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

[4chi]

Range? Acceleration? I love seeing classics gone electric.
I wonder if the Cuban classic cars will also go electric? Eventually those parts will run out, right?

My dad has an old 1976 Mercedes 450SL that just sits in his garage as he's been told it would take about $15k to get running. I looked in to what it might run to make it electric, it was over $100,000. Ouch. I'd have to sell 100 shares.

 

[mongo]

Tesla said they were trying to eliminate the wave in Q4, right? Maybe we're seeing the effects of a more steady supply of ships out of Shanghai.

Indeed.
I just get a little triggered when scale factors are applied to small inital values as a positive, or to large values as a negative.

For instance, if Rivian doubles their production rate, that's still less than 3 R1Ts a day. Edit: from the 1.x a day rate, @Webeevdrivers informs me it has improved.

 

[elasalle]

I think the big boys watch covid numbers more than we think. Yesterday's nationwide US figures were above the previous two or three Tuesdays. Today's were much better, so the downward trend is for today reconfirmed.

I've found that when I check and see a surprisingly good covid number for the US at 7am, things go pretty well at 9:30.

Lots of squeezing going on this week all over the place for whatever reason. Maybe it's new TSLA wealth at work for the wsb crowd.

Not allowed to talk virus, poltics or about strong men on this thread ...

but .. the whole of last year market was up because bug was up and market went down on reopening fears ....

 

[Todd Burch]

Hey look, the MMD is back!

 

[FastCompany]

This video is a must watch. Gave me goose-bumps and brought tears to my eyes.

From the Youtube description:
"Elon Musk's ex-wife Justine Musk speaks about the hidden secrets of Elon's life. They were married for 8 years, and Elon Musk has five kids with Justine. Watch this video to learn about the untold story of Elon Musk's life. Enjoy!"

Justine Musk speaks of Elon

 

[SOULPEDL]

My dad has an old 1976 Mercedes 450SL that just sits in his garage as he's been told it would take about $15k to get running. I looked in to what it might run to make it electric, it was over $100,000. Ouch. I'd have to sell 100 shares.

Or learn how to build it yourself. One thing I learned from my classic is that if it's your daily or weekend driver, you had better be your own mechanic or it is very pricey and the knowledge and parts are scarce.

If there ain't a decent boat out there soon, I might have to do the same for the water (cooling is easy there) as only a few others have so far. Take that Roadster rocket booster, point it in the water... launch the boat! Exactly what's needed to get it up on plane and me out of the water. Who says you can't compress water?

 

[Webeevdrivers]

Indeed.
I just get a little triggered when scale factors are applied to small inital values as a positive, or to large values as a negative.

For instance, if Rivian doubles their production rate, that's still less than 3 R1Ts a day.

Rivians production numbers have increased substantially in the last week.

 

[22522]

That information gradient is what kills nearly all the risk: you end up knowing far more than almost anyone else about Tesla.

This is important. Thanks for using the word gradient.

If you appreciate time (transients) risk gets even better. Still working on both.

 

[Nocturnal]

Checked in on our primate friends over at WSB. Heavy TSLA support lately. Shocking I know.

Also, this is gold.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1455634300574085122

 

[TheTalkingMule]

Ouch!

Bloomberg - Are you a robot?

Tesla’s October Surge Batters Active Managers Who Missed Out

Elon Musk’s company rallied 44% last month, delivering the second-best performance in the S&P 500. It accounts for 2.5% of the index by weighting and contributed 11% of the S&P 500’s October gain.

 

[GOVA]

This video is a must watch. Gave me goose-bumps and brought tears to my eyes.

From the Youtube description:
"Elon Musk's ex-wife Justine Musk speaks about the hidden secrets of Elon's life. They were married for 8 years, and Elon Musk has five kids with Justine. Watch this video to learn about the untold story of Elon Musk's life. Enjoy!"

Justine Musk speaks of Elon

Thank you for making me cry. What a wonderful person Justine is! Not many ex-wifes would speak that way of their ex-husbands.

 

[pz1975]

Thank you for making me cry. What a wonderful person Justine is! Not many ex-wifes would speak that way of their ex-husbands.

But Linette Lopez, Dana Hull and Lora Kolodny obviously know way more about Elon than her. I mean they read Twitter and Facebook!

 

[Boomer19]

She is basically critical of his tweets teasing Bezo's, calling Biden a puppet of the UAW etc.

when you know nothing about engineering, science, physics, design, product, etc etc etc etc etc etc etc
…it’s much easier to pick on elon’s inner id on twitter to make yourself more relevant.

 

[SOULPEDL]

This video is a must watch. Gave me goose-bumps and brought tears to my eyes.

From the Youtube description:
"Elon Musk's ex-wife Justine Musk speaks about the hidden secrets of Elon's life. They were married for 8 years, and Elon Musk has five kids with Justine. Watch this video to learn about the untold story of Elon Musk's life. Enjoy!"

Justine Musk speaks of Elon

Freakin awesome, thanks!

I think what happens to many here is that we get very close to the truth so our confidence in ourselves improves along with Tesla innovation and the economics. To me, others just appear more in the dark, and very stuck.

This new mindset has caused me to think more Out-of-the-Box than ever before. It is in stark contrast to my corporate experiences where ideas routinely washed away for more political motives, which is where I s**ked.

Part of this confidence is fueled by investment gains and is a powerful feedback mechanism, but the more I identify or connect with Elon and the people around him, the more I see and try in my own ways. Truly inspiring, I'll have to send this to both my ex's who will just totally get me now.

 

[jbcarioca]

This video is a must watch. Gave me goose-bumps and brought tears to my eyes.

From the Youtube description:
"Elon Musk's ex-wife Justine Musk speaks about the hidden secrets of Elon's life. They were married for 8 years, and Elon Musk has five kids with Justine. Watch this video to learn about the untold story of Elon Musk's life. Enjoy!"

Justine Musk speaks of Elon

Her explanation of First Principles is both elegant and surprising. Her ability to describe that obsession is enlightening.
Somehow I find it quite understandable how they married, how they ended out divorcing and how they can still adore each other.
She seems to be a wonderful human being.
I too had tears in my eyes.

 

[Phobi]

Well that was sudden lol…jeez go for lunch already

 

[Rarity]

The problem with your scenarios is that each one independently has material probability (how high perhaps nobody knows) and the impact on TSLA in each case is significant:

1. We know his lifestyle is not particularly healthy. We know he is exposes to ratter more accident risk than are most people his age.

Given the present state of maturity of Tesla I think the risk #1 is by far the least serious. Why? The executive management team at Tesla is both deep and excellent. Elon Musk has been essential to establish Tesla as it is, not to mention all the other companies, but he has built such high quality staff that, after a hiccup or two TSLA will continue to thrive.

Right now, Musk seems more or less to be running Tesla on the very successful SpaceX model. He is spending most of his time on growing new business and business areas. For SpaceX that means Starship (and by extension Starlink). For Tesla that means FSD and new plant design and build.

I suspect that if something were to happen to Musk, we would not know what we have lost because his value lies mainly in the optionality that bears fruit far in the future. For instance, is the enduring value of Tesla as an HVAC company, an aircraft company, a terracotta solar tile company, a humanoid robot company?

What Apple lost with the passing of Steve Jobs probably was the introduction of the Apple iCar that never happened. But we will never know the magnitude of the loss.

 

[StarFoxisDown!]

Well that was sudden lol…jeez go for lunch already

The market in general is waiting the Fed later today so volume is pretty light. You know it's going to get pushed back down once volume dries up.

 

[AudubonB]

Hmm, not so sure I follow. Why raise cash today when putting it off means accumulating more cash via Free Cash Flow? Basically, if FCF is strong enough, there is no real economic value to parking more cash. Suppose that extra $12B was not used while the stock doubles. So a future stock repurchase of $24B would be required to take those surplus shares out of circulation. So one might think of not doing a capital raise right now as avoiding stock buybacks in the future.

Following up on this line of thought: Of all the revenue-raising tax hikes that have been circulating this season in D.C., the one I sense has the least amount of resistance is the corporate surtax on stock buybacks. Nonetheless - though even here I'm veering off topic for this thread - I believe its biggest effect would not be to raise revenue, but to deter buybacks (MeMod: and that is NOT an appropriate nugget to continue in this thread). Impact for Tesla? The indirect one occurring from its effect of incentivizing its corporate competition to act smarter, perform more diligently than going the easy way out of assuaging shareholders by 'artificially' propping up their share prices.

 

[AudubonB]

Not much.

Zach sounded significantly more reserved than Elon on how easily they can grow 50% there.... (which led to debates here about "50% above what # exactly"

I imagine there's some efficiencies that will be possible as they move to full front/rear castings eventually, and maybe the S/X refresh once in full swing will have saved some space over the previous gen stuff... but it's gonna be tight.

Given the amount of land in Texas I'm not sure why they're wanting to grow Fremont that much more- but I suppose they must have reasons.

re Fremont expansion: Do not neglect the third dimension. Mr Musk has dropped cannonball-sized hints about this over the years. My strong belief is that there was a severe setback on achieving this route when his plans for a hyper-roboticized factory (the "Dreadnought" campaign) faltered but I cannot understand why, in the long term, that is not the route Tesla will take.