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

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A little something to brighten the HODLer outlook and close up the weekend as we look forward.

Mr. C.T. Dots threw some more questions to his A.I. friend and turned out an excellent perspective about many things Tesla. The nuggets are worth the time to view. At least they were to me.

Enjoy

The way Tesla is run contrasts with virtually every MBA/beancounting-dominated client & company I've ever experienced. I've seen some great opportunities thrown away. Seeing behind the scenes led me to decide to NOT invest in any of them.

Contrast Tesla with Xerox - Xerox Parc’s Engineers on How They Invented the Future—and How Xerox Lost It

The @2daMoon / "Connecting the Dots" video above includes predictions of how Tesla will do, with x1000, x10,000 as possibilities - one for the Super Bull thread perhaps. Only Musk companies seem to make the most of their opportunities, I think he's changed how future companies will be organised. It might take time, but ex-Tesla people will change business and possibly society.
 
Have I been ordained to change GoJo’s mind?


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"I don't think those earnings are real"

"I don't want to think those earnings are real"

SurREAL

Isn't that implying accounting fraud? Turn up the Tesla's persecution* team to 11?

*They might be otherwise known as the "legal team"
 
From, ironically, the SEC:



Excerpt from Shorting America



That's what I was afraid of.
Way (I mean waaaaay) too much liquidity in TSLA for Gates' short position to make any difference. 20B traded every day against a one time 500M sale. And by the way, every short sale must be closed at some point by buying the shares back.

Also, remember all the people who said big oil was shorting TSLA? They weren't. Positions large enough to make a difference to the TSLA share price would have resulted in massive mark-to-market losses for anybody that tried such a strategy.

This board is in need of people who speak up when the board is led astray by those who can't distinguish the truth from what they want to be true.
 
An ice cream cone (or…a LOT of them!), available from George, and a trip to Cameroon, which Barbara is offering, are not the same thing. Yet if I spend my assets on one I’ll not be able to purchase the other.

Buying back back shares that shareholder Gretchen has means I haven’t the assets to pay Carol for that set of Alaskan Superchargers. Will Gretchen pay for them? Yaaaah….right.

So, the only relevant discussion is whether it is necessary for me to justify why I believe AK SpCs are a more worthy expenditure than shares. Except I made that argument on here close to a decade ago and I don’t believe in repetitive postings😜
 
Way (I mean waaaaay) too much liquidity in TSLA for Gates' short position to make any difference. 20B traded every day against a one time 500M sale. And by the way, every short sale must be closed at some point by buying the shares back.

Also, remember all the people who said big oil was shorting TSLA? They weren't. Positions large enough to make a difference to the TSLA share price would have resulted in massive mark-to-market losses for anybody that tried such a strategy.

This board is in need of people who speak up when the board is led astray by those who can't distinguish the truth from what they want to be true.
You are now speaking of an individual short seller, rather then the practice of short selling globally.

That's not what you referred to when you said:

What he says is true: Shorting TSLA doesn't hurt the company

And, as your previous post addresses, Gates likewise was not speaking of his specific individual position:

but somebody shorting the stock doesn't slow him down or hurt him in any way.

You've attempted to reframe the argument. And have avoided the reference to material I provided that directly refutes your assertion.
 
Also, remember all the people who said big oil was shorting TSLA? They weren't. Positions large enough to make a difference to the TSLA share price would have resulted in massive mark-to-market losses for anybody that tried such a strategy.
I disagreed here because we don't know the source of the money that was/is shorting Tesla.

We do know massive losses have been racked up, and we know some of the people who lost money, but not all of them.

Also shorting could be driven by multiple motivations, but in aggregate they hoped to make a difference, Intentions count here, not the end result.

As things stand, shorting has no real impact of Tesla's ability to expand, and neither do credit ratings, Tesla no longer needs to borrow money, and Tesla has paid back a lot of debt.

But just because shorting no longer has an impact, doesn't mean the intention wasn't to prevent Tesla being able to raise capital.

Where shorts badly miscalculated is, believing their own narrative.
 
"I don't think those earnings are real"

"I don't want to think those earnings are real"

SurREAL

Isn't that implying accounting fraud? Turn up the Tesla's persecution* team to 11?


That Tesla has been engaged in Enron/Madoff-level accounting fraud has been an ongoing TSLAQ narrative for years now.... for a good while one of the common arguments was around warranty $ being shifted around.... a more recent one is about accounts payable, where Tesla is showing these big earnings because they keep pushing off paying for anything...plus the usual fraud arguments around things sold or pre-sold and "will never" be delivered like L5 and flying roadsters....(and I'm sure the old timers have lots more examples they could cite)


None of them hold up to anyone with a halfway decent understanding of accounting--(well, the accounting specific ones anyway- L5 is a whole other can of worms!) but to the lay public it's sufficient razzle dazzle that many buy the arguments.
 
I used to believe that until he decided a valid physics first principles use of his money was to buy Twitter.

Now there is no longer any reason to pretend this is true. Elon is just the same as anyone else, if he feels like buying something he will buy it. If he feels like doing stock buybacks he'll do it and pretending otherwise is delusional and self-defeating.
Elon spending Elon money : For the overall betterment of human kind and to ensure that we don't devolve into chaos before sustainable energy and multi-planetary species is obtained...

Elon spending Tesla money: Just the Tesla mission
Elon spending SpaceX money: Just the SpaceX mission
Elon spending Boring company money: Make less people lose their minds in soul crushing traffic ;)
 
I agree that doing a share buyback is the same thing as management saying, "we have no better use for the capital". Ideally, Tesla can always invest the capital more profitably than by buying shares, even when those shares are mightily under-valued.
Also, availability of capital is not the sole determinant of the pace at which management can grow the business. For instance, there may not be enough supply of management and/or engineering talent available in order to grow beyond a certain rate. Or, maybe Tesla's suppliers are not able to keep up with such a pace of growth. In either case, some capital that is not needed could be returned to shareholders. Am not saying that it seems like the right choice in the current situation. But as the saying goes, money can't buy everything.
 
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While the logic is correct, if there are few Superchargers there will be more resistance to purchasing.

The whole point of Superchargers is to drive the adoption of EV's. Those paying attention have noticed that it's working so well that Tesla is production constrained. Yet, they continue growing their Supercharger network to ensure continued adoption and that expansion is focused, not on the rural areas where I would most want Superchargers to be added for my own selfish reasons, but where they will most effectively support the ever-increasing fleet size. It is many times more efficient to serve up Supercharger services to those living in populated areas and travelling the most popular routes than it is to serve those who live in the most rural areas or want to travel to them. So Tesla will continue doing that until they need to broaden their market to continue growing production. I trust they will do it in time such that they are not caught flat-footed.

As long as Tesla is production constrained as far as the eye can see, there is no point in expanding into seldom travelled areas. It's not a matter of whether they have enough money to do so (they do), it's a matter of capital efficiency. In time, Superchargers will cover every nook and cranny. That will happen so Tesla can continue to sell every car they can make, even as they become the largest automaker in the Western World (if not the entire world).
 
The whole point of Superchargers is to drive the adoption of EV's. Those paying attention have noticed that it's working so well that Tesla is production constrained. Yet, they continue growing their Supercharger network to ensure continued adoption and that expansion is focused, not on the rural areas where I would most want Superchargers to be added for my own selfish reasons, but where they will most effectively support the ever-increasing fleet size. It is many times more efficient to serve up Supercharger services to those living in populated areas and travelling the most popular routes than it is to serve those who live in the most rural areas or want to travel to them. So Tesla will continue doing that until they need to broaden their market to continue growing production. I trust they will do it in time such that they are not caught flat-footed.

As long as Tesla is production constrained as far as the eye can see, there is no point in expanding into seldom travelled areas. It's not a matter of whether they have enough money to do so (they do), it's a matter of capital efficiency. In time, Superchargers will cover every nook and cranny. That will happen so Tesla can continue to sell every car they can make, even as they become the largest automaker in the Western World (if not the entire world).
True currently when all available tesla models are sedans but dominating the truck market starting next year will require expanded supercharger options in large parts of most non-coastal states. I've had a cybertruck on order since day 1 but if it were available today I wouldn't get one because it wouldn't be usable in the remote areas I hunt and do field research & it wouldn't be convenient for farmers and ranchers in most of the Rocky Mountain & Great Plains states. It will undoubtedly change eventually but right now the supercharger map doesn't even show plans for many future Superchargers in these areas as is common elsewhere.
 
In short, the shortage continues thru 2023...

autoevolution: The End of the Chip Shortage: The Good News and the Prediction Nobody Wants to Accept.

This is incredibly bullish for Tesla as they are uniquely positioned to be least hurt by this due to best in class full stack agility.