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

[ByeByeJohnny]

It's customary for tax credits passed anytime in the year to be retroactive to the beginning of the year.

In fact, I'm thinking of spending $100 on a call option on an off menu SR Model Y and seeing if I can get that price with 7K credit for 2021.

I'm pretty sure it's also not customary for tax credits to make a difference between manufacturers that are an even further disadvantage to US manufacturers. Let's say this bill takes until July 1st to get done. Tesla will then have sold over 200k of those cars with no benefit to Tesla. Heck if they wait until Dec 1st they might have sold all 400k.

 

[S3XY]

This is my favorite line of the part that wasn't pay-walled:

Compared to this light-footed, sweet-singing creature, gas-burning competitors feel like puttering, muttering nincompoops.

The misguided people who think the transition to mostly EV's will take decades and strict government mandates don't know this yet.

I'm doing my best to let them all know this at every red light I'm at.

 

[buttershrimp]

Starlink launch pulled a “Gary Black” this evening, so they will try again tomorrow and deem it “good timing.”

 

[Artful Dodger]

Asian stocks bounce as bond market calms | Reuters (7:19pm EST)

"Asian shares firmed on Monday as some semblance of calm returned to bond markets after last week's wild ride, while progress in the huge U.S. stimulus package underpinned optimism about the global economy."​

 

[PeterJA]

...Buffett is certainly conservative. But he (and the people he has directly running these companies) are not idiots- and they're not ignorant of what direction their own industries are heading.

Captains of a conglomerate that invests in Chevron, GM and its own shares instead of Tesla are idiots or ignorant. In my opinion.

 

[Big Time]

Jim Creamer is really a big gulp of sour milk. A few times I think I agree with him, other times I wish he would pull his huge head out of his ass. Must be off his unusually high number of meds.

When this stock heads north of 740 I’ll be comfortable again, hopefully that comes sooner than later.

 

[capster]

Batteries won't be "falling out of the sky" in our lifetimes but there will be huge profits for those who can scale production of raw materials and finished products more quickly than the rest. The people who scoop those profits up will be the people who have enough vision to see how big the actual demand will be and invest the money now. You can bet this won't be Ford or GM.

We put humans on the moon in less than a decade by setting a big goal and commiting the resources to it. The world is awash with investment capital for electrification as evidenced by the share prices of any company with "EV" in the description. Throwing our hands up in the air and saying "I guess we will have to build hybrids because there won't be enough batteries in 2030" is a self-fulfilling prophecy and a real cop out.

Hybrids are barely better than efficient ICE cars and the development time for a new car model is just as long as the time to get a new mine operational.

I’m skeptical about the competitive viability of hybrids, including PHEV’s, that the OEM’s seem to expect now that there are competitive and compelling BEV’s on the market. I’ve nothing against hybrids and PHEV’s themselves mind you, my ex and I have had both.

They are a kind of designed by committee response: Keep the cars unnecessarily complex to keep the service and parts part of the business humming and don’t go to the trouble to make vehicles efficient enough to be suitable as pure EV’s.

The BEV market is going to evolve so fast that the hybrids and PHEV’s will not prove to be the durable stepping stones on which a lot of OEM’s’ strategies seem to be predicated.

 

[Knightshade]

Toyota can most certainly partner with Panasonic and Sumitomo to make GFs.

Toyota doesn't need Tesla to get Sumitomo to increase production at their mines or open new mines.

Toyota doesn't need Tesla to get Panasonic producing 10s or even 100s of GWh of battery cells.

Tesla has chosen to go out on its own. Toyota can't. As you say they don't have the expertise.

GM will be opening up a GF in Ohio with LG to produce 30 GWh per year with option to double size of factory.

If GM could do it Toyota certainly can.

If anybody can have as much batteries as they want- why does Tesla keep saying they will happily buy every single one anybody can make for them and are ramping up their own production and they still can't get anywhere near enough batteries for demand?

Captains of a conglomerate that invests in Chevron, GM and its own shares instead of Tesla are idiots or ignorant. In my opinion.

I mean- I'm willing to consider there's ignorant, idiotic, non-inheritance billionaires.

But I'm going to need considerably more convincing that Warren Buffet is one of em.


I mean, the most basic description of his own strategy is:

Find a very few companies you understand, feel are undervalued, and you have a lot of confidence in the continued future of. Then own them.

That's his philosophy.

That's coincidentally what most of the investors in this thread advocate.

They just have a different opinion on which few companies.

And that's fine. Not everyone has to understand every good company.

That's honestly part of WBs point- find a few YOU understand, own them. If someone ELSE finds DIFFERENT ones THEY understand that are great companies- they should own THOSE instead.


You and the other guy may have different results from each other- but you'll probably both be well ahead of the folks who can't bother and just throw $ at an index fund.

 

[kbeckley]

After today's near death 'Curt Renz' experience I thought I might mention that, like most forms, there are a lot of lurkers here. I am sure within the lurkers (and frequent posters for that matter) everyone has their own interests broadly under the term 'investor'. As a long term TSLA holder I have no (big zero) interesting in posts about calls or puts or leaps or Bollinger bands or MMDs or charts with moving averages or daily roundups or...you get my idea. All noise and useless to me but I recognize that many find them useful so...great. But please don't presume that if it is not interesting to you it might not be interesting to others (as long as it fits broadly in this forum's bounds - good luck to the mods). If you are trying to narrow the scope of the posts to fit your interests, well, stop. That is probably a disservice to others.

I come here because almost all pertinent Tesla news ends up in these pages, and the implications are dissected by smart folks. As a bonus I often get a laugh. If I feel I have something to contribute I will post (which is rare). This is mostly a good place to test one's investment thesis although dissenting views are run out of town a little too quickly IMO.

Anyway let's keep our top contributors.

 

[lafrisbee]

TSLA will go up when the newest Model S Plaid wins a drag race....and yet no one can find a youtube of it...yet...
Fly my winged monkeys, Fly. bring me the gurrrrl!

 

[OrthoSurg]

Congrats!

Just curious, for someone living in the United States, and who is aware that it is likely a new EV tax credit of ~$7k is likely in the very near future - why wouldn't you wait 1-2 months to get that potential savings?

In Quebec, you get a $8,000 EV incentive for EVs under $65,000. which excludes LR
On Canada, you get a $5,000 incentive for EVs under $55,000. They were designed to exclude Teslas.

I benefited of the $8,000 for my SR Model 3 with 305 km range I use for work commuting but my Model Y 7 seater will be for hauling the family and road tripping to Florida and camping. LR was mandatory.

 

[Tim S]

Sorry not sure I agree as my driving, or even my wife's driving is far superior to the current FSD. She has yet to brake check me just because of a shadow on the road. Or because someone may merge behind me.

You don't have the current FSD.

 

[Big Time]

this guy bothers me from time to time
Pompous trust funder?

 

[StealthP3D]

You don't have the current FSD.

It's also important for FSD doubters to understand that autonomous driving will have different strengths and weaknesses compared to humans.

That is simply to say that early autonomous vehicles will have accidents that never would have happened with a human driver. But who cares if, overall, it causes less death, injury and property damage than human drivers.

Already, Tesla's FSD has a big advantage over humans in the area of attentiveness. It never gets distracted. Considering that distracted driving is a huge problem, that's an important leg up over having a "real" human in the only driver's seat.

And autonomy can monitor multiple directions simultaneously. So the accidents that do happen will be of a different nature as the system is trained to the point that, eventually, a fatal accident will make world news (every time it happens) simply because it's so unusual. Even those accidents will be ones that wouldn't likely happen with human drivers. It won't make it worse, just different. It will be magnitudes of order better.

 

[JusRelax]

this guy bothers me from time to time
Pompous trust funder?
View attachment 640929

Honestly, I think he has a point. TSLA's volatility is not for everyone. If you (not you in particular... anyone) can't handle the volatility, you're better off not putting your money in $TSLA.

 

[Cosmacelf]

It's also important for FSD doubters to understand that autonomous driving will have different strengths and weaknesses compared to humans.

That is simply to say that early autonomous vehicles will have accidents that never would have happened with a human driver. But who cares if, overall, it causes less death, injury and property damage than human drivers.

Already, Tesla's FSD has a big advantage over humans in the area of attentiveness. It never gets distracted. Considering that distracted driving is a huge problem, that's an important leg up over having a "real" human in the only driver's seat.

And autonomy can monitor multiple directions simultaneously. So the accidents that do happen will be of a different nature as the system is trained to the point that, eventually, a fatal accident will make world news (every time it happens) simply because it's so unusual. Even those accidents will be ones that wouldn't likely happen with human drivers. It won't make it worse, just different. It will be magnitudes of order better.

Also, even with the older FSD that we all have, have you noticed that after a couple of highly publicized Autopilot deaths, there haven't been any the last couple of years, even as the number of people using Autopilot has increased by a lot?

 

[Big Time]

Honestly, I think he has a point. TSLA's volatility is not for everyone. If you (not you in particular... anyone) can't handle the volatility, you're better off not putting your money in $TSLA.

“........Maybe this isn’t for you” is about the most pretentious thing you can say other than “I’m shopping for large pink Himalayan salt cubes”

I agree with the statement, the wording is what bothers me

 

[MC3OZ]

It's also important for FSD doubters to understand that autonomous driving will have different strengths and weaknesses compared to humans.

That is simply to say that early autonomous vehicles will have accidents that never would have happened with a human driver. But who cares if, overall, it causes less death, injury and property damage than human drivers.

Already, Tesla's FSD has a big advantage over humans in the area of attentiveness. It never gets distracted. Considering that distracted driving is a huge problem, that's an important leg up over having a "real" human in the only driver's seat.

And autonomy can monitor multiple directions simultaneously. So the accidents that do happen will be of a different nature as the system is trained to the point that, eventually, a fatal accident will make world news (every time it happens) simply because it's so unusual. Even those accidents will be ones that wouldn't likely happen with human drivers. It won't make it worse, just different. It will be magnitudes of order better.

It is important to understand that FSD will not stop improving after it reaches a level better than a human, and good enough for regulators.

As more FSD cars are on the road, other drivers and FSD cars will find them generally more predictable. A final step is when nearly all cars are FSD is for them to actively communicate to further reduce edge cases via a query/response mechanism, which can be as simple as confirming they are yielding right of way, or signaling an intention to pull out of a car park.

The final state of play may be humans drive for pleasure, on tourist routes or on special tracks. Day-to-day commuting and touring road travel is FSD. Given a choice, not many want to drive the same route every day, or sit behind the wheel for a 4 hour stretch on a highway. There are more productive / recreational things they can be doing..

Not only will car travel be safer, it will be more relaxing productive and enjoyable... because if a human decides to drive, it will be for pleasure, and due to the novelty they are more likely to pay attention. In future many will simply decide they don't need to learn how to drive.

A rare unfortunate accident is an opportunity to learn and improve the system, as these get more infrequent, the chances of the situation reoccurring before it is fixed also gets lower, so many accidents should be a "one off".

 

[PeterJA]

Sorry not sure I agree as my driving, or even my wife's driving is far superior to the current FSD....

You don't have the current FSD.

Nobody has the FSD with optimized neural nets trained by Tesla's Dojo supercomputer later this year. The current beta that stunned testers is a toddler compared to what's coming.

Skeptics doubted that AI would ever beat humans at chess (until Deep Blue), or Go (until AlphaGo), or StarCraft II (until AlphaStar), or dogfighting F-16 jets (until Falco). My wetware intelligence detects a pattern here.

My favorite show-and-tell for skeptics of robot potential is this recent video, which stunned even Elon.

 

[TheTalkingMule]

Just saw the 4Q Sunrun numbers. Good god......$.85/Watt in sales cost!

I would love to know how that's gonna compete with Tesla who only charges $2.01/Watt.