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

[MP3Mike]

I called Wells Fargo Advisors in 2010 and asked them how I can move my tiny $22k 401k into entirely TSLA. They told me it was impossible so I eventually just gave up, being young and stupid. Kind of wish I had pursued that a little more tenaciously, or Wells Fargo cared about their customers enough to explain my real options.

Not every 401k plan allows moving money into a BrokerageLink type option. And even those that do sometimes put limits on what you can invest in. Like one I have can only invest in mutual funds, no stocks/ETFs/Options/etc. (Luckily that leaves some options: two Baron funds and one ARK fund that hold a decent percentage of TSLA.) The smaller the company the less likely their plan is likely to give you any options. (Another restriction is that I have to leave 5% of the money in the standard plan funds offered in the 401k.) Every plan is different.

If you are no longer with the company you can almost always move the 401k money into a Rollover IRA... (At which point you should be able to invest it in almost anything in the market.)

 

[Dancing Lemur]

I've been leaning more towards some buying pressure being postponed until the week of the 21st - 24th, yes.

The closing cross on the 18th seems like the ideal timing to buy for the indexers. It minimizes risk, and lets them add at the exact price TSLA will be added to the S&P 500. I'm sure that during most inclusions there is enough liquidity during the closing cross to accommodate most indexers, but I'm not sure that's going to be the case with TSLA.

As of right now, I think low volume indicates there hasn't been anywhere near enough front-running and speculation to accommodate indexers on the 18th. I expect that more front-running will happen over the next two weeks, but will it be enough to accommodate the indexers on the 18th? I'm not sure. I see a scenario where there simply won't be enough shares during the closing cross on the 18th, causing some of the buying to spill over to the week after.

I also think it's a lot less likely there would be a dip in this scenario. Most speculators (which is what would cause a peak and dip) would get paid on the 18th, but be insufficient to satisfy demand, thus it'd simply run up more in the week after until stock price settles.



I'm considering changing my 18Dec calls to 24Dec expirations. Most of my S&P calls are 24Dec expirations, I just have one position in 18Dec expirations. I might just keep them though. It'll depend on the cost.

I was wondering how long it would take someone to come to this conclusion. If the index funds don’t get what they want at the closing auction price, what happens in the following week? That’s why all the calls I bought on inclusion announcement are for 12/24. Not because I’ll definitely hold them that long, but because I might. And because the concept of a closing auction wasn’t a revelation for me.

I’ve got 500 & 550s (¼ each of total contracts), and the YOLOs at 650. That’s a total of 5% of my trading portfolio, which is considerably more than usual for the lottery plays. If there’s a run to, say 800, I’m ready. But if we don’t advance past 650 that’s ok, too. Y’all with your $750 and $1k calls are hoping beyond hope. I’m worried about those that are just getting margin accounts now or starting to dabble in options. This is what we heard at the end of August, and we know what happened after that. The time to do that was at the beginning of November, not at ATHs.

Please be careful and preserve capital if you’re trying to swing this.

 

[gabeincal]

I was wondering how long it would take someone to come to this conclusion. If the index funds don’t get what they want at the closing auction price, what happens in the following week? That’s why all the calls I bought on inclusion announcement are for 12/24. Not because I’ll definitely hold them that long, but because I might. And because the concept of a closing auction wasn’t a revelation for me.

I’ve got 500 & 550s (¼ each of total contracts), and the YOLOs at 650. That’s a total of 5% of my trading portfolio, which is considerably more than usual for the lottery plays. If there’s a run to, say 800, I’m ready. But if we don’t advance past 650 that’s ok, too. Y’all with your $750 and $1k calls are hoping beyond hope. I’m worried about those that are just getting margin accounts now or starting to dabble in options. This is what we heard at the end of August, and we know what happened after that. The time to do that was at the beginning of November, not at ATHs.

Please be careful and preserve capital if you’re trying to swing this.

Very helpful comment, and totally relevant to my situation, thank you.

I'm holding about 50 Mar '21 700 calls (cost basis is around $30) and thought about gradually reducing this position by Dec 21st. The greed in me (all of us?) wishes a run-up to $1,200 (life changing money for my family), but the rationality in me is saying '650 SP is more than enough gain than what you can do anything with right now, take it and don't get caught like on the top in August'.

I think I'll end up somewhere in the middle due to the greed winning, and also just plain lack of action to click sell (therefore action to hold)... At least they're Mar - should be able to hold them through a rough period.

The way I think it's worthwhile for me to look at this mountain (?) ahead is I better gain a decent crumb compared to my wallet - not the event. Since I'm converting my gains into shares, the possible run-up will provide glorious returns in the long run. And I'm in it for the long run at only 37.

 

[jw934]

thanks jw.

it is quite interesting. there's also two 5.2 million spikes Friday, one at 4:02, and one at 4:26. that's a total of 18 million shares, if they represent the same suspected process.

have never seen this brought up before, @jw934, I'm not disagreeing with you, but, I am curious about any details to your thought process for attributing this volume to closing cross transactions. if this is what's going on you've brought us quite a tool and some view reshuffling data ; )

I have heard multiple explanations for these extended hours high volume reports over the decades. The only explanations that makes sense to me are the ones discussed in these past few pages in TMC. But that only explains the trade at 4PM.

 

[TheTalkingMule]

Not every 401k plan allows moving money into a BrokerageLink type option. And even those that do sometimes put limits on what you can invest in. Like one I have can only invest in mutual funds, no stocks/ETFs/Options/etc. (Luckily that leaves some options: two Baron funds and one ARK fund that hold a decent percentage of TSLA.) The smaller the company the less likely their plan is likely to give you any options. (Another restriction is that I have to leave 5% of the money in the standard plan funds offered in the 401k.) Every plan is different.

If you are no longer with the company you can almost always move the 401k money into a Rollover IRA... (At which point you should be able to invest it in almost anything in the market.)

I eventually rolled it all over, invested most in SCTY and now have TSLA.....thank god. But that was after my company was bought I had to option to roll into an IRA.

What I needed Wells Fargo to tell me, or more realistically tell myself, was that you can easily take loans against your 401k. Right in the Wells Fargo site there's an instant loan option that you "repay" to yourself at interest. I coulda just done that and opened an IRA with at least a fat chunk of it. Ah well. At least I'm 1/10th as rich as most folks here!

 

[gabeincal]

I eventually rolled it all over, invested most in SCTY and now have TSLA.....thank god. But that was after my company was bought I had to option to roll into an IRA.

What I needed Wells Fargo to tell me, or more realistically tell myself, was that you can easily take loans against your 401k. Right in the Wells Fargo site there's an instant loan option that you "repay" to yourself at interest. I coulda just done that and opened an IRA with at least a fat chunk of it. Ah well. At least I'm 1/10th as rich as most folks here!

Most importantly, why would you want to do business with Wells Fargo? Or is it just me who had a terrible experience with them?

 

[SeaNile]

Rolling over one of my previous employers 401k into an IRA this week. Gives me a little bit of money to freely invest. Nothing huge but this one particular roll over nets me about 300k. Torn between going TSLA, MMEDF and Trulieve. Of course I can split the investments but these are the three I am most interested in right now.

 

[MXWing]

Not every 401k plan allows moving money into a BrokerageLink type option. And even those that do sometimes put limits on what you can invest in. Like one I have can only invest in mutual funds, no stocks/ETFs/Options/etc. (Luckily that leaves some options: two Baron funds and one ARK fund that hold a decent percentage of TSLA.) The smaller the company the less likely their plan is likely to give you any options. (Another restriction is that I have to leave 5% of the money in the standard plan funds offered in the 401k.) Every plan is different.

If you are no longer with the company you can almost always move the 401k money into a Rollover IRA... (At which point you should be able to invest it in almost anything in the market.)

BPTRX is 45% Tesla and 5% SpaceX.

How crazier can you get than that for a mutual fund.

 

[gabeincal]

Ah, I just paid for an annual membership on TMC with the gains from the sale of my not-even-arrived-yet Tesla Tequila (bottle).

Empty bottle sold for $1,420.69 on eBay about a week ago. 20% of gains go to PETA and now a little chunk to TMC.

Thank you for having me, it's an honor to be in such good company every day.

 

[gabeincal]

MMEDF

MMEDF looks aligned with my values in terms of utilizing natural psychedelic chemicals to treat / relieve mental disorders. Thank you for posting about them, I might just put 2-3% of my portfolio into them. Will do some more research...

 

[gabeincal]

BPTRX is 45% Tesla and 5% SpaceX.

How crazier can you get than that for a mutual fund.

4.06% of SpaceX. But how crazy it is to mix Tesla, SpaceX, Vail Resorts, Zillow, and Hyatt in the same portfolio? What is this place?

 

[mejojo]

I eventually rolled it all over, invested most in SCTY and now have TSLA.....thank god. But that was after my company was bought I had to option to roll into an IRA.

What I needed Wells Fargo to tell me, or more realistically tell myself, was that you can easily take loans against your 401k. Right in the Wells Fargo site there's an instant loan option that you "repay" to yourself at interest. I coulda just done that and opened an IRA with at least a fat chunk of it. Ah well. At least I'm 1/10th as rich as most folks here!

Loans against 401K are neither easy nor recommended...at least the one I was able to accomplish. I could take a max of $50K and if you leave the company you have to pay it back in short order, and you could not take another until a year following the year during which you repaid the last loan. Just....don't count on it being as good an idea as it seems.

PLUS, when you repay the loan, it is with after-tax funds.

8 Reasons to Never Borrow From Your 401(k)

 

[MP3Mike]

BPTRX is 45% Tesla and 5% SpaceX.

How crazier can you get than that for a mutual fund.

I mentioned two Baron funds.

But I think SpaceX is down to only ~3.6% of BPTRX now. (That is what happens when you have more money coming in, and TSLA going up in value, but can't just go buy more SpaceX to keep things balanced.)

 

[Tyler34]

Ah, I just paid for an annual membership on TMC with the gains from the sale of my not-even-arrived-yet Tesla Tequila (bottle).

Empty bottle sold for $1,420.69 on eBay about a week ago. 20% of gains go to PETA and now a little chunk to TMC.

Thank you for having me, it's an honor to be in such good company every day.

Check out that numerology. Damn, someone here must've been the ebay buyer, bidding it up.

 

[smorgasbord]

Not sure if Tesla's plug is patented or not, but there's really two reasons to put one on your car in the US:

Using Tesla destination charging (which nowadays requires Tesla approval except on older HPWCs that only speak J1772 protocol, or newer HPWCs that have had the protocol switch flipped to J1772 protocol (which AFAIK does not happen in the US))
Using Tesla Superchargers (which requires Tesla approval)

Otherwise, you'd just use a J1772 (with CCS or maybe CHAdeMO for DC fast charging).

Could just be that they're negotiating with Tesla for use of it, but they certainly seem to be teasing Tesla-compatible charging, which would obviously have a revenue impact for Tesla.

One can always just buy one of these to use Tesla non-superchargers for non-Teslas. About $160.

 

[Beltsbear]

BPTRX is 45% Tesla and 5% SpaceX.

How crazier can you get than that for a mutual fund.

Up 80% since I got in. Wish it had more SpaceX though.

 

[MXWing]

I mentioned two Baron funds.

But I think SpaceX is down to only ~3.6% of BPTRX now. (That is what happens when you have more money coming in, and TSLA going up in value, but can't just go buy more SpaceX to keep things balanced.)

Ahh wow, percentage dipped as Ron doesn’t sell his positions in TSLA.

I have no way of telling Mr. Baron to participate in all the SpaceX capital raises but hope someone is telling him!

Id love to see how 10K invested today does in Baron vs Ark at 5 and 10 years.

 

[smorgasbord]

I've been leaning more towards some buying pressure being postponed until the week of the 21st - 24th, yes....I'm considering changing my 18Dec calls to 24Dec expirations. Most of my S&P calls are 24Dec expirations, I just have one position in 18Dec expirations. I might just keep them though. It'll depend on the cost.

Thanks for the information and thoughts. I just wanted to chime in that Emmet Peppers went with Jan '21 Calls to provide some optionality in terms of collecting profits in 2020 or 2021.

For those that haven't seen it:

 

[mejojo]

Thanks for the information and thoughts. I just wanted to chime in that Emmet Peppers went with Jan '21 Calls to provide some optionality in terms of collecting profits in 2020 or 2021.

For those that haven't seen it:

If I recall, he put most of $3M on Jan 700s at $4-$5? Last I checked they were at $30, so it would seem he's turned his chance into maybe $16-18M or so. I wonder if he's got some stop losses on any of that?

 

[YAWD]

S&P inclusion announcement came at $408 @ $368B Market Cap.
Since then, we are now at $600 @ $567B Market Cap.
Since then, Market Cap has increased by $181B.
From various post'n blogs +-$140B needs to be bought from S&P Index funds and the like.
Therefore have we already overshot by $41B ($181B - $140B)? What am I missing?
I'm all for more gains, but am asking for a friend.

Weak shareholders who sold too soon