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

[SmokyPeat]

No need to ruin things..

Not to worry- I threw salt over my shoulder while dancing a jig under a horseshoe as I typed that post.

 

[InTheShadows]

V2G does practically nothing for a South California and areas with good climate, stable utility services.

Gamechanger and life saver for some regions like Texas where power was knocked out.

Was amazing to hear stories of people keeping their babies warm by staying inside their Model 3.

Equally heartbreaking to hear stories of those who lost their families by running ICE engines in their closed garages.

It’s more than just power outages. It’s providing peak power for the grid during high demand times in exchange for a reduced electric rate.

 

[Artful Dodger]

Tesla finally proves that it's a big, fat zero!

Yup. Took 11.5 years, but they finally proved it:

Next year: MOAR than Zero. Bigly more.

Ceres!

 

[nativewolf]

Here we are again, I don't understand your negativity against Germany/Berlin, but you are simply wrong. Have you actually ever been to Germany/Europe?


I actually don't have the energy to detail a counter-argument to you, so 4 quick bullet points:

• Land: the reason the site was offered to Tesla / Tesla chose it is that it was previously intended for a BMW plant, and a lot of the preliminary permitting groundwork had been done already. It is located next to a major east-west and north-south highways for road-access, as well as a direct rail-link onto the site
• I don't think we need to talk about its location vis-a-vis the market - considering shipping logistics: see above. (there is no need to be located near a harbor, since GigaBerlin will manufacture for Europe first and foremost, and that is all reachable over land
• While Berlin is not traditionally a hub of automotive talent, it is a a popular location for young people to live, and the close proximity to Poland (and the "automotive corridor" Wroclaw - Katowice - Krakau for sub-suppliers) for Polish laborers
• The German government is more supportive of Tesla than you can imagine. Please do not confuse the painful duration of the final permitting process with a lack of support in the government - also Elon does not want subsidies

Giga UK - have you heard of Brexit? Also, other than their own market - the nearest other right-hand drive countries are closer to Shanghai than the UK, or indeed India.

Politics - Spain (no offense to our Spanish friends here), Poland - - Also, there's a serious skilled labor shortage in Poland. It's all left to other countries in Europe for better working conditions and pay. Poland imports cheap labor from Belarus and Ukraine. The high-skilled engineering and tech employees that Tesla requires will not relocated to Poland.


Aarrgghh.....I used more of my energy than I wanted.

Please - let's stop this anti-Berlin/Germany rhetoric.

Thanks.

I am very positive on Berlin . Why do you think I am negative? I am however tired of people blaming the German govt for the slow launch. I think the slow launch is at a tactical requirement. The govt is not the constraint rather it is supply chain. Putting a gf in Brandenburg was brilliant and ballsy. I might have put it somewhere else but it worked out fine, the supply shocks offset any issues due to govt. everything is slow

 

[ZachF]

I question that. Granted-EVs by their nature overall are simpler, with fewer components and systems, and likely take fewer employees to produce. But within that framework, Tesla is, overall, likely to have more direct employees than GM. Tesla is highly integrated and (I believe) builds a higher content of the components used in their cars than other company. GM in turn outsources a large portion of their component manufacturing. They especially outsource a disproportionate part of their component production to foreign manufacturers. This leads to Tesla being the "most American car" with the highest percentage of US made content of any car maker. They don't seem inclined to change that, if anything going the other way and building more in-house.

The takeaway? If GM goes under, those jobs aren't lost. They may be displaced, moved to other parts of the country. But not lost to the US-assuming that it is a US manufacturer that picks up this volume. And if it is Tesla that picks up the volume of cars GM loses, likely there will be more American jobs, not less. Now, if our government chooses to yet again meddle in the free market, to try to pick winners and losers, to punish successful, innovative, progressive companies, and reward slow-moving, entrenched ones that are afraid to take risks, to innovate; they don't help the poorly run companies, who are doomed to failure anyway. All they do is harm the successful ones. And that, in turn, leads to fewer jobs, and a higher number of imported products and damaged US industries.

As I’ve stated before in this thread, historically oil and ICE vehicles have made up a large percentage of the us trade deficit (before fracking, it was over half of it).

Oil and ICE are huge subtractors to the US economy. The US net imports about 30% of its ICE vehicles. The Us is a net exporter right now of EVs thanks to Tesla.

 

[jerry33]

Seems like "smart money" is being a douchebag swallowing retail's money by generating volatility rotating money around(because they literally can't put it anywhere else). This is what I call reverse Robinhood because retail would either buy options because they are too poor to buy shares, or sell on fear/buy on fomo.

So yeah everything should be priced in, but due to high retail participation I believe smart money is trying to generate profits off the situation. So everything is pretty much fake news.

Until retail stops buying options and using margin (gambling) this will continue. But (most) retail gets greedy and ends up giving money to the house.

 

[jerry33]

I think the Michigan/ Ohio area covers 3 out of 4 of these quite well. The incentives aren’t necessarily there locally, but if it would help swing federal policy it amounts to the same thing.

I’m not entirely sure about engineering talent. I agree, Tesla isn’t likely shopping for ICE engineers.

The production workers are all going to be UAW, which will pretty much halt any innovation or rapid change. That makes only two out of four.

 

[Singuy]

All right guys. Couple of things to look for on the qqq which I think is more important than Tesla price .

377 is the 50 Ema so expect strong resistance there. Dead cat usually bounce to 50% of Ath out of lows, which is 373. Let's see where this takes us and hoping for a V shape recovery, get us back onto the daily chart bull trend.

 

[jerry33]

On the topic of manipulation....I can only imagine how much less "volitility" and gamma TSLA would have on a day like Tuesday vs what @Papafox details in his excellent analysis for Tuesday here....I wish someone cared and studied the behavior to expose it.

It's been exposed many times (even Cramer did it), but everyone with power and authority makes money from the current corrupt system, so there is no incentive to change it.

 

[Mengy]

No mention of the Bolt or it's closed factory at all in GM's earnings call, I think it might truly be dead and buried at this point.

With that in mind, I honestly do think GM will sell less EV's in Q1 2022 than the (26) they sold in Q4 2021!

 

[Unpilot]

No mention of the Bolt or it's closed factory at all in GM's earnings call, I think it might truly be dead and buried at this point.

With that in mind, I honestly do think GM will sell less EV's in Q1 2022 than the (26) they sold in Q4 2021!

You have it all wrong.
GM realizes that for EV the best part is no part.

So if they make no EV...they lead by example.

#Maryleads.

 

[jbcarioca]

Market makers have a lot of tools available to raise and lower prices at will. The reason for this is the system is set up to trust them. However, those of us who have been paying attention know the MM's are not trust-worthy. Money talks, ethics walk.

In US terms since the Buttonwood tree market makers have manipulated. technically the system(s) were not "set up to trust them". They were developed to improve liquidity and standardize tools of the trade. It is only by inference and political positioning that any reference to individual shareholders exists at all.
That may not be a popular view, but it is true. Worldwide financial systems were all developed to benefit financial institutions and institutional investors. I understand the previous sentence is absolute. A little more than 40 years ago I led a project for a very large financial institution to assess the structure and character of more than 170 individual financial markets, from the smallest at the time, the Seychelles to the physically largest, China (at that time they did not have a national system, and much intra-China trade ran on, believe it or not, bankcard debit settlement systems. That changed very, very quickly, but 1978 was the real beginning of their economic development).
That paragraph simply explains that the roelfo market makers and financial transactions is no monolithic at all. Almost none of it has much to do with individual consumers. There is a lesson that is unequivocal:

By design, participation in most securities or other financial markets does not have individual consumer benefits except from the typical Consumer Protection feature that are always designed to appear to have consumer benefits that are actually quite toothless.

The absolute classic example is in the present day. TSLA, represents more than half the total derivatives market. Why should that be? It si quite simple and transparent. TSLA is inordinately popular among active consumers who are self-directed. That means that those investors (US, if you please) are probably the most profitable single class of individuals. The result is that the TSLA individual investors devour large quantities of highly 'sophisticated' ...

note: I am using the 15c definition for the word:

sophistication (n.)​

early 15c., "use of sophistry; fallacious argument intended to mislead; adulteration; an adulterated or adulterating substance,"

...tools. Those tools are quite explicitly designed to generate r4venue from volatility, the more extreme the better.
Most fo us know that, but persist in trying to game a system designed to strip them of their money. In short, playing with derivatives as an individual consumer is roughly equivalent to using a 'system' to play slot machines. It cannot be successful long term and will not be.

Of course @StealthP3D is largely correct except for the purpose. Quite a few people here are using FINRA data:

Short Sale Volume Data

Short sale trade data is publicly available for off-exchange (OTC) trades in exchange-listed securities reported to a FINRA Trade Reporting Facility (TRF), Alternative Display Facility (ADF), or Over the Counter Reporting Facility (ORF).

www.finra.org

Given the interplay between DTC...

The Depository Trust Company (DTC)

DTC brings efficiency to the securities industry by reducing costs, immobilizing securities and making 'book-entry' changes to ownership of the securities.

www.dtcc.com

...FINRA and the reporting entities much short selling and consequent Fails to Deliver may never be reported at all.

This all sounds to be deeply conspiratorial. I don't really think that is true. factually very few people understand how this system works. Those who do are likely to be very, very 'nerdish' and some have very well developed analytic skills. Those few devise the various operational tools that end out being called 'bots', 'algorithms' or something else. Those are the automated tools that end out manipulating markets, quite often in ways that avoid regulatory reporting.
To my knowledge virtually no ostensible corporate leaders have any idea at all how this works. They only know they make tons of money until something goes wrong, whereupon they are perfectly equipped to deny responsibility, take their Nobel Prizes and/or $billions and retire into the sunset. In short, the system probably is mostly not corrupt but it is wide open for corrupt actions that are plausibly deniable.

This repeats regular warnings, that will invariably be ignored by people who are convinced they can beat the system. They're better off going to casino slots where they might at least get 'free' drinks when they lose enough.

 

[Dangerous Fish]

Er, what just happened in premarket?
ETA ignore me, just a glitch on Marketwatch I think
It's not that I'm staring at charts and tickers all day. Oh no, I've got much better things to do.
Honestly

 

[TheTalkingMule]

Er, what just happened in premarket?
ETA ignore me, just a glitch on Marketwatch I think
It's not that I'm staring at charts and tickers all day. Oh no, I've got much better things to do.
Honestly

ADP jobs figure came in much lower than expected. Could be a good thing tho as it may temporarily moderate Fed tightening. Rates down a bit.

 

[Knightshade]

It's doing a Tesla Master Plan Part Uno - let the deep pocketed folks pay for the R&D and production ramping now that the concept has been proven to be solid. Deep pockets aren't hard to figure, traders of all kinds (recall NYC to London is faster via Space than buried fiber cable, so the HFT and hedge funds will love the ability to shave another few milliseconds in colocated server rooms - for their totally senseless profit making off trade flow), and the military. Rock on!

FYI - it's about 5X the price of the single dish ( $2,500 hardware, $500 /mo ) for those interested

This really misunderstands a lot about Starlink. Nobody, and I mean nobody, that depends on custom-fiber-install HFT trade info is moving to starlink, which still has brief but intermittent service drops that most users don't care about but these guys literally run their business around not having. That's apart from them usually being in high density spots like NYC where needing line of sight to work well is highly challenging.


Even Elon Starlink is NOT for dense areas that already have high speed options.

It's for rural, sparse, and heavily underserved areas that don't.


The killer use cases for this new offering is two things
-

1) things like cruise ships and aircraft where you have to share the bandwidth of one receiver across hundreds of people and existing satellite offerings are terrible in comparison.

and

2) Providing rural/remote backhaul for telco companies where again they need to serve multiple users but running physical wires doesn't make sense.. Elon remarked specifically on that a while back

Those are the two sort of deals we’re doing- Where a 5G licensee has a rural requirement from the government, or where they do have 5G towers but the difficulty is backhaul.

Of course Tesla doesn't own or operate starlink so probably should move further discussion to the existing thread for it-

SpaceX Internet Satellite Network: Starlink

Not sure I agree... a "pre-order" doesn't provide said service, it primarily gauges interest. The article says:"“Starlink has neither applied for nor obtained any license from PTA to operate and provide internet services” They aint doing that yet, but are in the process of getting the license...

teslamotorsclub.com

 

[Krugerrand]

Berlin has really only 1 of your 4. Land.

Shipping logistics for Berlin is not great, the auto talent is not in Berlin, the govt...haha ha .

Berlin was chosen to stick a knife in the German OEMs. Poland would have been better for many things. Spain for others. The UK for more as well. Berlin was all about politics.

You talk too much about things you know nothing about. In and of itself it’s not an issue and you’d just be relegated to windbag status in people’s minds, but this is an investment thread dedicated to Tesla and TSLA for over a decade that prides itself on truth and accuracy, and much of what you flog with an authoritative air is straight up misinformed and ignorant opinion, not fact. And that is a problem. So kindly stop. Stick to what you really know about. Hint: Berlin et al is not one of those topics.

 

[AKAlex]

Regarding engineering talent-I'm not sure where Tesla is now doing it's primary product engineering and development. Has that moved from CA to TX? In either case, at the production facilities, they likely have little need for engine(motor) and drivetrain engineers. They will need manufacturing, process, industrial, controls and tooling engineers to bring an assembly to life and support production activities. Those would be readily available in the MI/OH area, and I suspect those at legacy companies would jump at a chance to work at Tesla. Thing is, Michigan and N. Ohio face a few concerns. One is the "brain drain" from the rust belt to the SE and TX, areas that are becoming manufacturing meccas. They also face weather concerns-long, cold winters drive heating costs, snowplowing costs of employee parking lots, degradation of facilities, as well as challenges with transportation and the ability of employees to get to work (I grew up not far from Buffalo and remember it all too well). The other issue involved transportation-Ohio in particular embraces toll roads. I don't recall them in MI though. If you are going to transport by truck, anything built in MI will require a toll road out in OH or IL. In the overall scheme of things, I'm not sure how big an impact those things are.

From a transportation standpoint, MI isn't well suited. It's not centrally located, bounded by water at least in part on 3 sides, and a foreign nation. To serve the populous east-coast markets, it would make more sense to locate in the mid-Atlantic states, or perhaps southern OH. Many of those states are more business friendly and lower tax as well.

Flip side, as far as geography and access to markets, Austin certainly isn't exactly centrally located, nor anywhere close to larger Eastern markets. Yes, TX is the 2nd most populous state in the nation, but it's still very spread out and doesn't have the population of the entire Eastern seaboard area. So perhaps that's not that big an issue.

I think the key reason why Tesla has been avoiding the upper midwest is the UAW. The rapid pace of innovation they are working with would quickly be stymied by the bureaucracy and work rules that come with a union.

When an engineer can't touch the machine he is designing/building, it is quite difficult to build the mental model necessary to rapidly iterate on it's design.

For instance, I currently work in a Teamster shop. If I see something wrong, it is not as simple as fixing the problem in the most direct way possible. It means working through the union bureaucracy to do so. This bureaucracy absolutely gums up the gears of innovation. Innovation is at the core of Tesla.

 

[ZachF]

ADP jobs figure came in much lower than expected. Could be a good thing tho as it may temporarily moderate Fed tightening. Rates down a bit.

I think the probability of recession this year is over 50%. It’s just mathematics of the huge buildup in inventories during the second half of last year.

Interestingly, even if the quarterly growth figures average 0% this year it will still produce a ~2.6% yoy growth figure.

 

[thx1139]

I think the probability of recession this year is over 50%. It’s just mathematics of the huge buildup in inventories during the second half of last year.

Interestingly, even if the quarterly growth figures average 0% this year it will still produce a ~2.6% yoy growth figure.

Curious if inventories built up why do people report shortages of items? Then again the shortages may not be real, just political.

 

[ZachF]

Elon mentioned that Austin was chosen primarily because that was one of the few places top engineering talent would move to from California. It's likely Berlin played into a similar thought process for the European factory. Berlin might not have the engineering talent, but it would be considered a positive for engineers who want to move for a Tesla job. Berlin is a true global city - It's unlikely as many top engineers would be willing to move to 2nd/3rd tier cities being discussed here.

Secondary factors were mentioned as regulations/location/logistics.

Source below:
Elon Musk explains why Tesla chose Austin for the Gigafactory and makes more Cybertruck revelations - Tesla Oracle

Nashville will be where Giga east is located. Bank on it.

Lots of young people moving there right now, it’s one of the current “it” towns, and it’s right in the automotive corridor surrounded by potential suppliers.