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

[lafrisbee]

I don't give a *sugar* when Christmas is.....
But Inclusion day is just a little more than 28 days away....
Maybe we can start a song with the SP in each day... start it 12 days before the 3rd day after TSLA is admitted to the index.
Something like....
"On the first day of christmas Elon Musk gave to me $578.23 and a 46 80 battery"...
And oh?
So not only is the 21st of December often the shortest day of the year....
But The S&P 500 committee puts the final bow on their present right in time for Xmas...either the 23rd or 24th, correct?
Thanksgiving is going to be a "this is happening or going to happen time" for teslanaires. Xmas will be, "Look what I got for Christmas!"
I must have been 5 when I last looked forward to christmas. I've hated it almost my whole life.

 

[Paul_SF]

I don't give a *sugar* when Christmas is.....
But Inclusion day is less than 28 days away....
Maybe we can start a song with the SP in each day... start it 12 days before the 3rd day after TSLA is admitted to the index.
Something like....
"On the first day of christmas Elon Musk gave to me $578.23 and a 46 80 battery"...
And oh?
So not only is the 21st of December often the shortest day of the year....
But The S&P 500 committee puts the final bow on their present right in time for Xmas...either the 23rd or 24th, correct?
Thanksgiving is going to be a "this is happening or going to happen time" for teslanaires. Xmas will be, "Look what I got for Christmas!"
I must have been 5 when I last looked forward to christmas. I've hated it almost my whole life.

He did say “high note”, not “too high of a note”

 

[StealthP3D]

Tesla is worth around 400-500 today, maybe 500+ after q4 report but that's about it. I know this because the market have spoken and Tesla have been hovering around 400 despite battery day or good q3. So if a 5x squeeze happens, no matter how you spin Tesla it's not worth the price. Not worth 1 trillion by year end either cause wtf. Tesla isn't Nikola or nio, you need execution to go along with the valuation, not hope and wishes. But hey hopes and wishes can carry the stock some distance but eventually it falls to fundamentals.

I hear what you are saying but I don't really think anyone can say what Tesla is worth at any given time. Look, TSLA is worth whatever someone is willing to pay you for it at any given moment. That doesn't mean someone with a perfect and complete understanding of everything going on behind Tesla's doors might not think it's worth more or less than the market price at any given time. And that might be an unusually informed opinion, but it's still an opinion.

Given that, it's impossible to say with certainty that TSLA is not "worth" $2500 right now. Personally, I think $500/share is a reasonable valuation that SHOULD grow at surprising rate. But that's still just one person's opinion. I'm pretty sure in June of last year you would have said TSLA was not worth $500/share (when it was trading under $200). And yet, if you could travel back to that time, knowing what you know now, you would buy as much as you could afford even if you had to pay $500/share. Because now it's worth $2500/share split adjusted.

Anyone who says TSLA is worth more or less than it's current market price is speculating - it's just someone's opinion. Everyone has an opinion and most opinions are wrong. The true value of any stock at any point in time can only be known in hindsight.

 

[Intl Professor]

If you say so. Be sure. Because I’ve heard that line many times here only for the people to post their regret, frustration and self-proclaimed stupidity.

In my case I'm too lazy to learn about short term trading. Been buying since 2010. Early buying is my advice but still buying. (Protected by relatively low income.)

 

[Runarbt]

I'm planning selling a large part of my shares - long due reorganization of our holdings that I always deferred because it seemed like it was never a good time to sell tsla.
I do not have a real plan with price points, very interested in learning about your approach.
I was thinking to link my selling to certain dates (e.g. dec 14, dec 20-21) rather than price points.

Personally, I do not think this is the time to sell. And certainly NOT to diversify..

But - if you need to sell. Why not sell through some CALL options, say 25-50% above current prices a few weeks out?
Then you might end up with no sale, and still have a nice cash pile.

 

[PeterJA]

...So if a 5x squeeze happens, no matter how you spin Tesla it's not worth the price. Not worth 1 trillion by year end either cause wtf....

TSLA is up 5x this year, which you said is worth the price "because the market has spoken." One trillion market cap will be only another 2x. With respect, how do we know what price is the market speaking versus what-the-f?

Every rapid rise will be followed by a pullback. The hard question is: How big a pullback and when? Every answer is a guess, not "wtf"-obvious, because every situation is different.

What we know about the current situation is this: S&P is working hard to NOT have a big pullback, because of the damage it would cause to funds that buy at the peak. Will S&P succeed? I don't know, which is the reason I will HODL hard rather than bet they will fail.

 

[Singuy]

TSLA is up 5x this year, which you said is worth the price "because the market has spoken." One trillion market cap will be only another 2x. With respect, how do we know what price is the market speaking versus what-the-f?

Every rapid rise will be followed by a pullback. The hard question is: How big a pullback and when? Every answer is a guess, not "wtf"-obvious, because every situation is different.

What we know about the current situation is this: S&P is working hard to NOT have a VW-like squeeze and pullback, because of the damage it would cause to funds that buy at the peak. Will S&P succeed? I don't know, which is the reason I will HODL hard rather than bet they will fail.

Kind of how growth stock works. The run up is aggressive until it's market cap is too big to double or triple anymore. Tesla is at this stage as a doubling will require some kind of high margin revenue going forward which Tesla will get there eventually, just not in 28 days. So any x3, x4 in the next few weeks will be unnatural. And here's the thing about bubbles, most people expect it to pop so the first hint of reversal we can see massive downward movements because everyone will put in aggressive stop losses by the hour if Tesla gains 30-50% a day.

What S&P is trying to prevent is very aggressive spike like vw, but a modest spike will most likely happen no matter what anyone can do. My hope is that we don't see vw level squeeze so I don't have to make any decisions and pay stupid amount of taxes. And also I don't want to see Tesla trip circuit breaker daily for a week just for me to regret for not making any decisions by hodl.

If you follow my post, I am perhaps the least happy about Tsla going up decoupling from fundamentals just to see ER having zero impact on the stock price. I like fundamentals driving tsla price action. I like when we figured out something that is a "surprise" to wall street and see massive spikes during ER, and banks start giving upgrades due to the "surprise".

On the other hand it's no fun to see tsla bleed after great earnings with surprises because sp decoupled from fundamentals two weeks prior due to a stock split. Or tsla loses 25% over a trading day because it got snubbed by S&P while the stock did absolutely nothing when FSD beta ends up better than expected.

 

[TheTalkingMule]

$52 for Jan 15th calls @ $500 strike seems a pretty darn good deal to me, and I almost never find TSLA call prices attractive. Therefore I think the combined effect of that attractiveness and an unwinding of last week's MM push-down will lead to a pretty fat pop Mon/Tues.

Doesn't hurt that more certainty has been created with the legal loss for T in Pennsylvania and the certification of recount tally in Georgia.

Could be a very good week that lands around $550.

 

[juanmedina]

$52 for Jan 15th calls @ $500 strike seems a pretty darn good deal to me, and I almost never find TSLA call prices attractive. Therefore I think the combined effect of that attractiveness and an unwinding of last week's MM push-down will lead to a pretty fat pop Mon/Tues.

Doesn't hurt that more certainty has been created with the legal loss for T in Pennsylvania and the certification of recount tally in Georgia.

Could be a very good week that lands around $550.

I hope we open flat so I have a chance to get some more calls .

On call selling yes there is a place and time to open the trade and right now with the low IV and the potential of a big run up makes it risky. That post from Fact Checking quote a few pages back goes into call selling:

Fact Checking, Nov 13, 2018
Last edited: Nov 13, 2018
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Now that prices are down again, and particularly if they go lower, I'm thinking about using some of that money to buy February call options, to capture the effect of the Q4 earnings report. I've only been in stock previously; for all of you experienced options traders, do you have any tips to suggest?

I'm thinking about building a spreadsheet to represent my view on the probabilities of the company being worth varying amounts at expiry, and then mapping that up against the projected profits (or losses) relative to the current strike prices.

If you are still open to suggestions to change your fundamental approach, the one you picked (trying to map probabilities to dates) is a perfectly fine textbook approach, but has several disadvantages:

• Mapping out even approximate probabilities of real-life events is hard, very hard - and mistakes compound along the Markov Chain you establish.
  
• Then assigning specific dates to those events is even harder, and adds more compounded mistakes.
• There's no reasonable way to establish how good your predictions were after the fact: the past has occurred with 100% probability and you can make profits for the wrong reasons which can skew your strategy with no good feedback loop.
  
• Markets are also fundamentally irrational, there's a lot of 'sentiment' and 'momentum', 'panic' and 'greed' and other deep psychological effects that have a very clear effect on prices but are almost impossible to model with probabilities.
• The options market is a zero-sum game - every dollar is earned at the expense of a counter-party. You are a small retail investor, while prices are set by the pros who have their own agendas, which are hidden most of the time. They have superior market position, superior capital, superior sources of market moving information and superior trading latencies. The only agenda you can count on for sure is that the deck is stacked and the system is rigged against you with one main goal: to take away your money, regardless of whether your predictions were right.
• This means that IMHO there's just two ways to make money consistently:
  • Identify mis-pricing that is Tesla specific and which takes real intellectual effort to uncover
  • Join the big guys and write options, covered by your stock position or by your cash.

 

[PeterJA]

...So any x3, x4 in the next few weeks will be unnatural....

Agreed, which is why I'll consider selling some shares if they hit $2k in December. But $1k is 2x, not 3 or 4x.

On the other hand it's no fun to see tsla bleed after great earnings with surprises because sp decoupled from fundamentals two weeks prior due to a stock split....

Disagree. I loved the recent dips to $400, because I bought more. If Trump crashes the market by bombing Iran or starting a civil war, I will grieve for the country but happily buy more TSLA. I'm happy if the price goes up or down. Win-win.

 

[jeewee3000]

@StealthP3D has talked at length about why *we* don’t do this - main point being, you will kick yourself if it doesn’t come back down and just keeps rising, and/or you don’t time the buy back correctly like the dozens and dozens of people in this thread who’ve missed the buy back.

If you need the money soon, knock yourself out. If you don’t, play dead.

This.

Think back of all the smart ones taking profits during the rise from 300 (presplit) to 1000. Not too smart now, eh?

 

[Singuy]

Agreed, which is why I'll consider selling some shares if they hit $2k in December. But $1k is 2x, not 3 or 4x.


Disagree. I loved the recent dips to $400, because I bought more. If Trump crashes the market by bombing Iran or starting a civil war, I will grieve for the country but happily buy more TSLA. I'm happy if the price goes up or down. Win-win.

I find buying into tsla hard since price target is moving around so fast mostly due to bs(stock split/S&P inclusion). I have more confidence in judging how undervalued a stock price is due to how misunderstood the company is(more FUD the better like 2019). Right now who the F knows what it's doing.

 

[Mo City]

https://twitter.com/heydave7/status/1330553052957347841

View attachment 610862

Oh wow! I thought I put down a lot for Jan15 650 calls.

 

[Krugerrand]

Depends on the decouple. If Tesla hits over 1k due to Volkswagen like squeeze then yes do expect it to drop down. Tesla will be a 2 trillion dollar company one day, just not by the end of this year lol.

Interestingly enough, heard the exact same thing this past year when Tesla soared to just under $1,000. Lots of people patting themselves on the back when TSLA retraced (but conveniently don’t bother to mention a lot of that was pandemic related not valuation related), then got back on the TSLA too expensive bandwagon when it rose again this time well over $1,000 and kept on going. More back patting when it retraced a bit until the rise from a-stock-split-means-nothing. Back patting again when it retraced from the not-an-S&P inclusion only to surprise! is-an-S&P-inclusion.

Lots and lots of talk about Tesla isn’t worth X in market cap - yet here we are.

So your it’s not a 2T company by the end of this year elicits a big fat eye roll from me. The SP goes where it goes and anyone who thinks they can time it; be my guest. I’ll just do what I do best; nothing. And watch my net worth continue to climb without me putting one bit of thought into it, or feeling one bit of stress.

 

[Singuy]

Interestingly enough, heard the exact same thing this past year when Tesla soared to just under $1,000. Lots of people patting themselves on the back when TSLA retraced (but conveniently don’t bother to mention a lot of that was pandemic related not valuation related), then got back on the TSLA too expensive bandwagon when it rose again this time well over $1,000 and kept on going. More back patting when it retraced a bit until the rise from a-stock-split-means-nothing. Back patting again when it retraced from the not-an-S&P inclusion only to surprise! is-an-S&P-inclusion.

Lots and lots of talk about Tesla isn’t worth X in market cap - yet here we are.

So your it’s not a 2T company by the end of this year elicits a big fat eye roll from me. The SP goes where it goes and anyone who thinks they can time it; be my guest. I’ll just do what I do best; nothing. And watch my net worth continue to climb without me putting one bit of thought into it, or feeling one bit of stress.

Right and when Tsla stocks hit 2 Trillion dollars by year end due to S&P squeeze, in hind sight we would be like "surprise!, another stock split on top of a squeeze and now Tsla is a 10 trillion dollar company!".

I said it before, currently Tsla can stock split itself into a trillion dollar company as the sp has became nothing but noise.

 

[WolfHero]

Tag line: "It's electric!"

You guys asked for it, and it's a real thing:
Tesla Dating

 

[Sanny]

You guys asked for it, and it's a real thing:
Tesla Dating

Damn, need to clear browser history now

 

[enzo]

I want to hear from those with a strong or academic knowledge of market dynamics. As we dive deeper into this fascinating and unprecedented event, many here undoubtedly would like to understand things better on a theoretical and practical basis.

The central issue is institutional buying and its effect on the stock price. Take for example the runup on 11/18 at 11:30AM-12PM from $458 to $480. The volume was over 10 million shares. What can we interpret of this event? Can we assume the entire period was a block of institutional buying? Or, was it initiated by a large purchase and then algorithmic trading took over? Can we extrapolate and say that if someone wants again to buy several million shares in a half hour, it will probably cause a similar increase of about 5%? What if large purchases are spread over the day--can they be 'hidden', effectively tricking people into selling to you at lower prices? (Sort of the reverse of what we normally see--price suppression followed by loss of enthusiasm in the afternoons). Or does the cumulative effect of buying always appear in the price? At what % of the overall daily volume can institutional purchases (or to simplify, just index fund purchases) remain 'in the background'?

It would be nice if one could mentally keep track of things as they progress, making estimates of how many tens of millions of shares have been bought up by funds -- or if this is simply impossible.

 

[WolfHero]

Damn, need to clear browser history now

Pro tip: Right click > Open link in incognito window

 

[PeterJA]

I find buying into tsla hard since price target is moving around so fast mostly due to bs(stock split/S&P inclusion). I have more confidence in judging how undervalued a stock price is due to how misunderstood the company is(more FUD the better like 2019). Right now who the F knows what it's doing.

I hear ya. Here's how I think about it:

As @StealthP3D said, judging TSLA's "fair value" is kinda impossible because of all the unknowns. The best we can do is look at the size of Tesla's addressable markets, their technology lead over competitors, their rate of innovation and efficiency improvements, etc... and judge they will grow a shite-load in the next decade. So any price now will look cheap eventually. If I miss the bottom of a dip, so what. I will win anyway.