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

[MC3OZ]

Agreed actions speak louder than words. One more interested in the spotlight than I might take actions such as raising a shareholder proposal.

Instead, the action I have taken has been to discuss these types of concerns with other investors, and use it to make informed decisions such as whether to hold or sell shares, selling another 9,000 shares last week (selling, not short selling, lest there be any confusion). The continued conversation some of us would like to have regarding the words and actions of a major shareholder and major executive and public face of a company we are all (presumably all here at least) invested in is a reasonable conversation to have, and will help inform my next actions r.e. holding or selling additional blocks.

I'm struggling so far to identify any material certain long term effect on the success of Tesla as a company in terms of revenue and profits, from these various Twitter stumbles.

We have many examples to consider, and there will be more.

But it seems like we have the conversation every time, lots of times, I would say frequently, and IMO each time it is the same, nothing changes.

 

[ElectricIAC]

Only someone allergic to money would miss out on the TSLA stock rocket because of mean tweets.

 

[MrMoo]

Ummm, TSLA is green on the 2 year chart, like a whole lot of other stock charts. And then it seems a whole lot of stuff happened, and almost every stock but Pfizer has had a pretty painful last year. I read on TMC that there was something called a pandemic, and then there were these disruptions to some ‘supply chain’, and then the whole tech and auto sectors got hit with a shortage of computer chips, and Tesla had to invent their own chip solutions as a work-around, and then China actually made Tesla close their China Gigafactory for a spell, and then people on TMC were debating whether it took 2 or more negative quarters to define a recession, and then they talked about interest rates going up every time this Fed guy named Jerome would speak……….. And the TMC folks said all those things were bad for TSLA’s ROI and for the whole market - except maybe that pandemic thing - that was kinda good for Pfizer at least it seems. But I don’t recall ever reading anyone blaming all that on Elon before. Was it really just his stock selling and Twitter comments that resulted in the poor ROI performance as you claim during this period where almost everyone else got beat down too? Or might you be willing to think there is at least the potential that just maybe a bit more happened along the way that might have contributed…..?

You are right it is green on the 2 year chart, by quite a lot. Give it another 7 weeks and if we are around where we are now, then we'll be red on a 2 year chart. But look that's just noise, 4 weeks from now, 6 weeks from now. It's been around 2 years and we haven't really made much progress was my point.

Well if you like Pfizer, you'll like Merck stock too, and Moderna. Oil has done well, so has energy. Tech stocks have done poorly, a lot of funds have actually lost more money on stocks like Facebook and Amazon than they have if they invested in Tesla. Tesla has been rewarded with relative strength compared to companies like Meta, Netflix, Amazon even doing well compared to Microsoft, Google. You can see it in the charts. There is no argument here. My point is you are kidding yourself if you think we wouldn't be even HIGHER than we are now if Elon hadn't of sold $10 billion worth of stock to pay taxes (For funsies) and buy Twitter. The selling pressure is huge. People have mentioned doing a buyback. Elon has sold more shares than what Tesla the company will buy back. If you believe a buy back will help the stock then surely you believe selling the stock will have similar negative effect (I am aware of EPS changes when a company does a buyback) but the buying and selling pressure on the open market is still something to take into account.

A fund doesn't want to be exposed to that. They can do all the DD in the world and be wrong, so be it. However if they do all the DD and are right, only to get screwed over by an external force. It's not much of an explanation in their annual letter is it?

Anyways my main point was. His antics make people (Fund managers) stay away. So it has no noticeable effect on the stock, but if he hadn't of sold any shares (antics) and if he wasn't like the way he is on social media (Funds may invest more money) the stock would be higher.

 

[SmokyPeat]

Ummm, TSLA is green on the 2 year chart, like a whole lot of other stock charts. And then it seems a whole lot of stuff happened, and almost every stock but Pfizer has had a pretty painful last year. I read on TMC that there was something called a pandemic, and then there were these disruptions to some ‘supply chain’, and then the whole tech and auto sectors got hit with a shortage of computer chips, and it seems Tesla had to invent their own chip solutions as a work-around, and then China actually made Tesla close their China Gigafactory for a spell, and then people on TMC were debating whether it took 2 or more negative quarters to define a recession, and then they talked about interest rates going up every time this Fed guy named Jerome would speak……….. And the TMC folks said all those things were bad for TSLA’s ROI and for the whole market - except maybe that pandemic thing - that was kinda good for Pfizer at least it seems. But I don’t recall ever reading anyone blaming all that on Elon before. Was it really just his stock selling and Twitter comments that resulted in the poor ROI performance as you claim during this period where almost everyone else got beat down too? Or might you be willing to think there is at least the potential that just maybe a bit more happened along the way that might have contributed…..?

My Enphase position being up 65% this year sure takes some of the sting out of Tesla being down 42%. Not a lot of soap opera style drama with that one either. I appreciate that more and more as time goes by.

 

[lafrisbee]

Was thinking about this, and sad to say I don't know even having lived in TX for 10 years, but are there Native Reservations that Tesla could partner with for things like this? They have done something similar I believe in another state (NM?). Would save a lot of transit time, and the state of TX would be completely unable to do a damn thing about it.

a couple of YEARS back I posted about the "opportunity. and while you'd think TX would have large Indian Reservations they don't. And the few they have aren't located in positions within the state that would provide a worthwhile geographic improvement.
And from what I know of Western history, Texas, and reservations. Reservations were continuously "moved" to less and less populated (by white people) and economically valued properties.... And Texas didn't just acquire the "Don't Mess with Texas" slogan. But back then it was something along the lines of "Texans will Mess with you." Indian or Mexican.

 

[Thumper]

Elon’s appallingly unwise retweet of a wild conspiracy theory regarding the crime against Pelosis will not do the stock price any good tomorrow. It is difficult to condemn it adequatly using civil language!

 

[InTheMiddle]

I’ll be buying the dip.

Sounds great to me! How many more shares are you prepared to buy that you haven’t already bought (and if that answer is > 0 shares, why didn’t you buy those shares on Friday and hence be at 0 more you are ready to buy today (Sunday))?

 

[Electroman]

Lopez is in the category of humans that are so stupid, they can't even conceive how stupid they are. There's no hope for Lopez.

Lopez, Kolodny, Russ Mitchell - lowest of low pond scum in journalism. There is one in WaPo too. They are all not stupid. Extremely vile and despicable reporters with no ethics.

 

[AudubonB]

Can't yet say I'm looking forward to the coming week, but I sure am glad this weekend is nigh over.

 

[ElectricIAC]

Sounds great to me! How many more shares are you prepared to buy that you haven’t already bought (and if that answer is > 0 shares, why didn’t you buy those shares on Friday and hence be at 0 more you are ready to buy today (Sunday))?

Whatever I can spare.

 

[insaneoctane]

Boy, moderators in this thread are going to have their work cutout for then since the Twitter acquisition closed. Every time Elon posts on Twitter, someone here is going to assume it's going to impact the stock and must be relevant. Then we get posts and discussion on all of them. Joy. Good luck mods!

 

[spacerfc]

My point is you are kidding yourself if you think we wouldn't be even HIGHER than we are now if Elon hadn't of sold $10 billion worth of stock to pay taxes (For funsies) and buy Twitter.

It's weird that you think him paying taxes is a bad thing, isn't that what the left wanted him to do? Now that he did it they're angry for some reason? Same thing with twitter purchase, you can't have it both ways.

Ultimately Elon Musk is going to do whatever he thought is correct, he's not going to change his behavior because of what media says, nor will he change his behavior because of fund managers. Doing otherwise would simply encourage the latter to act more irrationally and there would be no end to it. It's strange that many people thought Ukraine shouldn't give a single inch to Russia, yet they want Elon to give up everything to please media and fund managers, again you can't have it both ways.

 

[Electroman]

Carlos Ghosn *was* the champion of the Leaf. I recall plainly interviews with Ghosn pushing for EV's. Even if Andy Palmer was the initial developer/ champion internally of EV's they would go nowhere without the CEO's support.

Back in 2008 Ghosn was pushing for EV's and ridiculed by the press - but nevertheless continued to push for EV's. I don't have the time to look for these earlier statements, but see his recent interview (also mentioning how Tesla with 1% of the market has more than 50% of the valuation of all ICE companies).

Also, IMHO Ghosn was indeed framed by the Japanese who correctly feared a Renault merger France was pushing for, against Ghosn's advice. Ghosn opposed the French who in reality wanted a take-over (because he knew the Japanese would never accept it), tried to prevent this with a compromise, which the French government (Macron) overthrew with new laws giving the Japanese faction no other choice than to stop the upcoming merger by arresting Ghosn. Even though it was risking huge losses for Nissan (turned out in fact to be true). See also Ravinder Passi's treatment, he knew too much as head of Nissan's global legal affairs.

Edit: grammar, details

That was an excellent interview. Thanks for sharing. Goshn has the passion and the heart in the right place, but could not simply execute in a legacy Japanese environment.

 

[MrMoo]

It's weird that you think him paying taxes is a bad thing, isn't that what the left wanted him to do? Now that he did it they're angry for some reason? Same thing with twitter purchase, you can't have it both ways.

Ultimately Elon Musk is going to do whatever he thought is correct, he's not going to change his behavior because of what media says, nor will he change his behavior because of fund managers. Doing otherwise would simply encourage the latter to act more irrationally and there would be no end to it. It's strange that many people thought Ukraine shouldn't give a single inch to Russia, yet they want Elon to give up everything to please media and fund managers, again you can't have it both ways.

No you are missing my point. My previous posts were not here to say what his doing is bad or good. My previous posts were in response to someone else saying that Elons antics don't do anything to the stock. The company trades based on fundamentals and I was saying that is not true the share price is where it is at today partly due to his antics.

I mean you just proved my point. He is going to do whatever he thinks is correct and certain big money out there doesn't like what he thinks. They have money to put into a growth allocation in their portfolio and instead of putting $1 billion into Tesla they will put it into Amazon for example. Then you have people on here questioning why Amazons P/E ratio is higher than Teslas when we are growing way faster than Amazon. Well now you have a partial reason.

 

[Webeevdrivers]

Elon’s appallingly unwise retweet of a wild conspiracy theory regarding the crime against Pelosis will not do the stock price any good tomorrow. It is difficult to condemn it adequatly using civil language!

It’s the torpedo of the week. At some point the board has to act and show this freak show the door.

 

[InTheMiddle]

Ultimately Elon Musk is going to do whatever he thought is correct, he's not going to change his behavior because of what media says, nor will he change his behavior because of fund managers. Doing otherwise would simply encourage the latter to act more irrationally and there would be no end to it.

I expect that all humans do change their behavior based on the what the media says. Bear in mind:
1. Change is only occasionally instantaneous; typically change is more gradual- or, at least, the change appears to be more gradual because at times the extent of the change is only obvious in hindsight.
2. What impact “media” has on us can be because we agree with it, or disagree with it. Either can cause a change in how we think / act.
3. Media is not a single uniform entity. What media we choose to expose ourselves to (including to read TMC) says more about ourselves than it says about the media that exists. We now have another example of what types of media certain people are choosing to peruse / post.
4. That other, incredibly-relevant-to-TSLA-investing company is itself a media…

 

[spacerfc]

No you are missing my point. My previous posts were not here to say what his doing is bad or good. My previous posts were in response to someone else saying that Elons antics don't do anything to the stock. The company trades based on fundamentals and I was saying that is not true the share price is where it is at today partly due to his antics.

I mean you just proved my point. He is going to do whatever he thinks is correct and certain big money out there doesn't like what he thinks. They have money to put into a growth allocation in their portfolio and instead of putting $1 billion into Tesla they will put it into Amazon for example. Then you have people on here questioning why Amazons P/E ratio is higher than Teslas when we are growing way faster than Amazon. Well now you have a partial reason.

Or big money has it in for Tesla and they're just using Elon as an excuse? You do realize Bezos is selling tens of billions of Amazon stock to fund his philanthropy and Blue Origin (which hasn't reached orbit after 20 years). Bezos' sales of Amazon stock is very much comparable to Elon's sales of Tesla stock, yet as you say Amazon didn't get hit as hard as Tesla. This disproves your hypothesis that Elon's "antics" is the cause.

 

[MrMoo]

Or big money has it in for Tesla and they're just using Elon as an excuse? You do realize Bezos is selling tens of billions of Amazon stock to fund his philanthropy and Blue Origin (which hasn't reached orbit after 20 years). Bezos' sales of Amazon stock is very much comparable to Elon's sales of Tesla stock, yet as you say Amazon didn't get hit as hard as Tesla. This disproves your hypothesis that Elon's "antics" is the cause.

What do you mean big money has it in for Tesla? Money is money, they don't care where they make it. What do you mean using Elon as an excuse? Do you mean Berkshire does an annual share holder letter and says also on Tesla, we don't invest in that because of Elon.

I'm not quite following where you are going with this.

 

[WolfHero]

Jeep joint venture in China files for bankruptcy.
"Sales for the venture, which sold the Jeep Cherokee SUV and the Compass crossover, have been in sharp decline for the past four years. Sales fell by 50% in 2021 from the previous year to 20,396 vehicles. For 2022, it sold less than 2,000 vehicles. In May, it reported selling only a single vehicle."

Chee-Kiang Lim, managing director China at Detroit-based consultancy Urban Science: "
The joint-venture policy was originally designed to compel foreign brands to share their brands and technology with local Chinese (automakers) in exchange for access to China's large, growing auto market," he said. Now that Chinese automakers are more "confident that they have closed the gaps with or even surpassed their foreign partners," he said, "we have to expect more JVs to unwind in the coming years."

Stellantis says Jeep joint venture in China to file for bankruptcy

 

[ElectricIAC]

Jeep joint venture in China files for bankruptcy.
"Sales for the venture, which sold the Jeep Cherokee SUV and the Compass crossover, have been in sharp decline for the past four years. Sales fell by 50% in 2021 from the previous year to 20,396 vehicles. For 2022, it sold less than 2,000 vehicles. In May, it reported selling only a single vehicle."

Chee-Kiang Lim, managing director China at Detroit-based consultancy Urban Science: "
The joint-venture policy was originally designed to compel foreign brands to share their brands and technology with local Chinese (automakers) in exchange for access to China's large, growing auto market," he said. Now that Chinese automakers are more "confident that they have closed the gaps with or even surpassed their foreign partners," he said, "we have to expect more JVs to unwind in the coming years."

Stellantis says Jeep joint venture in China to file for bankruptcy

Makes you wonder when CCP plans to boot Tesla and appropriate the technologies and innovation for their copycat products.