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

[LightngMcQueen]

So much straw man (Epstein...), I won't even discuss

and then

(remember when he [Elon] sat on Trump's council or defended Rex Tillerson?).

This appears to be inconsistent.
But I agree, not worth discussing.

 

[Gigapress]

Not necessarily.

I understand your point about the potential for overloads reducing, but that depends on a number of assumptions you are making in order to be correct.

Firstly you are assuming that the contention ratio of the non-Tesla fleet will be the same as the contention ratio of the Tesla fleet. At the moment the Tesla fleet is at 69 vehicles per connector. So if in any localised area Tesla were to oversell subscriptions (say 600-per connector) then the non-Tesla fleet would tend to swamp the existing connectors, and I'd hazard a guess that the connector-build-out wouldn't ramp fast enough in that localised area to get it under control before Tesla-brand suffered.

Tesla can mitigate the risk by 1) overbuilding in advance or 2) Limiting the number of subscriptions either with a local quota or appropriate pricing.

Second you are assuming the dstribution assumptions hold true (whether Poisson, Gaussian, or others of the same ilk). But in th ereal world of humans they probably won't. Clustering effects will cause swamping etc. as humans do stuff in the real world that violate the assumptions (football matches, factory holidays, school half terms, etc). In the long run Tesla could build-out the network to cater for this, but in the intervening 3-4 years considerable damage can be done in key geographies.

The clustering effects and other kinds of statistical heterogeneity are probably independent of network scale I think. In other words, I believe Tesla already sees these effects just with Tesla drivers. I think increasing the scale just increases the magnitude without substantially changing the pattern. Also, if it's causing considerable brand damage they don't need to do it for 4 years. They'd just need to announce that accommodating the demand was more difficult than expected resulting in delays for everyone and stop allowing new subscribers for a while.

This not to say that I either disagree or agree with opening up the Tesla network. I can see both the advantages (of which there are many) and the disadvantages (also obvious), and various aspects that are both within and without of Tesla's control in managing this. And until/unless we have visibility on network use data we can't really form a decent view ourselves.

I'm gobsmacked that very little of the investor calls press for better data on either the Supercharger network or on the Energy play. It is almost as if the analysts don't know what questions to ask.

The analysts are clueless, and so are many of the retail questions from Say.com. Maybe we should pool our share count voting power to get this one on the call for Q4 earnings.

 

[thx1139]

I remain unconvinced. I think it would be wise to prove this hypothesis, on smaller scale, maybe in the friendly jurisdiction with high need for poverty alievation.

How about Bernie makes the test run ...say in Cuba, they sure have lots of poverty. He can redistribute capital from the local rich to the broader society and see how it impacts productivity.

<NVM ... it appears to have already been done... the tests results are somewhat inconclusive. >

Maybe Canada would be a better choice. I hear they have a socialist health care system, unlike the US where the Health Care system is setup so that people really need to work until they drop dead.

 

[woodisgood]

I'm sure it's been mentioned how TLSA SP is an important variable in being able to provide hiring incentives. And in this case he could be lowering the baseline to get some key players into the company.

Is there any data suggesting a hiring blitz (like in the new factories)?
And are employee options given only during hiring, or are there ongoing stock incentives that are tied to the calendar (like performance reviews etc...)? Do we know their internal dates on this by chance?

Just to state the obvious, we know they were going on an AI/robotics hiring blitz after AI Day. How long it takes to recruit and sign the top talent (the ones who have pretty sweet gigs elsewhere and may be relocating) is an open question. That process could be being finalized right now for many top hires. In many ways those are the most important people - folks like Karpathy that will really be the primary drivers behind TeslaBot. For them the incentives package really might matter, compared to engineers straight out of school.

In general Tesla has been on a hiring blitz for the factories and sales/service for the last few months.

 

[Gigapress]

Come on y'all...this is a TSLA forum, not a US politics forum, especially not for comments that aren't even tangentially relevant to Tesla. Half the audience here isn't even in the same hemisphere as the USA. Plenty of other appropriate places on the internet exist to have such discussions.

We are grown-ups here and I would hope we can exercise enough basic self restraint to consider before posting the relevance of topics to Tesla's mission, operation and financial performance.

 

[navguy12]

Now would be a great time for some good non-Elon news . . .

Like Austin production commencing or something.

Or Berlin commencing production (around 2359 GMT on 22 Nov…)

 

[lascavarian]

Are you commenting the comments, or the OP itself?

The referenced posting ended with a statement that they felt what they were referencing was a "big deal". It's not a big deal because it can't be such without some sort of attribution to give it some level of credibility. It is just another whisper down the lane statement made on the internet. If it gets attributed to a credible primary source (a name who stands by it) then it may be worth more evaluation.

I like to see what is roiling the internet so it is fine to post such things IMO. My comment is about the referenced material (not you or your interest or sharing) self proclaiming it's own importance when it lacks credibility IMO.

I am quite happy with my CT reservation and waiting for substantiated performance stats.

 

[navguy12]

To be clear, this is not a substantial addition. That said, do we know what it is?

WAG: stable platforms for gigapresses.

 

[StarFoxisDown!]

Or Berlin commencing production (around 2359 GMT on 22 Nov…)

We should also start to hear some rumblings/news of Austin-made Model Y's starting to come out by end of Nov

 

[winfield100]

a tiny update on sales, by Elon, the last month, actually since 11/8 it seems

Real Time Insider Data - DATAROMA - Investing

www.dataroma.com

Total	Transactions	Amount
Buys	0	$0
Sells	303	$6,304,129,888

i gotta do a copy paste to get actual # of shares, but this is in addition to SEC form 4, thru last friday, probably updated later today/tonight

 

[navguy12]

Case in point, a friend is reaching out to me asking what I think the stock movement is going to be near-term because they need cash for a down payment. They've been a shareholder for many years, never sold a single share. This 25% drop for them means they have liquidate a lot more shares than they wanted.

Agree with your overall argument, but one observation regarding your example: If they needed the cash for a down payment say, six weeks ago, what would have been the share count being liquidated at that point?

 

[ZachF]

While I don’t mind going a little OT every now and then, I do think we are getting a bit into the weeds today.

Therefor, as a favor to the people who may not want to read any OT stuff, future posts of mine that I think may be a little OT or not completely directly related to TSLA will be put into spoiler tags so people can more easily skip over it if they so chose.

 

[SOULPEDL]

Not sure if already mentioned, but you know who might get pissed off by him not borrowing money to pay taxes? Banks.
So he's not playing their little system of seemingly forced borrowing, as I try and figure out what's really going on here.

 

[BriansBucketList]

Bought 10 more at $986.

The general consensus seems to be that the SP is going to be under pressure for the rest of the week and possibly going into our Thanksgiving. So the safer play would be to wait. But I agree with @SOULPEDL. And even if there are no immediate positive news, I am sure I will be happy with this move in the very near future.

Similar move here... this is the first time I can remember when a somewhat finite amount of shares are being sold, under a widely discussed timeline, with further pain on the horizon. I'm sort of agreeing that it will end like a fireworks show, we'll all be in pain, but a great time to back up the truck. Most likely considerable portfolio discomfort when buying should occur, and we may not see the prize until next year. It takes conviction, and it helps a bit to own the product. I'm at a hotel with 20 Tesla chargers, and I've always charged my P3D at home. Wow, charging is way faster than 3 years ago.

 

[winfield100]

If you look at 1 year and 1 month, Bollinger bands and Average True range bands (and look at the appreciation in your portfolio for the same time period if you just did HODL/DCA/"rage buy on margin" ,things are very tasty, the linear regression points up, the stock price is just tapping the bottom of the ATR, during a publicised stock sale. there seems to be a lot of "when in danger or in doubt, run in circles scream and shout" ('Witches of Karres')

 

[woodisgood]

Not sure if already mentioned, but you know who might get pissed off by him not borrowing money to pay taxes? Banks.
So he's not playing their little system of seemingly forced borrowing, as I try and figure out what's really going on here.

Aside from personal borrowing, they also expected to handle his sale as a block trade, as GB keeps harping on (essentially netting similar commissions to a cap raise). GS/MS probably felt that recent "come to Jesus" moments for their analysts should have earned them that.

 

[Nocturnal]

We need some news to change the topic of discussion.

 

[MXWing]

We need some news to change the topic of discussion.

Funny memes might have to do for now.

 

[generalenthu]

I cant shake off the feeling that Elon is gonna exercise his 2018 options too that he has earned, with all the cash he's generating. Right now, it ensures there is a lower gain and hence a lower $ amount in taxes due. Further, the short term taxes are likely to go up making it more beneficial to exercise those options.

Longer term, these grants are going to become so big that in $ terms if he exercises and sells in 2028 or whenever, it'd be hard to find enough liquidity. There's barely enough liquidity even now, given the stock has appreciated so much.

 

[15Peter20]

I hope Tesla is managing to onboard a lot of great talent during this time period. It would be a wasted opportunity if they didn't.

Still waiting for their call….