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

[ARON44]

This is what FUD consists of.

The correct attitude is that you don't need to outrun the bear. It is more than enough that you outrun at least some of the others.
Same with China ... Tesla China is not Tesla and Tesla is not Tesla China. Tesla China is and will be doing better than anyone else in China, no matter what exactly happens there.
And Tesla non-China will be doing better than anyone else not in China, no matter what happens there.

Why?
Because Tesla got, gets and will continue to get most of top talent.
Less clever never wins over more clever on intelligence tasks. And everything in this world is intelligence task.
In Tesla's past talent was not enough, they also needed mountains of money to get started. Now they have both. And also the third, killing feature: they are prepared to eat themselves. Tesla will stop selling cars the same day that starts to make sense.

Look I know China is not Tesla, but China collapsing wouldn’t be ideal lol, but this dude is talking about a world wide population collapse, I’ve never really thought of this problem? I thought populations were growing?

 

[LST]

Look I know China is not Tesla, but China collapsing wouldn’t be ideal lol, but this dude is talking about a world wide population collapse, I’ve never really thought of this problem? I thought populations were growing?

Google it. Elon is on the record of saying just that, poulation collapse is the biggest risk of the world as we know it. There is a cure: make babies, or robots…

 

[unk45]

In my experience, common ground could always be found if one were willing to abandon or ignore enough important principles. But I don't believe the act of "finding common ground" is more important than the most important and fundamental principles at issue here and neither did the founding fathers of the country that drew Musk to its shores to change the world, because of the great opportunity and freedom found here. Freedoms that should not be denied an individual merely because he has taken on difficult jobs. That said, I'm sure there will always be people who are convinced they have been done wrong by the man doing more good for the world than 100 of them put together. I know I can't change all of their minds, it would be delusional to think I could.

The reason I'm not willing to abandon important principles, is because the natural progression of this kind of thinking is to suggest there is someone more suited to being CEO than Musk. That's where this kind of thinking leads. And there is no doubt in my mind that there are people out there who want Tesla to fail and who have already suggested he should no longer lead the company. The day is coming when they will fight for Musk to be replaced by a different CEO, a CEO who is more conventional, who keeps his political views to himself, who only sells shares in dark pools, who never says what he really believes, who tries to pump the share price as high as possible, who will shut down FSD and Optimus development as unattainable and who never stirs the pot.

In short, a CEO who could not hope to succeed at changing the world. That's where this kind of thinking leads because you are not going to change who Musk is and how he operates. I think that's a good thing. All I can do is invite the people who think they have been done wrong by Musk to see things from a more open-minded and less self-centered point of view. And I will agree to disagree with those who continue to think Musk owes them more of himself than he has already given. That he has robbed them somehow. Because there is no more trustworthy or capable person for this particular job that can continue to lead the company more quickly or more efficiently towards its mission. None. They don't exist. That's not worship, that's just looking at his track record and the path the company is on.

Be careful what you wish for.

This is excellent reasoning. Some will virulently oppose this thinking. Fundamentally the world changes positively only when an exceptional person achieves seemingly impossible things.
From Galileo to Einstein scientific advance has been disputed by authorities. Should they have negotiated and compromised? Elon Musk has not dealt in basic theoretical advance. He has, like Santos Dumont, the Wright brothers and Henry Ford, applied known science to achieve ‘unachievable things’. Should they have negotiated or compromised?

From all the technological achievements of Elon Must, can anyone honestly say or think of someone who could do as well? Those who imagine he is easily replaced are, in sum, plotting to ‘kill the goose laying golden eggs’. So the ‘goose’ is loud, strident at times, ‘defecates‘ at will. Does one kill the ‘goose’ because of side effects?

 

[Maarten]

'Crack' TSLA investors when the stock price temporarily doen't live up to expectations:

 

[nativewolf]

Population demographics are widely discussed and known. Japan is a good example of what aging means .... no collapse and yet with challenges. Tesla could put a huge nail in the Japanese bubble but that is because Japan inc had their head in the sands on oil hydrogen and fuel cells.

China is a different animal but same path, it was predicted decades ago the China would age out before it could finish developing. No one really knows what that will mean.

 

[ShareLofty]

This is excellent reasoning. Some will virulently oppose this thinking. Fundamentally the world changes positively only when an exceptional person achieves seemingly impossible things.
From Galileo to Einstein scientific advance has been disputed by authorities. Should they have negotiated and compromised? Elon Musk has not dealt in basic theoretical advance. He has, like Santos Dumont, the Wright brothers and Henry Ford, applied known science to achieve ‘unachievable things’. Should they have negotiated or compromised?

From all the technological achievements of Elon Must, can anyone honestly say or think of someone who could do as well? Those who imagine he is easily replaced are, in sum, plotting to ‘kill the goose laying golden eggs’. So the ‘goose’ is loud, strident at times, ‘defecates‘ at will. Does one kill the ‘goose’ because of side effects?

No one is saying kill the goose. He just needs to give up the CEO role of Twitter and Tesla. He can focus on being Chief Product Officer

 

[UkNorthampton]

Regarding demographics & effect on Tesla demand:-

1. Those populations with a greater proportion of older people probably have a slower initial Robotaxi/FSD/EV adoption due to conservative views (dependent on a person, but population-wide I think this is true).
2. Past a certain point, Robotaxi/FSD/EV adoption will catch up in those markets affected by (1) due to hassles of owning cars, especially ICE (certainly in Europe)
3. Biggest effects will be on economies/country budgets. I've heard figures like the following:- for every increase of 5 years in average age of a population, health care needs/costs double. Similar for social support I would suppose. So ten years leads to four times the need/spending. I can't provide sources, from memory.
4. We need robots - Tesla Suboptimus Prime. We have more chips than people now. Eventually we'll have more robots than people.
5. Tesla is well placed for any disruption. Others aren't. Markets will expand, incumbents will fail. Elon the Disruptor.

 

[Maarten]

No one is saying kill the goose. He just needs to give up the CEO role of Twitter and Tesla. He can focus on being Chief Product Officer

Can we please stop this endless discussion?

 

[UkNorthampton]

No one is saying kill the goose. He just needs to give up the CEO role of Twitter and Tesla. He can focus on being Chief Product Officer

I'm not normally someone who idolises or is a fan of anyone. I like studying people (past & present) and there's always bits to pick & choose from.

Elon though is extraordinary. We need to get the most from his most productive years. Adding layers will just slow decision-making. Last word from me on the subject (this week).

 

[JRP3]

Blaming Elon for exercising his human rights to expression and his legal rights to buy and sell as desired, after all he has done for shareholders and humanity alike, made me feel ashamed and disgusted to be associated with them.

Freedoms that should not be denied an individual merely because he has taken on difficult jobs.

Being a CEO and a public figure comes with different responsibilities than the average person. If you don't want your "freedoms" limited don't take on those roles, simple as that. I'm neither ashamed nor disgusted by those who fail to recognize that simple fact because I don't expect anything else from those individuals. The inability to criticize anything Elon has ever done has been well documented here over the years.

 

[JRP3]

Google it. Elon is on the record of saying just that, poulation collapse is the biggest risk of the world as we know it. There is a cure: make babies, or robots…

Elon is quite wrong, population is still growing and will continue to do so for quite a while but obviously cannot continue unchecked. A stable population level must be reached eventually, and it will be, one way or another.

 

[unk45]

Google it. Elon is on the record of saying just that, poulation collapse is the biggest risk of the world as we know it. There is a cure: make babies, or robots…

Elon is being succinct. His conclusions are based on basic demography. There is copious data, OT here.
This journal, US-centric to be sure, but an excellent start, begins to guide:

https://read.dukeupress.edu/demography

At the core.
- globally, the people born immediately after WWII rose to power and influence rapidly because their parent’s generation was decimated and/or inhibited by that war.
-That generation, the boomers, had easy access, easy lives and thought they were enlightened. They took early control and still hold the reins, managing those badly now. That generation, mine, causes still almost irreparable harm.
- the next generation, much smaller, never has had great opportunity nor easy, cheap education. As a result, these are now notable for an unusual set of things, producing Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, and countless political extremists, nominally led by elderly people like Trump and Putin and Bolsonaro, but their power bases are those Generation X.
- Generation X discontent has led to reduced fertility, reduction of political stability and massive discontent.

All those demographic factors link with near global increased life expectancy that has near global catastrophic consequences for everything from health care, education and retirement funding to retail sales and labor force reductions.

So major countries like the US have negative population growth when excluding immigration. From China to nearly every European country populations are rapidly aging and are well below replacement level. Meanwhile Generation X fights immigration because they never have had what their parents led them to expect.

That is why Elon is so correctly anxious to build a new generation that can help restore humanity and instill a perpetuating planet.
Besides, the replacement rate of buyers for everything sustainable is shrinking even while the technologies are maturing.

That is precisely why the rate of attraction to Tesla, for example is highest among very, very young people. Tesla, because of Elon, is building for the future.

 

[InTheMiddle]

On the contrary, to be expressly clear, one need not abandon their core principles for the sake of finding common ground with others. Both common ground and strongly-held personal differences already exist; it is merely where one chooses to spend their time focusing. The point is simply that certain topics become sufficiently divisive to achieve a level where perhaps they should no longer be part of the discussion here. Unfortunately, human psychology tells us that the more divisive a topic is, the greater level of back-and-forth it will engender online, until it devolves past either party being able to truly understand the other side. These topics are not be some fixed list, because frankly it's likely more to do with the way the topics are discussed (in absolutist terms) than the topics themselves, and will likely vary from time to time...but as with other things, I believe each of us "knows it when we see it".

Frankly, I do not know where the correct venue for such discussions would be, although I suspect that it would involve being in-person, surrounded by far more neutral people than firmly-opinionated people to help keep it 'friendly', and potentially involve consumption of adult beverages. As someone noteworthy recently mentioned, major online media entities lead to people feeling emotions which I'll generally bucket as "not good emotions". Let's keep TMC as positive as we can for as long as we can.

In my experience, common ground could always be found if one were willing to abandon or ignore enough important principles. But I don't believe the act of "finding common ground" is more important than the most important and fundamental principles at issue here and neither did the founding fathers of the country that drew Musk to its shores to change the world, because of the great opportunity and freedom found here. Freedoms that should not be denied an individual merely because he has taken on difficult jobs. That said, I'm sure there will always be people who are convinced they have been done wrong by the man doing more good for the world than 100 of them put together. I know I can't change all of their minds, it would be delusional to think I could.

The reason I'm not willing to abandon important principles, is because the natural progression of this kind of thinking is to suggest there is someone more suited to being CEO than Musk. That's where this kind of thinking leads. And there is no doubt in my mind that there are people out there who want Tesla to fail and who have already suggested he should no longer lead the company. The day is coming when they will fight for Musk to be replaced by a different CEO, a CEO who is more conventional, who keeps his political views to himself, who only sells shares in dark pools, who never says what he really believes, who tries to pump the share price as high as possible, who will shut down FSD and Optimus development as unattainable and who never stirs the pot.

In short, a CEO who could not hope to succeed at changing the world. That's where this kind of thinking leads because you are not going to change who Musk is and how he operates. I think that's a good thing. All I can do is invite the people who think they have been done wrong by Musk to see things from a more open-minded and less self-centered point of view. And I will agree to disagree with those who continue to think Musk owes them more of himself than he has already given. That he has robbed them somehow. Because there is no more trustworthy or capable person for this particular job that can continue to lead the company more quickly or more efficiently towards its mission. None. They don't exist. That's not worship, that's just looking at his track record and the path the company is on.

Be careful what you wish for.

 

[CorneliusXX]

Being a CEO and a public figure comes with different responsibilities than the average person. If you don't want your "freedoms" limited don't take on those roles, simple as that. I'm neither ashamed nor disgusted by those who fail to recognize that simple fact because I don't expect anything else from those individuals. The inability to criticize anything Elon has ever done has been well documented here over the years.

The problem as I see it is that the CEO criticisms tend to be for specific events and not the aggregate performance - a lot of the commentary is rating every swing of the bat (or maybe even a bad season) and if there are a few clangers in quick succession he's called a terrible batsman and we need fresh blood in the team - but looking at career stats he's up there with the absolute greats. I give him a lot of latitude for swings I don't agree with precisely because he's achieved things I will never achieve and couldn't hope to.

I'm reading The Founders book about the founders of PayPal at the moment and there's a lot of poor swings by Elon in the X.com era mentioned, yet he adapted and created a giant company (along with other brilliant founders). Even with poor swings he's hit more 6's that nearly anyone else, and tends to do so at the times they are really needed.

Some examples:

• First 100% owned China plant - Who besides Elon could have had the will and skill to have navigated that political environment
• Getting Panasonic to make a big leap into cells at GigaNevada
• Making the world believe EVs are a real option
• The decision to go for Gigacasting - which is acknowledged to be Elon's
• Not being scared to drop vehicle prices by $10k and put the hurt on the competition while driving the mission forward - most other CEOs would probably cut volume to protect margins

So when people want another CEO, who else can we choose that we can rely on to step up to the wicket when the game is on the line and knock it over the fence. Ross Gerber?

Apologies for the cricket analogy.

 

[Cosmacelf]

Tesla might be in big trouble in little China if this guy is right? China is totally collapsing this decade apparently? Is this guy credible? never heard of him till recently, I’ve listened to a few podcasts now and I’m ready to throw myself off a bridge lol, basically the good times are over and globalisation is finished? He seems to know what he’s talking about but is it a bit hyperbole? Im not sure but I hope he’s wrong?

Zeihan likes to throw rhetorical bombs and be a contrarian. He is right on a lot of things that are happening (like the demographic collapse of China), but guessing what happens because of that, he doesn’t have a better crystal ball.

What his analysis often misses is that the world adapts to changing conditions. A few months after the Russian war started, he was peddling a PowerPoint slide which showed that Russia and Ukraine were the worlds number one supplier of things like pig iron (needed for steel making) and potash (needed for fertilizer) and neon (needed for semiconductors). Around now and into the summer we were going to be beset by critical shortages of these. I don’t think this is happening and it is because supply chains do adapt.

One of his recent videos bashed the heck out of EVs and Tesla in particular. It was awful. He used every anti-EV trope going. Based on that alone and Gell-Mann Amnesia theory, you should probably treat his future predictions with a huge grain of salt.

 

[Cosmacelf]

Google it. Elon is on the record of saying just that, poulation collapse is the biggest risk of the world as we know it. There is a cure: make babies, or robots…

Yeah, it will indeed be a very different world in 100 years. one possible future is indeed a depopulated world, basically empty cities, and robots outnumbering a dwindling human population. The only thing I know for sure is that I won’t be around to see it!

 

[SOULPEDL]

Yeah, it will indeed be a very different world in 100 years. one possible future is indeed a depopulated world, basically empty cities, and robots outnumbering a dwindling human population. The only thing I know for sure is that I won’t be around to see it!

Housing, inflation, and the dual working parents destroyed the family team IMO. But what if the core problems there went away? What if by having a robot, raising a child is a piece of cake? No more diapers, no daycare hassles, no expenses, no fear of kidnappings, your kid gets all the facts straight from day one, and best food ever!

By that point, there should be a yearning for human connection among the Robot kids. So much that the pendulum swings yet a gain to find that whole civilizations are being recreated on new terms. The come-back generation - maybe some are here already.

 

[Sunlight]

Just a thought and/or question for the weekend......

Why do Xpeng and Nio track Tesla share price-wise? Chinese; EV only start-ups and NO Elon? Indeed Xpeng is down more than Tesla over 6 months (No Twitter drama here!); Nio similar to Tesla.

They seem to move in some loose form of unison under different circumstances.

Could it be that the markets/interests are working against all 'only-EV' companies as the biggest threats to the status-quo? I leave out Rivian, Lucid and others as young and small and immature

I have no idea - just speculating!

 

[Sunlight]

Just a thought and/or question for the weekend......

Why do Xpeng and Nio track Tesla share price-wise? Chinese; EV only start-ups and NO Elon? Indeed Xpeng is down more than Tesla over 6 months (No Twitter drama here!); Nio similar to Tesla.

They seem to move in some loose form of unison under different circumstances.

Could it be that the markets/interests are working against all 'only-EV' companies as the biggest threats to the status-quo? I leave out Rivian, Lucid and others as young and small and immature

I have no idea - just speculating!

Just checked and Rivian and Lucid basically in the same boat.

 

[2daMoon]

...
They seem to move in some loose form of unison under different circumstances.

Could it be that the markets/interests are working against all 'only-EV' companies as the biggest threats to the status-quo? I leave out Rivian, Lucid and others as young and small and immature

I have no idea - just speculating!

I speculate that having any "form of unison" become loose may be a losing proposition.