxiety exist?

Mostly?

Because humans are bad at facts and math, and REALLY bad at risk assessment.

They can easily talk themselves into insane hypothetical like "Well sure I only drive 30 miles a day on average.... BUT what if my spouse gets hit by a bus in a snowstorm after I've already driven those 30 miles, and there's no ambulances available, and they need an organ transplant in a hospital 200 miles away?!"

What about long trips

What about em? A 322 mile Tesla can make them easily thanks to superchargers.

Hell if you go find old posts on here, 220 mile range Teslas easily made them, before there were NEARLY as many superchargers too.

But again people like to make up crazy things in their heads- "WHAT IF I GET A JOB OFFER 1000 MILES AWAY AND HAVE TO START TOMORROW AND THERE ARE NO FLIGHTS?!"

, or making the car work harder (poor weather, towing, more mass in vehicle, faster driving)? How one drives makes a difference.

Sure. 322 miles might become 160 miles of range.

But then, again, the average daily drive is only 30 miles... and the MAJORITY of daily drives is only 10.

160 is way more than enough

See again the tens of thousands of Nissan Leafs sold annually year after year after year. Mostly bought by people rational enough to realize they basically never drive 100 miles in a day, let alone 300.... and if an emergency DOES come up, rental cars and airplanes both exist....(or likely some owned an older ICE vehicle to cover those edge cases)

Again, I'm talking about pre-pandemic times.

Right- back when the average american drove 30 miles, with the majoriy driving less than 10, on a daily basis.

As proven to you with sourced data.

Now, of course, people drive even LESS.

One of the primary concerns of any EV owner is range. 322 miles seems like a lot until you take a long trip, or drive fast in a SoCal HOV lane for a long time

Speaking of moving goalposts

What does any of this have to do with a battery that lasts a million miles?


BTW you seem fixated on California.... so let's debunk your ideas about your own state real quick.


The Average Miles Driven per Year in the United States

14,435.

That's the average # of miles per year driven by someone in CA.

Which is... ~39.3 miles per day.

That IS a bit higher than the national average of 30.

But not much.

And it means over the ~6.6 years on average a new car owner keeps the car, you'd drive... 95,271 miles.

So 450,000 seems plenty, and 1 million pretty irrelevant.

You're falling in to a false-weighting statistical fallacy here

Just the opposite. I even explained to you how we get an average of 30 miles daily driven while we also know the majority drive 10 or less.

It's because outliers well above average such as yourself shift the mean toward 30, while the MEDIAN remains 10 because the MAJORITY of drives are around 10.

I understand what you mean about anecdotes, but your stats are wrong

They really aren't.

because they're weighting *everyone* vs. the specific demo of potential EV owners or Tesla buyers/owners

There you go Gordon Johnsoning up the thread again.

everyone is a potential EV or Tesla owner.

That is literally the mission of the company

To accelerate the transition of everyone to sustainable things like EVs.

Thus looking at the average needs of everyone not just "rich dudes in LA" is exactly the correct target.

Further, this assumes the person who moves close to a job keeps it as long as they want. People change jobs, but they don't always change homes (and sometimes they can't if they're locked in to a lease or are homeowners with families). So, they commute. My entire career is full of people with crazy commutes, and some commute 2 hours one way

Because California real estate pricing is batshit insane.

Guess what one reason Elon had no trouble finding engineers happy to move from CA to Texas is?

Your figures aren't fact.

They literally are though.

Your inability to accept facts, and instances we ignore facts and instead cherry pick "rich EV owners in CA" as the only relevant demographic notwithstanding.

We should conduct a poll here, asking people how long their commutes are since we have a great self-selected groups of Tesla enthusiasts.

Right. Cherry picking.

Especially dumb cherry picking too since Tesla is trying to get non ev owners into EVs.

You contradicted yourself. Marketing has value because drawing people out of ICE and in to EVs is important now more than it will ever be in the future.

You're the only one contradicting yourself.

You just rambled on for 10 paragraphs about how ONLY EV OWNERS MATTER and we should ONLY POLL CURRENT TESLA OWNERS FOR DATA.

Now when it hurts your point you suddenly realize drawing in ICE owners matters.

You're talking about ICE cars again

And back to pushing the goalposts the other way I see...suddenly ONLY EVS MATTER again [/QUOTE]

 

[woodisgood]

I think a "leak" in this respect would be considered insider trading. Generally it's hard to keep secrets when more than 1 person is involved. But I feel like anyone involved in handling S and P stuff for Tesla right now knows that there are probably people doing everything they can to overhear their discussion and they are on high alert to keep things under wraps.

Yeah. I was thinking more along the lines of the funds who need to do the buying, not Tesla folks. S&P would contact them, presumably via email and say, “Start buying this month, we’re not announcing until you’re done buying.” That’s a lot of funds/managers (not sure exactly how many but at least dozens?), and if there was any document involved, you’d think it would make its way out due to the unprecedented nature of such a move. Not to mention the fin-media with ears to the ground on the whole Tesla/S&P thing.

All that is to say I’d be very very impressed if they were actually able to execute such a maneuver incognito!

 

[Dancing Lemur]

C'mon $442.68... Mama needs a new pair of shoes!

Bottega Veneta or Jimmy Choo? Or are you hiring a personal cobbler?

 

[lafrisbee]

A few thoughts:

1) I just finished watching the movie Paycheck, which caused me to reflect more deeply on the implications of knowing the future. My conclusion was that I’m now far less excited about knowing what’s coming for sure particularly if it ends poorly, but even if it ends well a lot of the awesomeness of surprise is gone. I like awesome surprises.

2) She’s not a Ouija board and so far she’s given no indications of any ability to be quite that date specific. Do you think she’s been holding out on me?!

3) I feel like you might be wanting me to exploit her relationship with The Universe for monetary gain. That seems a bit shallow.

4) Let me see what I can get out of her.

2) She is more like a Ouija Board if she gives nothing specific, especially a date. Ouija boards work better when they've been plied with alcohol. Use that if needed.
3) Please! No!
We would never think of using her for monetary gain. Your Dear Old Mother is loved by us all. But not for monetary gain. Look at it this way...she is providing us piece of mind. She has a calming effect on the world. All is good.

 

[Chickenlittle]

My bet is that this week will close just under 500, unless the SPoon is announced. Too many calls at 500 for MM's to be happy above that price.

Your aware tsla will have tremendous jump in earnings by declaring cumulative losses up to date in either 3rd or 4th qtr report (I suspect the 3rd). I suspect impossible to keep out of SPoon then. I see SP inclusion a double edged sword. Short term benefit but those days when SP down will be a drag

 

[woodisgood]

I don not believe this is legal, it would be insider trading, essentially.

But what do I know.

It would be insider trading for S&P funds that track the index to buy ahead of an announcement?

 

[jw934]

There are $1000 strikes for september 2022 calls available.

Source: I own some.

Specific for Sept 2022, is that because you expect the stock price by Sept/2020 to be over $1000 plus the premium you paid? Or do you plan to sell the call when Tesla joins S&P500 (or some huge stock rise event), before the call price drops? Personally, I do not expect $1000 by Sept 2020, but I have wrong many times before about the unbelievable SP rise. Thanks in advance.

 

[Cape Coddess]

Bottega Veneta or Jimmy Choo? Or are you hiring a personal cobbler?

Skechers. Like?
(I didn't get this rich by not being practical )

 

[Nocturnal]

...what? I was pointing out the existing battery already has a lifespan more than 4, nearly 5, times longer than the average new car buyer owns a car.

This isn't a "well, I don't NEED another taco" this is literally "giving them a taco they'll never eat"

They aren't going to use the lifepan from 100k-200k on average (and the second owner isn't gonna use the 250-450k range either). So adding EVEN MOAR lifespan doesn't appear to help anybody in the first couple decades the thing exists.

[/QUOTE]
Way too much for me to jump in on but wanted to address this point. Yes, a car rarely makes it to those levels of miles before being junked (due to wear, damage etc.) But, an ICE engine/transmission with 400k miles is essentially worthless. Nobody is going to take the effort to pull it out of an car to transplant into a new one or repurpose. I've assisted in pulling a motor before. It's a lot of work and at minimum you need to perform a full engine rebuild before re-using.

A million mile EV battery would 400k miles on it can easily be pulled from an old model 3 headed to the scrap yard. That battery could be immediately be repurposed into another vehicle or into stationary storage with minimal effort.

 

[Tslynk67]

Yeah. I was thinking more along the lines of the funds who need to do the buying, not Tesla folks. S&P would contact them, presumably via email and say, “Start buying this month, we’re not announcing until you’re done buying.” That’s a lot of funds/managers (not sure exactly how many but at least dozens?), and if there was any document involved, you’d think it would make its way out due to the unprecedented nature of such a move. Not to mention the fin-media with ears to the ground on the whole Tesla/S&P thing.

All that is to say I’d be very very impressed if they were actually able to execute such a maneuver incognito!

That's also insider info, it's highly material information that they disseminate to external organisations who would benefit from it.

 

[Tim S]

Hello happy people, someone suggested I try out covered calls with my shares...has anyone tried this?

I can give you an example. I sold one $700 Oct 02 2020 covered call contract today for $750. I plan to hold until expiration. If the SP is under $700 at the close on Oct 2nd, it will expire worthless and I made $750. If the SP is above $700 then, I will let it exercise and sell 100 of my shares at $700 per share.

The risk is if the SP is significantly higher than $700 by then, which is unlikely but not impossible obviously. Then I will lose my shares at a "cheap" price. But I'm OK with that for 100 shares, because I will be a lot wealthier if the SP is above $700 in 3 weeks

A warning though...this might not be the best time to sell covered calls, with the upcoming potential catalysts of Battery Day, Q3 P&D and Q3 Earnings... and of course S&P inclusion will happen sometime. That is why I only sold one today.

 

[StealthP3D]

Another new piece of slang, in the spirit of Joe Mode--can we get Tesla to rename neutral to Nikola Mode?

That's funny! But it would be disrespectful to the name of one of the most amazing innovators to ever live.

I always thought that "Chill Mode" was probably initially referred to as "ICE Mode" by the Tesla engineers (as it really does replicate the time delay built into the throttle mapping and lack of power typical of ICE cars) but Elon saw that as escalating the anti-EV sentiment and suggested "Chill Mode" as a more hip, less antagonistic alternative.

 

[LN1_Casey]

Why’d we think SPoon is still a possibility this quarter? I am completely discounting that already for this quarter. The earliest that could occur now would be next quarter after 3Q ER

I don't necessarily think it'll happen this quarter, I'm agnostic about it's inclusion. If it happens, it does. If it doesn't, it doesn't.

 

[Paul_SF]

View attachment 588477

Skechers. Like?
(I didn't get this rich by not being practical )

OT

Nice cat! What’s her/his name?

 

[Knightshade]

Way too much for me to jump in on but wanted to address this point. Yes, a car rarely makes it to those levels of miles before being junked (due to wear, damage etc.) But, an ICE engine/transmission with 400k miles is essentially worthless. Nobody is going to take the effort to pull it out of an car to transplant into a new one or repurpose. I've assisted in pulling a motor before. It's a lot of work and at minimum you need to perform a full engine rebuild before re-using.

A million mile EV battery would 400k miles on it can easily be pulled from an old model 3 headed to the scrap yard. That battery could be immediately be repurposed into another vehicle or into stationary storage with minimal effort.[/QUOTE]


Absolutely valid point as far as making batteries useful after the car isn't- in the sense of advancing the mission of moving to greener energy supply this will, MANY years from now (after those 400k miles), help.

But I don't see that adding significant upfront value to the vehicle today.

"Well, sure its third for fourth owner 20 years from now will be able to bank some solar in this if he pulls the battery and puts it into a mount, and...didn't already have stationary storage for his solar 20 years in the future for some reason... so... I guess I better pay some more for that!" doesn't sound likely to me.



Now- that said- if they move this stuff UP FRONT into stationary storage and throw a crazy long warranty on it- THAT certainly adds value to stationary- just not vehicles.

 

[dmvevguy]

I can give you an example. I sold one $700 Oct 02 2020 covered call contract today for $750. I plan to hold until expiration. If the SP is under $700 at the close on Oct 2nd, it will expire worthless and I made $750. If the SP is above $700 then, I will let it exercise and sell 100 of my shares at $700 per share.

The risk is if the SP is significantly higher than $700 by then, which is unlikely but not impossible obviously. Then I will lose my shares at a "cheap" price. But I'm OK with that for 100 shares, because I will be a lot wealthier if the SP is above $700 in 3 weeks

A warning though...this might not be the best time to sell covered calls, with the upcoming potential catalysts of Battery Day, Q3 P&D and Q3 Earnings... and of course S&P inclusion will happen sometime. That is why I only sold one today.

Awesome, thank you as I'm researching this!!

 

[woodisgood]

That's also insider info, it's highly material information that they disseminate to external organisations who would benefit from it.

Ha, ok that makes sense. Clearly I know jack sugar about insider trading.

That all being said I don’t believe S&P is happening anytime soon. For me price action is explained by Battery Day and the usual call-buying/delta-hedging loop. Now if we were to keep rising 10%/day for ten straight trading days I might have to reconsider some more far-fetched theories.

 

[ggr]

It would be insider trading for S&P funds that track the index to buy ahead of an announcement?

If the fund knew about inclusion before the announcement, that would be insider trading, yes. And if it was a fund that tracks the index, even after the announcement there is a specific window of time when they can buy, which might not start immediately.