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

[Mike Smith]

 

[Artful Dodger]

As further growth in revenue and FCF is expected for Q4, it is quite likely they will pay off most/all of the remaining debt in Q4.

No, there were special circumstances in Q3 that lead to an advantage in paying off those convertible bonds years early. The result was a substantial reduction in quarterly interest expense, and an permanent boost to EPS which made it a good use of the cash.

It will be about 2 yrs IIRC until the same alignment occurs for the last of their convertible bonds. It was discussed here in this thread at the time (Aug 2021 I think).

Cheers!

 

[Buckminster]

If you look back through the history of this thread, collectively we have been consistently too bearish on average. Those of us in the top 20% of bullishness made the highest returns. Collectively, we would be billions of dollars richer if we were all as bullish of as the most bullish 20%. There were bulls who lost a lot of money but that was due to short time horizons. To my way of thinking, a highly leveraged short-term call option far out of the money is not super-bullish, it's simply gambling. Being super bullish means one has a very high conviction that Tesla will succeed and prosper excessively in the long term, not that you know where the share price will be in a month.

Since 2018, I have consistently argued that Tesla is a gob-smackingly good long term investment even though I have no strong opinion as to where the share price would be next week or next month and, when it does take off, to be very careful about selling too soon. Even though I include myself in the most bullish 20% of this so-called bubble we are allegedly in (I call it reality), I would have made even more had I been even more bullish, to the point of recklessness even. As it was, I broke every traditional investment rule in the book about being over-concentrated and still I was too conservative.

I will admit that now that TSLA has increased more than 20 fold in 2 1/4 years, I'm much less bullish than I was previously. Yet I still cannot find an investment that I think has a better risk/reward ratio longer term. I would much rather see someone be too bullish than too bearish. The majority of people in the world are too bearish as evidenced by the fact that they see no compelling reason to save money and invest in productive companies.

In short, I'm baffled by those who focus on the small minority who they think are too bullish and try to paint it as if most people here tend to be too bullish. It doesn't align with the facts.

Safe space for super bulls here:
Super Bulls Only
I've moved on to hyper bull fyi...

 

[Fobble]

So in Q3 Tesla paid off $1.5B debt, leaving only $2.1B left. As further growth in revenue and FCF is expected for Q4, it is quite likely they will pay off most/all of the remaining debt in Q4. THEN, when they no longer have any debt left and no real need to take on any more since they are printing money (lots of profit and plenty of cash on hand), will likely receive "investment grade" debt rating. How useful

In the longer terms, Tesla will have to continually build at least a few more giga factories to meet the 20M cars per year goal. Not sure if they can achieve that without debts. Frankly, it's not necessary to focus on zero debt either. I know your statements are for fun discussion here

 

[Curt Renz]

Teslarati - today: Tesla China’s launches new massive Delivery Center with Grand Opening Ceremony

Excerpt:

Because of Giga Shanghai’s increased manufacturing rates and the imminent start of production at Tesla’s European factory, Giga Berlin, the automaker can now begin to focus on making cars for Chinese customers in China instead of splitting the production output between the Chinese and European markets. As demand for Tesla’s vehicles continues to rise in China, the company is opening more service centers and delivery hubs for customers to come to pick up their cars. Now that exporting vehicles to Europe will come to a close soon, Tesla will have their hands full with China’s demand, which has not slowed down since the company delivered its first vehicle in China in early 2020.

 

[Unpilot]

And Tesla has just started. In fact, it is hard to imagine its run in full scope.

Boy isn't that the truth.

When I run a thought experiment on possible future valuations...it gets pretty wild.

I try and stay grounded...but the future is so bight I gotta wear sun glasses at night.

 

[SOULPEDL]

$TSLA up double digits while Nas takes a huge dump? Say it aint so.....

You hurt S&P's feelings who is up a whole .05% today!!!

 

[PokerFJÆS]

If you look back through the history of this thread, collectively we have been consistently too bearish on average. Those of us in the top 20% of bullishness made the highest returns. Collectively, we would be billions of dollars richer if we were all as bullish of as the most bullish 20%. There were bulls who lost a lot of money but that was due to short time horizons. To my way of thinking, a highly leveraged short-term call option far out of the money is not super-bullish, it's simply gambling. Being super bullish means one has a very high conviction that Tesla will succeed and prosper excessively in the long term, not that you know where the share price will be in a month.

Since 2018, I have consistently argued that Tesla is a gob-smackingly good long term investment even though I have no strong opinion as to where the share price would be next week or next month and, when it does take off, to be very careful about selling too soon. Even though I include myself in the most bullish 20% of this so-called bubble we are allegedly in (I call it reality), I would have made even more had I been even more bullish, to the point of recklessness even. As it was, I broke every traditional investment rule in the book about being over-concentrated and still I was too conservative.

I will admit that now that TSLA has increased more than 20 fold in 2 1/4 years, I'm much less bullish than I was previously. Yet I still cannot find an investment that I think has a better risk/reward ratio longer term. I would much rather see someone be too bullish than too bearish. The majority of people in the world are too bearish as evidenced by the fact that they see no compelling reason to save money and invest in productive companies.

In short, I'm baffled by those who focus on the small minority who they think are too bullish and try to paint it as if most people here tend to be too bullish. It doesn't align with the facts.

Indeed, even the most bullish of us had not dared hope in 2019 that we would be here at $4500 presplit by 2021. Sometimes, mindbogglingly wonderful things happen to the well-prepared Tesla investor. At the darkest days of March 2020 I did not expect TSLA to go to the moon before the end of the year, but I thought it wise to prepare for a best-case scenario by at least buying two 3x out of the money March 2021 calls for a bit of my winnings of the early 2020 runup. Amazingly those two ended up going well over 100x each, worth a good number of annual incomes, life-changing really. Wild success is possible only if you've positioned yourself to take advantage of it.

 

[Prunesquallor]

This dude

https://twitter.com/x/status/1451602720792608769

 

[Fobble]

Was this posted? Apparently, demand issue in China.

Tesla China launches new massive Delivery Center with Grand Opening Ceremony

Tesla launched its new, massive delivery center in the Minhang District of Shanghai with a grand opening ceremony and initial deliveries.

www.teslarati.com

 

[Paul_SF]

This dude

https://twitter.com/x/status/1451602720792608769

I really don’t understand the need to say “I live or die with Tesla”. Who is trying to impress with that statement?

 

[woodisgood]

I really don’t understand the need to say “I live or die with Tesla”. Who is trying to impress with that statement?

Maybe he's trying to convey in his own way it's more than just an investment for a [very] rich dude. I definitely understand the sentiment, if he's being genuine without ulterior motives.

 

[Pezpunk]

I really don’t understand the need to say “I live or die with Tesla”. Who is trying to impress with that statement?

He's ramping himself up to be a major cult personality guru, the way he sees Elon Musk, but without any of the underlying technical expertise or real-world experience. Press him on details and he reverts to pseudo-spiritual gobbledygook.

Not an asset to the Tesla hive mind IMO.

 

[lafrisbee]

Indeed, even the most bullish of us had not dared hope in 2019 that we would be here at $4500 presplit by 2021. Sometimes, mindbogglingly wonderful things happen to the well-prepared Tesla investor. At the darkest days of March 2020 I did not expect TSLA to go to the moon before the end of the year, but I thought it wise to prepare for a best-case scenario by at least buying two 3x out of the money March 2021 calls for a bit of my winnings of the early 2020 runup. Amazingly those two ended up going well over 100x each, worth a good number of annual incomes, life-changing really. Wild success is possible only if you've positioned yourself to take advantage of it.

ConFession: In November of 2019 I was unmotivated so I had youtube opened and I saw Tesla was going to debut their truck. I thought, "What the hell'" and clicked on it.
I thought the first "truck" to come out was fake. I knew the next truck would be the real truck. I kept waiting... and I thought I'd never buy such an ugly thing. And after some time I understood just the concept of the "truck." And put down a hundred dollars. (eventually on three of them to insure that whatever model suits me I can buy it.)
So then I found the cybertruck forum. And many of the members invested in tesla just to pay for their trucks. And they kept bragging about the stock performance.
So I bought stock in my ROTH. I knew nothing. I have not even rode in a Tesla yet. And now being half-a-teslanaire means I have more money than I'll spend if I don't get stupid.
My "Fortune" is a result of the Butterfly flapping its wings in the Amazon rainforest. Bored and lazy I clicked on the cyber(nota)truck reveal which has me here.
You guys have gotten huge sums. Some of you because you understand. But there had to be that butterfly for you to or you'd be like your friends that did not join you.

 

[dm28997]

I really don’t understand the need to say “I live or die with Tesla”. Who is trying to impress with that statement?

If Tesla succeeds then Climate Disruption reversal may save our life or the fossil fuels addicts will continue to destroy our livable environment who show how unethical and greedy they have become.

 

[ammulder]

Plus the new chargers are the 250 kW ones and the new batteries can sustain a higher C-rate. So in terms of total fleetwide mph charging capacity, which is the real metric of concern, it's more like a 5-10x increase.

Is this really true? I thought someone tested a Model 3 or Y with v2 and v3 Superchargers and found pretty minimal difference because it only sustained a high charge rate for a pretty short period of time... so adding a boost to the first 5-10 minutes of charging only saves a minute or two in total, it doesn't cut a 30min session to 20min like you'd expect if told you're going from 150 kW to 250 kW. (Though, not sharing power with adjacent stalls can itself be a big improvement -- particularly with drivers who don't know that's a thing at v2 stations.)

If the "new" batteries are better at maintaining a high charge rate, how new do the cars have to be to see a significant improvement in total charge time?

 

[jhm]

FAANG TAAG

 

[Krugerrand]

Sorry... FTFY:

10^7 = 10*10*10*10*10*10*10 = 10,000,000
10^8 = 10*10*10*10*10*10*10*10 = 100,000,000

e is a number, e≈2.718 so you can see what you wrote above doesn´t make sense.

e (mathematical constant) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Sometimes 10^7 is written as 10e7 (10 with an exponent of 7), I guess this is where you´re coming from.

OMG! You’re all making this more difficult. I’ll stick to long math to figure out how many duffel bags I’m going to need.

 

[Knightshade]

Is this really true? I thought someone tested a Model 3 or Y with v2 and v3 Superchargers and found pretty minimal difference because it only sustained a high charge rate for a pretty short period of time... so adding a boost to the first 5-10 minutes of charging only saves a minute or two in total, it doesn't cut a 30min session to 20min like you'd expect if told you're going from 150 kW to 250 kW. (Though, not sharing power with adjacent stalls can itself be a big improvement -- particularly with drivers who don't know that's a thing at v2 stations.)

If the "new" batteries are better at maintaining a high charge rate, how new do the cars have to be to see a significant improvement in total charge time?

Yes, it's really true.

One of the car mags did an initial test as V3 was just launching and it wasn't as good, but after firmware updates they retested and it was a significant speed improvement.

 

[SOULPEDL]

Thanks. If a moderator would kindly move these posts to its own thread, I would love to have an ongoing discussion of social bubbles. Like you, this is a matter that confronts me personally on many levels, even straining certain family relationships. I think it helpful each of us to first accept that we our already in certain bubbles. The next step is to understand why we are in these bubbles and what biases and limitations they may impose on us. And ultimately I think we want ways to challenge and the limits of our bubbles and find constructive ways to help others along. I definitely don't have the answers, but it is good to sit with the questions and to engage others along the way.

In a bubble... Who me?

I've been consistently bullish on FSD, and even thought it was done already back in 2016 based on that famous video. But using the product keeps me grounded (and on my toes), and knowing about Dojo keeps it all real. Only thing in a bubble here is my timing.