TheTalkingMule
Distributed Energy Enthusiast
Logically I think if he we're gonna continue selling in 2021, today was very likely to be a selling day. If not today or tomorrow, then I feel pretty sure he's done. For now at least.
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Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable
- Thread starter AudubonB
- Start date
Logically I think if he we're gonna continue selling in 2021, today was very likely to be a selling day. If not today or tomorrow, then I feel pretty sure he's done. For now at least.
Interesting. What is the "big transition for Tech" that you think will be over in 3-4 years?
And what do you and others (@petit_bateau, @henchman24, @FrankSG) think of Cathie Wood's prediction that the S&P500 will crash because most of its companies will be disrupted by the five "platforms of innovation"? (I think that's what she said.)
StealthP3D
Well-Known Member
Interesting. What is the "big transition for Tech" that you think will be over in 3-4 years?
And what do you and others (@petit_bateau, @henchman24, @FrankSG) think of Cathie Wood's prediction that the S&P500 will crash because most of its companies will be disrupted by the five "platforms of innovation"? (I think that's what she said.)
S&P has demonstrated just how slow it is to transition to the disruptive companies when they hemmed and hawed on TSLA even after they met all their criteria. I think in turbulent times like this the S&P will underperform as there are some real losers in there. Money is still doing a slow rotation out of the impacted industries and into the future. Investors putting their money into well run companies that will benefit from the transition into the technological age should outperform the S&P by a handy margin. Some of these industries benefitting will be traditional companies who are able to leverage technology to be leaner and more profitable. I do think the S&P will continue to have mostly positive years but, unless they suddenly become enlightened, returns will be very mediocre relative to the winners of the new economy. And that's going to hurt their reputation because, historically, the S&P has been good at focusing on the companies performing well and in their element.
In short, I don't think the S&P 500 will accurately represent market returns as well as they have in the past because investors and funds that pick stock will be able to outperform them. That has not traditionally been the case.
Buckminster
Well-Known Member
10.8 plus V11 holiday update expected today. Notes for the now defunct 10.7:
V11 screen that employees are receiving below:
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Paracelsus
Active Member
This is actually a great post..........except instead of Steinbach, I would propose that Tesla already has the tools in their tool box to improve Arizona's water supply if we were to really approach this problem on a scale that the Infrastructure Bill/BBB originally deserved to face the Climate Crisis and our Grid concerns head-on. And they could do so by simply expanding on the concept of solar covered canals that have already been successfully deployed elsewhere, but do it on an 'Elon Scale' here. Solar covered canals coupled with Tesla battery storage solutions would improve the amount of water available to AZ residents, would increase the amount of renewable energy on the West Coast Grid, would reduce the amount of water needed from the Colorado River, and ultimately would provide a path to dramatically reduce the amount of CO2 emissions from the State of AZ. A couple years ago @jbcarioca and I had some fun conversations about this. It is late, the market has long been closed, and this is slightly on topic (thanks for the segue @SOULPEDL) so here we go:
About 35% of Arizona's water supply comes from a single source through the Central Arizona Project (CAP), which delivers the Colorado River water to Central and Southern Arizona. Its a 336-mile long diversion canal that runs through the desert to deliver approximately 500 billion gallons of water, lifting it up to 2,900 feet using 15 pumping stations that deploy a total of 115 giant pumps using 2.5 million MWh of electricity each year - the largest of these pumps can move 3,740 gallons per second. At the Mark Wilmer pumping plant alone there a six 66,000 horsepower pumps available for use as needed, each requiring 50 Megawatts of power, thus each pump requires more power than the entire city of Lake Havasu. This makes CAP the largest power user in Arizona. And from Wikipedia, "the canal loses approximately 16,000 acre-feet (5.2 billion gallons) of water each year to evaporation, a figure that will only increase as temperatures rise. It loses 9,000 acre-feet (2.9 billion gallons) annually from water seeping or leaking through the concrete."
I am simply going to assume that just about anyone reading this already has their hackles up regarding a few of the statistics above - most particularly that:
*the Central Arizona Project is THE LARGEST POWER USER in Arizona (read that again please just so it sinks in since it is rarely talked about)
*over 5 Billion gallons of precious Colorado River water simply evaporate along the route in the photo above, and this is happening while we are shown updates of water levels lowering at Hoover Dam almost weekly now. 5 Billion gallons is approximately enough water for 100,000 people annually.........and it just evaporates.
The combination of these two facts become really important when you consider that until just a few years ago almost all the power for the CAP project came from the Navajo Generating Station. This was a 2.25 Gigawatt coal plant located near Page, AZ that was operated until the end of 2019. The Navajo Generating Station received most of its coal from the Navajo Reservation about 100 miles away. From the information I could find, it looked like the majority of this system was in operation for roughly 30 years delivering coal-powered water from the Colorado River across the desert. And it takes a LOT of coal to get this water to the ends of the canal. If you assume that there is approximately 2,500 kWh per ton of coal, and the CAP used 2.5-million Megawatt hours per year............then the CAP project was literally using 1 Million tons of coal per year to move AZ's CAP water - roughly 8,600 rail cars worth of coal - which would have produced about 2.86 million tons of CO2 each year - not counting the CO2 from mining the coal and moving it 100 miles to the Navajo Generating Station. So while almost everyone is aware of the Arizona's water crisis, very few people stop to consider the Carbon Footprint and Global Impact of Arizona's water crisis..........which in my opinion far exceeds the water crisis itself. After the closure of the Navajo Generating Station in 2019, CAP power has been supplied by a mix of coal and natural gas power, and I have read that approximately 1% of the power supply also comes from solar...............? These last statistics I am having trouble nailing down and would gladly look to more knowledgeable folks on TMC for a sharper pencil here.
In a nutshell, a 336-mile long canal (approximately 80' wide at the surface, 30' wide at the bottom, and about 18' deep) following a route through high elevation desert where substantial amounts of electricity must be delivered to each pumping station along the route. Let's assume we cover the 80' wide canal with a 100' span of Tesla 420 panels. If we covered 100 miles of the CAP we would cover about 52,800,000 ft2 with 420's. If we throw 17 watts/ft2 at it, that 100 mile portion of the CAP could be generating up to 897.6 MW at peak solar production. Napkin math says the CAP is roughly using about 300 MW of power for the full system, so we are already able to put some surplus energy into storage during peak hours while taking Arizona's largest power user off the grid at that time (yes, lots of room for argument with these numbers - this is all 50,000' concept stuff on TMC - but please jump in and help me out where you can).
But lets say this happened on the Hornsdale Battery project-scale........that perhaps the 'Michael Cannon-Brookes of Arizona' tweeted Elon and asked him to cover 300 miles of the canal because he wanted to maximize solar production and energy storage capacity, and he wanted to minimize the amount of evaporation along the CAP by shading it with solar panels while using the water in the canal to help cool the underside of the panels to help raise their efficiency. That 300-mile stretch could create a 2.7 Gigawatt solar project that could take the CAP entirely off the grid with sufficient storage capacity.....and it could help supplement Arizona's increasing power demand..........and it could also significantly reduce the 5 Billion gallons per year that is currently evaporating from the CAP. (For reference the Phoenix area had a peak demand of about 7.6 GW during last summer's heat wave, which was about 2 GW higher than the peak of 2015).
All fun speculation, but all becoming well within 'the art of the possible' if moving the needle on reducing coal & natural gas CO2 emissions and saving water in the Colorado River while improving Arizona's water supply really do become important enough to tackle. All while not using any additional land to do so. Fingers crossed the 'Michael Cannon-Brookes of Arizona' tweets Elon about the potential for such a project soon.
(projects in India above) The first 1 km development was expected to save 9,000 m3 of water per year while producing 1.6 GWh of electricity
Thank you for sharing.
I hope they remembered to suggest that ‘the Ox/mule is in the ditch’ in response to working on Sundays, as in a lot of ways, it is.
I turned this into a blog post. There's not that much more information beyond the graphs, but I've elaborated a bit on a few things, including on the downsides of call spreads.
TSLA Options: Are Call Spreads the Future?
Idle observation: almost 11 months go on Jan 25th TSLA traded intraday at $900.
Better give Gordo a call
petit_bateau
Active Member
The whole point of the CAPE ratio is the CA bit of the definition, which tends to keep one's feet on firmer historical ground. Counting on future profits for justification of pricing inevitability causes hubris. Future chickens may never hatch if the environment turns cold and unwelcoming.
All these things suffer from Goodhart's Law (Goodhart's law - Wikipedia) so must be used cautiously.
Another critique of the CAPE ratio example that I gave using the S&P-500 might be that the S&P-500 is no longer as representative of global valuations as it once was, for example not taking into account NASDAQ or China or wherever. But as a crude warning signal it is helpful.
I fully accept - and agree with - the points that @StarFoxIsDown and @henchman24, @FrankSG etc make in respect of the current big-corp skew, big-tech dominance, and TSLA exceptionalism. Regarding the first it seems to me that size increasingly matters in a globalised world (Piketty has something to say about this as well, returns to the big are better). Regarding the second this is the oft-anticipated payback for newtech : the dot-bombers weren't wrong, they were just too early. And regarding the third the competitive advantages that Tesla is building in scale, scope, and speed appear to be accelerating away from the nearest competitors rather than eroding and that is not yet fully priced-in by the market. So I'm still a buyer of TSLA when personally possible (in fact I picked up a few this week).
It is a funny old world, some of us who are now here were having these same conversations 25+ years ago. Some new voices have joined the conversation, (and some departed, may they rest in peace), and we have from time-to-time changed venue, but the conversation goes on. A lot of things have had to come right for Tesla to become possible as the success it is. I hope a lot more goes right, and personally I think Tesla would fare OK even if there were to be a massive macro-dump similar to the inter-war depression. Indeed the more hostile the macro environment the faster legacy companies and industries will founder. But the collateral damage of recessions & depressions is very regrettable, so I am not wishing for one.
But one day there will be one. The CAPE ratio is high, the signal is at amber. How to proceed is the question.
Bjorn also lives in one of the few countries where the non-Tesla charging networks is robust enough to be relied upon - which likely gives the Mercedes more of an advantage (less of a disadvantage?) than in most countries.
One of the main reasons I try to keep an eye on the competition is not to directly compare to Tesla's offerings (although I did use the plaid price as a point of reference) - We already know Tesla is the runaway leader and will be supply constrained for years to come - but to see if they are good enough for some people to genuinely want one even after they have done their research on EVs. To me at least, it is less clear around what other EVs are out there that people might genuinely want rather than just buying some compromised compliance vehicle. Nearly all the alternatives seem to have a critical flaw (e.g. The Porsche has battery/warranty issues, the Mach-E has power/charging/ADAS issues, Audi's software is terrible, the Bolt blows up, etc) that make them non-starters.
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Who benefits most from the bot? It is an AI vector that may require little customization.
When computers first came out, wasn’t it Buffett who said “you could buy Wang, but the real value is companies that benefit from Wang technology.” Or something like that. Or somebody like that.
Request for help.
When computers first came out, wasn’t it Buffett who said “you could buy Wang, but the real value is companies that benefit from Wang technology.” Or something like that. Or somebody like that.
Request for help.
As @Paracelsus and I also discussed there is this one: https://www.ladwp.com/ladwp/faces/l..._afrWindowMode=0&_adf.ctrl-state=13ncpkjjqe_4
LADWP is the largest utility in the US, perpetually the object of movie, fictionalized carefully, Chinatown Chinatown (1974) - IMDb
This one is more difficult than the CAP because of gigantic scale and diversity. Anybody who wants details can find copious data by searching LADWP.
The basic fact is that Elon Musk is a rare individual who can actually imagine, plan and execute projects at these scales. As the Indian projects and others around the world demonstrate so vividly, huge benefits can be achieved by simply covering open water conduits with photovoltaics. Perhaps one of the most obvious is in California's Central Valley, from 2013:
Report: Evaporation from California Irrigation Adds Enough Water to Colorado River to Supply 3 Million People
A new study says that cross-border evaporation can be added to the list of supply and policy problems that water and land managers in the arid Southwest US. should ponder.
www.circleofblue.org
Clearly, Tesla/Elon could achieve more benefit in many countries including the US by tackling water use, wastage as well as power generation, storage and management. Tesla is already preparing for this with public utility licenses, autobidder and large distributed power projects together with governments and developers.
Now all that is needed is gigantic scale and some perspective from @Paracelsus who knows how power distribution and mismanagement are endemic.
Elon can easily generate high scale from his existing contacts with Tesla competitors in photovoltaics, Jinko, JA and Trina all of which will be needed to meet such gigantic demands. Tesla already uses that policy with batteries to excellent effect.
Until now we have often discussed potential for Tesla Energy, thinking it si 'just a year away', as it continues to be year after year. Now that California mandates distributed energy in new construction we though Tesla could quickly scale. That has not yet been true.
With global water shortages, energy generation failures and increasingly severe climate catastrophes now should be the time. It is long past. We do not even need to list the disasters. They are everywhere.
Should not this have Tesla priority along with all the vehicles? Does not Elon have the aspiration for just one more earth-saving project? Especially since he could quite easily gain cooperation using his historical processes.
This, as we keep repeating from time to time, is even larger than automotive.
Seriously, folks, if not now, when?
This is excellent advice. Just for reference, to those who see severe downturns coming, here are just two cases of high success during the Great Depression:
This guy knew depression was coming, but also anticipated electrical utilities and other public infrastructure.
Then there was Procter and Gamble which invented the 'soap opera' and advertised on radio.
The moral of the two stories: If you find innovation and better solutions they'll survive and thrive. And, do not forget, keep healthy cash reserves and do not carry leverage into a recession.
Oh, that rather describes Tesla does it not?
@Curt Renz
"the more things change, the more they stay the same"
When GM Volt came out in 2011, a mere 10 years ago, there were $20,000 premiums for a ~40-50 mile range 16kwh battery compliance PHEV
Report: Chevrolet dealer ready to charge $20,000 over MSRP for Volt... will more follow? - Autoblog
2011 Chevrolet Volt – Click above for high-res image gallery
www.autoblog.com
(internet is acting glitchy, tornado watch and high winds, carry on")
I hope there is an announcement coming on Jan 5th then ;-)
TheTalkingMule
Distributed Energy Enthusiast
Just one last warning about using Schiller PE from here on out.
Fossil fuels, and the era of scarcity that accellerated with them, are ending. Sustainable abundance, based on zero marginal cost renewable energy and made possible by ubiquitous storage, is rapidly disrupting the entire world.
There's never been a time where looking back 10 years at earnings would distort reality more.
Fossil entities that made billions each quarter will be rendered valueless within just a few years. Massive players in renewable energy will crop up out of the blue and grow to trillion dollar valuations.
Shiller PE is of almost no value when economic shift is this massive.
Fossil fuels, and the era of scarcity that accellerated with them, are ending. Sustainable abundance, based on zero marginal cost renewable energy and made possible by ubiquitous storage, is rapidly disrupting the entire world.
There's never been a time where looking back 10 years at earnings would distort reality more.
Fossil entities that made billions each quarter will be rendered valueless within just a few years. Massive players in renewable energy will crop up out of the blue and grow to trillion dollar valuations.
Shiller PE is of almost no value when economic shift is this massive.
MTL_HABS1909
Active Member
/s
I’ll try to get this out before market opens. You and @jbcarioca have enlightened me. I was always told the CAP beginning and end points were within a few feet of elevation. Seemed like a selling point so it didn’t look like it used much power. False assumption for sure.
Another fact (rumor?) availed to me over the years while living here was that Az has been pumping their water allocation from the original SW water agreement, and dumping it into the ground to raise their water table… despite not needing it. Use it or lose it mentality. If true, what are we doing growing Phx Az so quickly? Still?
If the Politics of water are anywhere similar to Auto industry, I suspect we’re approaching a dead end faster than we know. Literally, Lake Powell dam is a mere 50 ft water depth away from becoming non-generating, and will be referred to as a “Dead Pool.” I expect this within a year or two.
Although I was only joking on Steinbach fixing our water issues in Az, the ideas shared here are quite logical and doable. However, Az population first needs to recognize the problem. And what better person than Elon the Scientist to put these facts and solutions out there in plain sight. Meanwhile I have seen zero slowing of city growth or warnings while filling everyones’ swimming pools. The Az focus is on using less per capital to maintain constant usage. Problem is the Colorado river original calculations were high from the very start and lake Powell will go dry. Maybe for the good to reduce evaporation further.
This will likely move Off-topic but was worth the read and the time you both spent putting facts to paper. Thank you!
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