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

[SO16]

it doesn't matter what you or I think of the 'false narrative' it is what the overall market thinks... and the market clearly didn't believe there was an EV market. They were proven very wrong.

You're spreading a false narrative on the only OEM not to go bankrupt... only US OEMs to not go bankrupt are Tesla and Ford. That is a key difference. Toyota, Honda, BMW, and plenty others have avoided that fate.

True but they certainly had help.

Ford, BMW, Toyota Took Secret Government Money

In the depths of the financial collapse, the U.S. Federal Reserve pumped $3.3 trillion into keeping credit moving through the economy. It eventually lent $57.9 billion to the auto industry — including $26.8 billion to Ford, Toyota and BMW.

jalopnik.com

 

[henchman24]

Ford, BMW, Toyota Took Secret Government Money

In the depths of the financial collapse, the U.S. Federal Reserve pumped $3.3 trillion into keeping credit moving through the economy. It eventually lent $57.9 billion to the auto industry — including $26.8 billion to Ford, Toyota and BMW.

jalopnik.com

That's not bankruptcy though... all automakers have been willing to take gov't money, including Tesla.

 

[Ogre]

I do love a boring day like today.

It's not a huge day... just watching the SP slowly climbing up.

I guess it's too subtle to stave off the bickering.

 

[StealthP3D]

I think for Tesla to eliminate the need for supervision, it really needs to be able to detect a driveable path. Any extreme deformation of the road surface, any foreign object in the road which is dangerous to hit, should render the path undriveable.

Some objects are relatively safe to hit, but obviously the car can’t know that unless it recognizes the object, or has some other method of determining it is safe to hit. So unless the object in the road is known to be safe to hit, then the car should never hit it.

Possibly Tesla can identify so many objects, that the chance of running across an unidentified object is vanishingly small, but I would think this unlikely.

If I’m right, then the question becomes why can’t Tesla ALREADY not strike objects in the road? What’s needed to get there?

I believe FSD is currently tuned knowing that it is an advanced driver assistance feature. I wouldn't draw too many conclusions from the fact that it doesn't swerve around every object it sees. I wouldn't put it past Tesla to purposefully not make it as good as it can possibly be to help solve the biggest danger of releasing a nearly perfect system to the public. Namely, you cannot stop people from becoming over-confident of the systems abilities. The danger is that people will start treating it as if it doesn't need oversight before it's ready. Tesla can mitigate this problem by not solving some easy, but common, problems until it's really ready to go live.

That might sound like an apologist's point of view but it fits with how I would expect Tesla to mitigate such a big threat to the way they use Tesla owners to test and train FSD. I honestly think Tesla is protecting their right to continue to use the public to teach the system. It would not take too many goofballs assuming the system has reached a safe level of autonomy to ruin everything. Current FSD versions still require human oversight and, if you use the system for any length of time, that is pretty apparent. That is a very good thing.

This makes me wonder how Tesla will handle this problem when FSD is finally good enough to drive without oversight, but it is only legal to do so in some jurisdictions. Because people in jurisdictions where FSD is not legal to use without oversight will assume that's just a technicality and use it anyway. My best guess is Tesla will step up the nagging and make it completely unbearable to use it without oversight in those jurisdictions that oversight is still legally required.

 

[henchman24]

I do love a boring day like today.

It's not a huge day... just watching the SP slowly climbing up.

I guess it's too subtle to stave off the bickering.

I mean a 7x beta is underperformance.

 

[Pezpunk]

Yes, yes, I agree with you, @elasalle, to each their own.

I never said options trading was a sin (nice putting moralistic words in my mouth), nor for those who choose that level of risk to stop. I merely asked people to stop promoting options trading as "safe", a no-brainer, and what every smart investor should be doing. It is by definition adding risk / reward to stock investing:

"It is misleading of all those who try and promote options trading as 'you can be really safe' and predictable. Stop doing this!"

For every one who made money on an options trade, we have evidence of others who lost big time. Was it @Pezpunk who said that they were now almost in the black since starting to invest trade options in ~2015 since when TSLA has done a 10-bagger? (a reply to a post of mine about 6-8 months ago. Sorry if I can't recall who posted that.) By contrast, NO HODL-er is in the red since 2015. Zero. 100% of them made money if they held til today.

Nope, wasn’t me. I have never done any option trading whatsoever. 100% buy and hold (with very occasional selling when I needed the money or wanted to slightly diversify). Worked out spectacularly, with far less effort and stress than trying to time the market all the time.

 

[Mengy]

I do love a boring day like today.

It's not a huge day... just watching the SP slowly climbing up.

Seems to be stuck at $930 right now. Wonder if we'll break above that yet today?

 

[TheTalkingMule]

To keep things in perspective.... we're now almost exactly halfway between the 52 week high and low.

$620.57 - $1,243.49

Loooooong ways to run.

 

[Mengy]

Seems to be stuck at $930 right now. Wonder if we'll break above that yet today?

Yep that took about two minutes to happen, $932 achieved!

 

[thesmokingman]

Yep that took about two minutes to happen, $932 achieved!

The runway has been cleared for takeoff!

 

[Ogre]

To keep things in perspective.... we're now almost exactly halfway between the 52 week high and low.

$620.57 - $1,243.49

Loooooong ways to run.

Two half steps forward, one step back.

Just be happy its a half step forward

 

[StealthP3D]

No one is promoting anything.
Blame the carpenter, don't blame the tool.

If you are interested in other ways to trade, learn more, risk/rewards, trade along with invest etc etc give options a try, learn the fundamentals.
Don't get caught up n get rich quick schemes, options ain't that. If it's not for you, so be it.

BUT, don't hold the HODL bible and say everything else is a sin cheers!!

I haven't seen anyone say every trade except for buy/hold is a sin!

But I have seen people promoting options trading here. Not that there's anything wrong with that (other than it belongs in a different thread) but I'll tend to speak up if I think it's presented in a misleading manner to those with less options knowledge. It's hard for me to overlook the fact that some people promoting options trading have only been doing it themselves for 3 or 5 years (or even less)!

 

[lafrisbee]

We now will have our imagery be changed....
It used to be "picking up pennies in front of a steam roller."

I give you...
4-year old O'dowd picking up pennies in front of a Tesla

 

[Mengy]

I haven't seen anyone say every trade except for buy/hold is a sin!

But I have seen people promoting options trading here. Not that there's anything wrong with that (other than it belongs in a different thread) but I'll tend to speak up if I think it's presented in a misleading manner to those with less options knowledge. It's hard for me to overlook the fact that some people promoting options trading have only been doing it themselves for 3 or 5 years (or even less)!

I like doing covered calls on stocks as long as the stock price is at a value I'd be happy selling the stock for anyway. I've done many CC's on various stocks over the years, often I'd get the premium while still keeping my shares, and that's a super win.

I have NOT done any CC's on TSLA yet because I don't plan to sell any TSLA for a great many years yet. But, someday, when the share price is far higher than it is now, I could see myself doing some CC's on TSLA.

Probably sometime after 2025, and only with my "fun" account. I have a few accounts where I will be holding TSLA until well into the 2030's.

 

[unk45]

I think we knew, but MegaPack XL factory at Lathrop, CATL LFP at Shanghai and US.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1558574992702353408

Unless the politics change again quickly, CATL will not build that US factory. With more US politicians loudly visiting Taiwan, we should not really think that will happen...any time soon. OTOH, they could build in Mexico or Canada, could they not?

 

[vikings123]

Yes, yes, I agree with you, @elasalle, to each their own.

I never said options trading was a sin (nice putting moralistic words in my mouth), nor for those who choose that level of risk to stop. I merely asked people to stop promoting options trading as "safe", a no-brainer, and what every smart investor should be doing. It is by definition adding risk / reward to stock investing:

"It is misleading of all those who try and promote options trading as 'you can be really safe' and predictable. Stop doing this!"

For every one who made money on an options trade, we have evidence of others who lost big time. Was it ___ (edit: it wasn't Pezpunk - sorry for calling you out!) who said that they were now almost in the black since starting to invest trade options in ~2015 since when TSLA has done a 10-bagger? (a reply to a post of mine about 6-8 months ago. Sorry if I can't recall who posted that.) By contrast, NO HODL-er is in the red since 2015. Zero. 100% of them made money if they held til today.

I haven't seen anyone say every trade except for buy/hold is a sin!

But I have seen people promoting options trading here. Not that there's anything wrong with that (other than it belongs in a different thread) but I'll tend to speak up if I think it's presented in a misleading manner to those with less options knowledge. It's hard for me to overlook the fact that some people promoting options trading have only been doing it themselves for 3 or 5 years (or even less)!

See below for the third post in the thread that's in question. I hear what you guys are saying about risks/promotion. We encourage everybody to read the first page of that thread before they do anything. I don't think anybody is saying this is easy money.

Risks I can think of (not intended to be exhaustive):

There are risks with all option strategies. The first and biggest risk is that selling options has effectively unlimited risk. That's mitigated by having the cash already in place to buy the shares when a put is assigned, or the shares on hand to sell when a call is assigned.

As a bonus, by having the options you sell fully covered / funded, you'll be able to trade these at very low levels of options authorizations. I've done both of these trades in my Roth IRA, so this may be compatible with your retirement accounts.


That leads to the smaller and still important risks.
On the call side, you could sell a call and watch the stock rocket past your strike. Example - you sell an 800 strike call and watch the shares rocket up to $1000 (or $2000). You just missed out on all that upside beyond your $800 strike (ouch).

On the put side, you sell a $500 put, and watch the shares drop to $250. Yeah, you got what you thought was going to be a good deal at $500, but you missed out on buying shares somewhere between $250 and $500.

For the first of these, I've got that covered by owning as many long term buy and hold shares as I really want. If the shares do take off and go to the moon, then I've got my shares that will take advantage of that. I also only sell calls at strikes I would be genuinely happy to sell at.

For the second, I only sell puts at strikes that I'd genuinely like to own the stock at. The premium is a distant secondary concern.

Another important risk in either direction, is that you buy shares (puts are assigned) and then you can't get at least the strike on the Covered Calls you start selling to turn those shares back into cash. That means you'll lose the difference in those strike prices when your Covered Call exercises. And of course, the reverse in the other direction (you sell your shares through the Covered Call, and then you can't buy replacement shares through a Put sale to get back into shares).


Another pair of risks I can think of - using margin to back your put sales, or margin to own the shares for your call sales. I don't use margin. If you do use margin, good luck, and maybe let us know how you're doing that and the guard rails you're using to protect yourself.

 

[damonbrodie]

I believe FSD is currently tuned knowing that it is an advanced driver assistance feature. I wouldn't draw too many conclusions from the fact that it doesn't swerve around every object it sees. I wouldn't put it past Tesla to purposefully not make it as good as it can possibly be to help solve the biggest danger of releasing a nearly perfect system to the public. Namely, you cannot stop people from becoming over-confident of the systems abilities. The danger is that people will start treating it as if it doesn't need oversight before it's ready. Tesla can mitigate this problem by not solving some easy, but common, problems until it's really ready to go live.

That might sound like an apologist's point of view but it fits with how I would expect Tesla to mitigate such a big threat to the way they use Tesla owners to test and train FSD. I honestly think Tesla is protecting their right to continue to use the public to teach the system. It would not take too many goofballs assuming the system has reached a safe level of autonomy to ruin everything. Current FSD versions still require human oversight and, if you use the system for any length of time, that is pretty apparent. That is a very good thing.

This makes me wonder how Tesla will handle this problem when FSD is finally good enough to drive without oversight, but it is only legal to do so in some jurisdictions. Because people in jurisdictions where FSD is not legal to use without oversight will assume that's just a technicality and use it anyway. My best guess is Tesla will step up the nagging and make it completely unbearable to use it without oversight in those jurisdictions that oversight is still legally required.

I thought Tesla would have more "goofballs" with the release to 100K users to be honest. I think they are taking a very measured approach to how many people will be exposed to FSD relative to the improvements they are making. I'm not sure they are gaming the progress like you suggest, but the effect is there: FSD has been very successful with no serious screwups so far. The FSD progress has stayed ahead of the idiocy that can be caused by an ever larger population of users.

 

[elasalle]

I haven't seen anyone say every trade except for buy/hold is a sin!

But I have seen people promoting options trading here. Not that there's anything wrong with that (other than it belongs in a different thread) but I'll tend to speak up if I think it's presented in a misleading manner to those with less options knowledge. It's hard for me to overlook the fact that some people promoting options trading have only been doing it themselves for 3 or 5 years (or even less)!

Sharing information/knowledge should not be perceived as promoting.
We know MM call us bloody retail investors (who can't read financial stmt) .... the 3-4 years(or even less ... seems to be along the same lines. Multiple years of trading means squat, ( yes a hare can outrun a tortoise. There isn't just one secret formula, or process)

Don't trade options if it is not for you. Before you jump into the deep side of the pool, learn to swim on the shallow side.

Had I listened to folks here saying don't sell CC., don't trade options, I would have had less shares. (I am that proof in the pudding)
cheers!! (final reply or let's go to DM and not overload this thread)

 

[MartinAustin]

I thought Tesla would have more "goofballs" with the release to 100K users to be honest. I think they are taking a very measured approach to how many people will be exposed to FSD relative to the improvements they are making. I'm not sure they are gaming the progress like you suggest, but the effect is there: FSD has been very successful with no serious screwups so far. The FSD progress has stayed ahead of the idiocy that can be caused by an ever larger population of users.

...and meanwhile, many, many people die every day at the hands of human drivers.

 

[M|S|M MYP]

Great.....