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

[thesmokingman]

Whatever his product may be, he is now gaining more clicks to his website than any time in history. It pays to create controversy with Tesla. I bet you Nikola wouldn't even be around if their con of an ex-CEO didn't sue Tesla for nothing but bs. It put them on the map and literally paid for his mansion.

Nah, he's forever cementing his name with douchery. Let's not forget he ran for Senate in Teslafornia and lost badly. His single platform was anti FSD, that was it lmao.

Meet the Reclusive Software Billionaire Attacking Elon Musk

Dan O’Dowd, a software entrepreneur in California, is running for Senate on a single-issue platform: Tesla’s self-driving software.

www.nytimes.com

 

[MC3OZ]

Whether he ends up acquiring Twitter or not, it's been bad for Tesla and Tesla shareholders. I don't need a court to tell me this has been a sh*t show.

I am a huge Tesla fan. Obviously, Tesla and Musk have done some amazing things, but he also sometimes makes mistakes:

• The "funding secured" tweet, whether or not he thought it was true at the time, was a bad idea.
• Calling that dude a pedophile on Twitter was a bad idea.
• Buying a billion dollars of Bitcoin with Tesla's spare cash at about $33,000 then selling it at about $30,000 was a bad idea (for more reasons than simple finance).
• Backing himself into the risk of being forced to buy a company he doesn't want at a price it's not worth is also a bad idea.

I want the man to focus on the mission. The misadventures above ain't it.

I think Elon himself knows that some of his actions make him a bigger target for critics, but he also knows he is a big target anyway.

The times when Elon makes a mistake that has a negative impact on Tesla are rare, and are usually corrected, perhaps even over compensated for.

He is focused on the mission, but if even Elon who would like to stop himself occasionally doing dumb things, or being too unfiltered, can't do it, I don't see how we can.

IMO none of these things have a material long lasting effect on the value of Tesla.

Same if Elon sells shares, or doesn't sell shares, no material long lasting effect.

IMO it is all the very definition of "Much Ado About Nothing".

On the flip side Elon has made plenty of good calls, solved many hard problems (with the right team) and shown considerable foresight about which problems the company should be tackling, and stuck determinedly to solving hard problems over a long duration. All of which has built the company into what it is today.

 

[ZeApelido]

Musk coming out swinging

https://twitter.com/x/status/1557570812617580544

https://twitter.com/x/status/1557582615103913986

 

[Thekiwi]

So, if you sold 4%, that would be a HUGE number and irrational, would it?

I'll continue to pretend that 4 parts of 100 is not a huge amount of the whole.

Edit: for additional perspective, he sold 0.07 percent of the total number of TSLA shares. Generally, when one delves into the hundredths of one percent it is often considered a minuscule portion of the whole.

Pretty sure you got your math wrong there by an order of magnitude. Elons sales yesterday were $7 Billion worth, which is closer to 1% (0.8%) of Tesla market cap.

 

[Ogre]

CEO selling outside of previously planned sales is never good.

It just means he needs cash. Tesla stock is 99% of Musks net worth, if he needs to “Withdraw” money to do things, he has to sell it. Would you prefer he sold $100b to keep in reserve for other things?

Do you really think Musk owning 16% of Tesla instead of 17% (or whatever the actual numbers are) is going to make a damned bit of difference?

I think what this boils down to is people think shareholders should have a say in how Musk can spend his Tesla shares.

 

[Ogre]

If Tesla could identify the car used for the test, then they could get the logs.

Regardless, it is very easy for others to repeat a similar test, and debunk the claims made for this test.

I strongly suspect you have to cook up a weird set of specific conditions to make the car run over this dummy. The cones aren’t there by happenstance.

 

[Beltsbear]

If O'Dowd had irrefutable proof, he would just sue Electrek for liable. But instead he's throwing a fit on Twitter. Props to Fred for standing up to this charlatan:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1557535437085876225

A thread with O’Dowd and Lambert (who blocked me for disagreement)…. not sure who to root for! My guess is O’Dowd will sue Lambert.

 

[Ogre]

A thread with O’Dowd and Lambert (who blocked me for disagreement)…. not sure who to root for! My guess is O’Dowd will sue Lambert.

Not sure O’Dowd wants legal scrutiny of his methodology.

 

[Buckminster]

I expect TSLA to go up massively in the next 2 months. Why not buy more LEAPS I ask myself? I already have 50% value in LEAPS - it would be crazy to buy more. Well I won't sit idly by if I am wrong. If the SP is <$400 (post split) the day before Q3 ER (probably 18th Oct & following at least some of the early TWTR case FUD), I will sell shares to buy more LEAPS.

Who is with me?

17th Aug - Split share ownership date
20th Aug - FSD 10.69 drops
24th Aug - Split
Sep? - FSD V11
30th Sep - AI day #2
2nd October? - P&D
17th October - TWTR trial starts
19th October? - ER
21st October - TWTR trial ends
21st October - Earliest date Elon could re-buy TSLA

 

[ShareLofty]

21st October - Earliest date Elon could re-buy TSLA

False. He could rebuy on Monday August 15th if he’s successful in negotiating a lower price from Twitter this week. I believe @farzyness is saying it’s a possibility to be done this week.

 

[jw934]

Wow, Fred actually did some investigative journalism and called O'Dowd and contacted the test driver to gather the evidence to debunk the claim. Nice article, rare.

In summary: O'Dowd put the responsibility for the reporting of the test on the driver, and when Fred contacted the driver, he was not able to provide any photo of display showing FSD engaged, only a photo showing the Tesla agreement page text before allowing FSD to be engaged.

Tesla self-driving smear campaign releases 'test' that fails to realize FSD never engaged

A Tesla Full Self-Driving smear campaign started by a California billionaire running for Senate has a new attack ad based...

electrek.co

Fred is further challenging O’Dowd. Nice. Even FactChecking appreciates Fred helping to fight the FUD for the Tesla community.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1557617504347897856

 

[deffu]

Pelosi says U.S. House will pass Inflation Reduction Act on Friday

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Wednesday the House of Representatives would pass the Inflation Reduction Act on Friday.

www.reuters.com

 

[jw934]

Powerful visual for the US audience. [Edit: Chart is good but title not accurate. Marketing not = advertising. Thanks for reminding @jeewee3000 ]

Comparing Tesla’s Spending on R&D and Marketing Per Car to Other Automakers

How much does Tesla spend on a per car basis on innovation and marketing, compared to more traditional automakers?

www.visualcapitalist.com

 

[jeewee3000]

Powerful visual for the US audience.

View attachment 839529

Comparing Tesla’s Spending on R&D and Marketing Per Car to Other Automakers

How much does Tesla spend on a per car basis on innovation and marketing, compared to more traditional automakers?

www.visualcapitalist.com

That's great and all, but it's not entirely accurate.

Tesla indeed spends $0 on advertising, as the red bar graph suggests.

But the title "R&D vs marketing" which is not what the graph shows.

We've been over this, many moons ago. Marketing = advertising + all other forms of marketing. And Tesla does spend money on marketing. The effort they put in their youtube channel, Gigaparties, supercharger location funsies, ... is all marketing with a certain $ cost.

Not that I mind, just pointing out the title is misleading and obviously biased in favor of Tesla. We're always pointing this out when articles are biased towards legacy OEMs, but in this instance it's the other way round.

 

[Favguy]

Is anybody thinking of investing in TSLL at all? Most of my money is in UK ISA & SIPP so I've no options available except directly buying/selling stocks, but this is available.

Would appreciate anyone's thoughts on it.

 

[heltok]

Seems that Tesla FSD doesn't hit cardboard kids:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1557363740856778755

 

[unk45]

When you put most or all your money in a company engaging in a high risk endeavor dominated by a person who is both a genius and a quirky person( to say the least), this is exactly what you get. Krugerrand is right. Oh I’m talking of Apple. This is far from the first time I’ve seen this situation. Henry Ford also comes to mind.

Lessee, Thomas Edison, Igor Sikorsky, JP Morgan, Alfred Nobel…perfectly balanced non-controversial, every one. Elon is just a better talent scout than we’re some of these. Whoever thinks Elon ought to be quiet and inoffensive might prefer buying some GM or perhaps Boeing.

 

[SO16]

Yeah I echo these feelings. Honestly, since everything last winter and going through all of that, I have no emotion now regarding performance of the stock. My holdings in this company are multiple thousands of shares and I really just don’t care anymore. I won’t sell, but I’ve become numb to this entire emotional drama everyday now practically.

People freak out if they are under from a year ago. Try going all in, holding for about 4 years only to be in the red > 40% in 2019 and all these newcomers get in at a lower price than I did. Annoying as fk. But I held, continued to buy and it paid off.

This handful of months in the red for some is nothing. At least this time around there is no threat of bankruptcy. And talk about FUD from the media saying Tesla was dooooomed. Now that was certainly more stressful than this time around.

 

[SN_8]

Musk coming out swinging

https://twitter.com/x/status/1557570812617580544

https://twitter.com/x/status/1557582615103913986

Things that make you go :

Why is it that CNBC hangs on and reports Musk's every tweet, except those that directly call out the incestuous relationship between the news media and advertising? Hmmm.

 

[Usain]

Pelosi says U.S. House will pass Inflation Reduction Act on Friday

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Wednesday the House of Representatives would pass the Inflation Reduction Act on Friday.

www.reuters.com

This is a good news/bad news situation. It sounds like there will be an up or down vote in the house on Friday with no opportunity for amendments or changes. There will be no conference committee to work out differences between house and senate versions of the bill. Any changes would mean another vote in the senate, and that would be way too risky for Democrats to allow.

So we are done. Like it or not, this is the text that will pass. EV tax credit starts on page 381:

https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/22128148/inflation_reduction_act_of_2022.pdf