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

[MadScientist23]

Lol, in Banff National Park, the bears have their own police escort.

View attachment 836700 View attachment 836702

(Actually, two. Park Police and an RCMP cruiser)

Cheers!

I think you mean the SEC is there

 

[UnknownSoldier]

I can't believe I forgot to mention this nugget. When I was trail running in Tahoe, I ran into a bear .

And the bear ran away from me! It's a bullish sign - TSLAQ bears are running scared...

Yes I am idiot American taking a selfie with a bear who's mom is probably 2 minutes away from mauling me.

I saw a documentary about what not to do when you encounter a bear cub in the wild. I think it was called "The Revenant"

 

[ZsoZso]

LOL Tesla listed under "Speculative Tech" right now on CNBC

And CNBC is listed under "Comedic Entertainment" now on TMC.

 

[snellenr]

Refining, I think they may get into it.

Mining, however, I have great pause to want them to go down that rabbit hole. The permitting for mining, at least in the USA, is very arduous and fraught with legal land mines, many of which can last for decades after a mine is closed down.

"The Boring Company has announced that they will be building an underground test track in northern Nevada. Rock waste haulage has been subcontracted to Tesla Motors."

 

[shrspeedblade]

I can't believe I forgot to mention this nugget. When I was trail running in Tahoe, I ran into a bear .

And the bear ran away from me! It's a bullish sign - TSLAQ bears are running scared...

Yes I am idiot American taking a selfie with a bear who's mom is probably 2 minutes away from mauling me.

I don’t know, I just saw a bear up at Tahoe and he was feasting!

 

[Big Time]

Schumer says he expects Senate to begin voting on climate and tax bill Saturday

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Thursday he expects the chamber will begin voting on Democrats' $739 billion climate, healthcare and tax...

www.marketwatch.com

 

[ninpb]

Umm, I too saw a bear in my Sequoia trip two weeks ago. Someone tell us what this means?! With my family so didn't want to spend the time to decide if it was just small or a cub that I didn't take a pic.

 

[capster]

I can't believe I forgot to mention this nugget. When I was trail running in Tahoe, I ran into a bear .

And the bear ran away from me! It's a bullish sign - TSLAQ bears are running scared...

Yes I am idiot American taking a selfie with a bear who's mom is probably 2 minutes away from mauling me.

Not sure I see the connection. Why should the bears run scared now?

Statistically speaking, past performance is not an indicator of future performance. The rise around the time of the previous split could‘ve just been coincidental—sample size of one and all.

And, logically, if you have a pizza cut into 3 slices and slice it further into 9 pieces, you have no more pie than you started with—and no, that’s not an apples-to-oranges comparison as I’m referring to a pizza-pie (wait, was I supposed to specify that in the premises? and isn’t topologic a branch of logic? ).

Further, we know from those who are, um, economical in their thinking that markets are efficient. Thus, can we not infer from the wild gyrations of the stock price that Tesla’s commercial prospects fluctuate dramatically by the very moment?

QED (quod erat desiderata ), shorts need not cover anytime soon.

It helps to be familiar with the various philosophistical schools of thought as an investor, don’t you know.

/s

 

[M|S|M MYP]

Schumer says he expects Senate to begin voting on climate and tax bill Saturday

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Thursday he expects the chamber will begin voting on Democrats' $739 billion climate, healthcare and tax...

www.marketwatch.com

Prepare for...."We have irreconcilable differences....we will discuss this further when we re-convene in September"

 

[H Mak]

Well, I'm right until somebody shows I'm wrong, which nobody has. Lots of "we wuz robbed!!" but no actual evidence. Lots of "I remember" but no links to anything. So yeah, I get riled up when people post stupidity and misinformation to this thread. Kind of similar to... you.

Well, except that Henri, le Chat Noir is totally cool. Whereas your avatar is... your avatar.

I'm getting bored now with your posts on this subject which happened a long time ago, and so far I haven't bitten, but in the hope that it will end the pointless argument, here is what happened with me:

My broker was very late in allocating my shares and the delay prevented me doing something which I wanted to do. I was extremely annoyed with them, in fact frantic, and made a complaint. One of their managers telephoned me and was on the phone for about 20 minutes. Extremely apologetic, lame excuses, "you're a valued client" etc etc.

Following the call I received this email:

Dear Mr.
Thank you for your time on the phone earlier, it was nice to speak to you.
It was good that, following the recent stock split, we were able to update all our customers Tesla holdings earlier this afternoon, once the new shares had been received by us.
I would like to reiterate our apologies for any inconvenience that the delay may have caused you and, as a gesture of goodwill and also in recognition of your loyalty to our service, I am happy to arrange a payment of £200 to your dealing account. This will take approx. 3-5 days to process, I will let you know once it has been credited.
Finally, please do let me know if you encounter any future issues which cannot be resolved via normal channels and I will look to assist in any way that I can.

OK I know your next question - what was the amount of your loss? Here's my answer: I'm not telling you.

Can we just leave it there please.

 

[M|S|M MYP]

Not sure I see the connection. Why should the bears run scared now?

Statistically speaking, past performance is not an indicator of future performance. The rise around the time of the previous split could‘ve just been coincidental—sample size of one and all.

And, logically, if you have a pizza cut into 3 slices and slice it further into 9 pieces, you have no more pie than you started with—and no, that’s not an apples-to-oranges comparison as I’m referring to a pizza-pie (wait, was I supposed to specify that in the premises? and isn’t topologic a branch of logic? ).

Further, we know from those who are, um, economical in their thinking that markets are efficient. Thus, can we not infer from the wild gyrations of the stock price that Tesla’s commercial prospects fluctuate dramatically by the very moment?

QED (quod erat desiderata ), shorts need not cover anytime soon.

It helps to be familiar with the various philosophistical schools of thought as an investor, don’t you know.

/s

Hijack alert.....I believe Gordo has hijacked @capster account.

 

[TheTalkingMule]

Bought a single $950c for tomorrow for funsies.

 

[SmokyPeat]

We seem to be at the same level with battery science that Gregor Mendel was at when he described how genetics influenced the inheritance of traits in sweet peas. Researchers constantly propose wondrous combinations of anodes, cathodes and electrolytes that will revolutionize the industry. It took about 20 years between the time that Whittington conceptualized the Li ion battery to when such batteries were commercially produced. Battery technology will definitely improve, but what that improvement will be is presently unclear.

Whittingham. But I suppose Whittington is Goodenough.

 

[jkirkwood001]

That is indeed the notion we all tend to hold. It is probably indisputable that TSLA retail investors are far more active and involved than are those of any other large cap corporation.

However active they are there are some other factors. Tesla also has one of the largest insider holdings also, with around 40% held by them (that is not really precise due to the heavy combination of aging options and recently exercised ones that change totals. Combining those with 42% most recently reported for institutional gives us 80%, the average institutional holding percentage for the Fortune 500 in 2019.

That proportion is probably fairly typical, although some reports using other samples sometimes go to 90% or so.

For the last couple of months short interest has been between one day and 1.5 days to cover, running less than 3% of float.

Can retail account for all the volatility, or even a major part of it? That is possible, but not plausible.
In my opinion the primary culprit is market makers and large speculators. Most of the largest speculators have probably tired of periodically losing their gains and more. Market makers, though, are pleased to use all their ability to manipulate markets.

The only caveat in my view is that 'Robin Hood', they of taking from the poor to give to the rich, plus retail brokers are making quite excellent returns from retail, primarily from the small but growing number of gamblers who are drawn to quick riches. They're carefully cultivated because of those profits, even from margin lending itself. Almost no reliable information about those actual patterns is available, because the primary market makers are private and disclose almost nothing at all.

The 'rule of thumb' in large retail brokers not long ago was that 5% of the customers made all the money. Now with commission-free and custodial-charge free retail trades being the rule, it is probably more like 3% of customers making all the money. At this point all the major brokerage revenues are coming from the truth 'pawn shop and gambling' trade.

In this environment it is hard to imagine that some unusual factors exacerbate Tesla volatility. First, the largest shareholder lives on borrowed money and that is highly profitable business. Second, all the quasi-institutional sell-side and speculators are making the market maker coffers burst with glee.

So, no I don't think retail is really a major force, but thanks to various Citadel interests, retail is providing an increasingly attractive part of that.

The greatest risk is that all this histrionic behavior continues to detract from actually promoting the Tesla Mission. That is sad. HODL, 'live long and prosper'.

Thanks for your insight again, @unk45 .

I'll add my amateur opinion, which is that retail investing will grow in volume over time compared to the historical norm. The reason is self-serve investing is getting easier and easier (and cheaper and cheaper) compared to mutual funds, etc.

Also, more and more companies (at least in Canada), are moving to 'defined contribution' plans (managed by the employee) and reducing 'defined benefit' plans (managed by the institution). This means more individuals are more accountable for their investments than before. In my own case, once I had to become responsible for investing my company pension (within company boundaries), when in 2015 I went independent from my Big 4 consulting firm, I was more comfortable investing myself than using an advisor. I've never looked back (thank you TSLA!). To use an ugly analogy, how may of us like(d) waiting and paying for a gas station attendant to pump our gas once we were able to do it ourselves quicker and cheaper?

I suppose many company plans would be considered institutional as long as the employee is employed. But I'm just saying the trend is towards self-serve (retail) investing.

Having said all of that, I'm not suggesting more retail investing would be 'fairer' or 'smarter' in outcome. As you point out, The Robin Hoods of the world have no qualms taking profit from uninformed investors. But like a democratic election, that's still better than an institution deciding for us, no?

 

[capster]

Hijack alert.....I believe Gordo has hijacked @capster account.

Was trying to channel P. G. Wodehouse. Boy, did I miss the mark.

 

[jkirkwood001]

People c'mon there isn't going to be ANY exciting product announcements at the AGM. It will be the regular boring update of Tesla's accomplishments to date with maybe a few nuggets of data we haven't seen before.

There is no utility in announcing anything major. Firstly, Tesla is entirely focused on ramping existing factories and manufacturing lines. Secondly, there is nothing to demonstrably show. Announcing new factories, products etc would be many years away. 2023 and 2024 are already spoken for-- Semi, CT, Austin/Berlin Ramps.

Yeah, and Tesla's never surprised us before...

 

[Cosmacelf]

Who's making today's bingo card?

I'm reposting this for late stragglers who only read the last few pages.

Shareholder Meeting Bingo! I made 100 different cards. Everyone can click this link, enter in your TMC screen name, and you'll get a randomized card which you can play on the screen/computer/tablet.

https://mfbc.us/v/pkqj387

"Rules" (since this is just for fun) is that you call your own game (ie. cross off squares yourself). BINGO is defined as one full column, row or five diagonal.

If you win, shout BINGO as loud as you can (bonus points if your partner gives you a dirty look). Then do a screen shot and post your complete card. First poster gets some sort of kitschy prize to be determined later.

We're up 64 players as of this post!

 

[Drezil]

Electrical engineer here but NOT a battery engineer. I have followed battery tech announcements in the press for decades now. Back in 2001 I was founding a telecom company and seeking VC funding (I know, I know) and got to sit in meetings where our funding VCs were enamored with a battery startup from MIT. We and they both eventually went down the tubes. There have been myriad new battery tech LAB announcements for decades. Some even got made into products. Be very very wary of any new glowing battery announcement even from the most competent sources, e.g. MIT.

Last thing i followed in Detail was the QS "breakthrough" where they had an awesome cell.
Single layer. In a Lab. With 0.2 Wh Capacity. And brittle (meaning you cannot roll them up into cylindrical cells)..

Or the solid-state-battery that great scott once had:

Yes. They all work. But having things working on a bench-scale (i.e. single scientist at his bench with 1 battery) is orders of magnitude easier than "Lab Scale". Lab Scale was, what Maxwell had, when Tesla acquired them.. Bringing that to "production scale" is again orders of magnitude harder. And then bringing that to "extreme scale" (what elon plans with ramping from 0 to 100GWh or even TWh in a few years) is AGAIN orders of magnitude harder...

BUT the problems are different. Lab Scale has normally problems with repeatablility (like .. a one-off at the bench can happen, but get the same performance reliable on 100 handmade cells is HARD), production scale has normally problems with things like automated preparing/mixing/feeding of materials. Ramping to extreme scale has then problems of logistics, planning on resource-acquisitions ("we might get into mining"), different qualities from different suppliers and the whole rats tail this entails.

Every week you can read some new Bench-Scale breakthrough battery..
Like some dude on twitter once said: Prototypes are easy, (Mass-)Production is hard.

 

[Artful Dodger]

I'm getting bored now with your posts on this subject which happened a long time ago, and so far I haven't bitten, but in the hope that it will end the pointless argument, here is what happened with me:

My broker was very late in allocating my shares and the delay prevented me doing something which I wanted to do. I was extremely annoyed with them, in fact frantic, and made a complaint. One of their managers telephoned me and was on the phone for about 20 minutes. Extremely apologetic, lame excuses, "you're a valued client" etc etc.

Following the call I received this email:

Dear Mr.
Thank you for your time on the phone earlier, it was nice to speak to you.
It was good that, following the recent stock split, we were able to update all our customers Tesla holdings earlier this afternoon, once the new shares had been received by us.
I would like to reiterate our apologies for any inconvenience that the delay may have caused you and, as a gesture of goodwill and also in recognition of your loyalty to our service, I am happy to arrange a payment of £200 to your dealing account. This will take approx. 3-5 days to process, I will let you know once it has been credited.
Finally, please do let me know if you encounter any future issues which cannot be resolved via normal channels and I will look to assist in any way that I can.

OK I know your next question - what was the amount of your loss? Here's my answer: I'm not telling you.

Can we just leave it there please.

Yeah, in the event it wasn't just Equiniti that was deliquent in delivering the dividend shares in Sep 2020. @Chocochip had the same issues with Hargreaves Lansdown (read #197,563 ) and @SebastianR had those issues with Consors, a German broker (read #197,472 ). I recall about a dozen TMC members that reported receiving their shares late.

REMEMBER, by Friday morning, TSLA had gone down over 30%. Those brokers bought legitimate shares on the cheap, and retroactively gave them to their rightful owners. Now, if you don't have the RIGHT to sell, how are you the RIGHTFUL owner?

P.S. You aren't, the Broker owns you. Lawsuit!

 

[Krugerrand]

Well, I'm right until somebody shows I'm wrong, which nobody has. Lots of "we wuz robbed!!" but no actual evidence. Lots of "I remember" but no links to anything. So yeah, I get riled up when people post stupidity and misinformation to this thread. Kind of similar to... you.

Well, except that Henri, le Chat Noir is totally cool. Whereas your avatar is... your avatar.

There were in fact people who could not sell shares and/or exercise/close/sell their options and they were just as angry as you, but not nearly so - belligerent.

None of us here today are those people, but we have already told you it did happen. Feel free to use the search engine and go digging. It’s not our job to find that information for you and upset your fantasy.