ElectricIAC
Good-Natured Rascal
Seems like we all have Care Bears in our midst.
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Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable
- Thread starter AudubonB
- Start date
Thank you AD. I was a shareholder of OSTK in circa, 2003-2006, and followed the travails of Patrick Byrne. Being a broker at the time, I became very familiar with OSTK's tangle with the naked shorts. Not many people in my life, Wall Street or other, understood what I was describing (naked short-selling) and saw me as a tinfoil hat, just as almost everyone on Wall Street did with PB. I became so aware of the NSS issue that I retired from the industry in 2008, sooner than I would have liked to. I could not see putting retail investors' money into that type of market. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't think of this problem. I see it as the greatest financial crime against free-market, investing humanity. As I have opined, several times on this board, TSLA is a target of this crime. Elon needs to, with his team of lawyers, confront the SEC on this issue or, as I have suggested, spin off part of TSLA into a new company, the result of which would put pressure on the short sellers (fake or legit) to cover. Somehow this crime has to be stopped.Musk-see TV: (the story of how one CEO beat the hedge funds, saved his company, and lived to tell about it)
Billion $$$ Fight Against Naked Short Selling | hosted by Roger James Hamilton (11 hrs ago)
Jeers to the shortzes!
P.S. There's some advice on how Tesla could deal with short sellers in the first 5 minutes of the video.
BONUS Reading:
So I ventured onto the Rivian investor discussion forums on another website, and guess what I found? The same moaning and bitching about Elon as you see here!
It did on the way down!We need 23 in a row to get back to ATH, so should be at a new ATH well before the end of February. That is how this works, right?
2daMoon
Mostly Harmless
I have come to fully accept how the "experts" on Wall Street have built their system by design to enrich the insiders. Doing so by slowly but surely migrating the wealth of a nation into their pockets using rules that govern the behind-the-scenes operations they are privy to.
Particularly, they appear to prey upon those in a position to be least likely to understand and most likely to volunteer their retirement, life savings, nest egg, etc. into the traps laid out for them. I know, as I have been one of them. (now out of margin for life, thankful I only dipped a toe into that rancid pond)
Reform seems unlikely as the ranks of the regulating agencies have been populated with their compatriots and supporters of the Big Con that has been running for decades. A Rothchild of some flavor was quoted as once saying something like, "Give me control of a nation's money supply and I care not who makes the laws" and I believe an easy corollary can be derived and applied to having control of the inner workings of a stock market.
Yet, TSLA has, multiple times in the past, created momentum enough to overcome these players' clever manipulative attempts. Considering Tesla's current point on the exponential upswing into the S-Curve that will track this transition, it seems highly likely that there will be more upward momentum that Wall Street's criminal-element-by-design may be unable to overcome.
As the mechanisms for their scheme have been revealed, it has become clearer how they are dependent upon us schmucks volunteering into their game of stealthy robbery by making our funds available to them in Margin accounts, and, by playing the Options game. (though some seem to have a knack for Options, many, many others simply set up the ilk with what they need to do their worst)
Long term investors who are disinterested in dedicating their waking hours to staying just ahead of those targeting their assets are well advised to simply play long, do not keep money in an account with Margin permissions activated, and play Options, if at all, with only a tiny percentage of one's holdings.
Like most con games, the target of the con must be just greedy enough to take the bait. Only those who do not embrace the siren song of "get rich quick" have a chance of avoiding becoming a mark.
Praise be to Elon!
If anyone has the motivation to deliver us from these filthy bastiges once more, it will be him.
Patiently waiting for the first hint of the smell of burnt hair.
HODL
Particularly, they appear to prey upon those in a position to be least likely to understand and most likely to volunteer their retirement, life savings, nest egg, etc. into the traps laid out for them. I know, as I have been one of them. (now out of margin for life, thankful I only dipped a toe into that rancid pond)
Reform seems unlikely as the ranks of the regulating agencies have been populated with their compatriots and supporters of the Big Con that has been running for decades. A Rothchild of some flavor was quoted as once saying something like, "Give me control of a nation's money supply and I care not who makes the laws" and I believe an easy corollary can be derived and applied to having control of the inner workings of a stock market.
Yet, TSLA has, multiple times in the past, created momentum enough to overcome these players' clever manipulative attempts. Considering Tesla's current point on the exponential upswing into the S-Curve that will track this transition, it seems highly likely that there will be more upward momentum that Wall Street's criminal-element-by-design may be unable to overcome.
As the mechanisms for their scheme have been revealed, it has become clearer how they are dependent upon us schmucks volunteering into their game of stealthy robbery by making our funds available to them in Margin accounts, and, by playing the Options game. (though some seem to have a knack for Options, many, many others simply set up the ilk with what they need to do their worst)
Long term investors who are disinterested in dedicating their waking hours to staying just ahead of those targeting their assets are well advised to simply play long, do not keep money in an account with Margin permissions activated, and play Options, if at all, with only a tiny percentage of one's holdings.
Like most con games, the target of the con must be just greedy enough to take the bait. Only those who do not embrace the siren song of "get rich quick" have a chance of avoiding becoming a mark.
Praise be to Elon!
If anyone has the motivation to deliver us from these filthy bastiges once more, it will be him.Patiently waiting for the first hint of the smell of burnt hair.
HODL
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Out of all the victims of this NSS nonsense, don't you think Elon would be the right person to tackle it head on? Or did he side step it because it is outside of his control politically, and no longer affects the mission since Tesla is now fully self-funded? The only affect it has remaining is employee retention. So there is hope there still.
My personal belief is that the SEC is allowing NSS so that the US gov't can manipulate the economy and cater to special interest at will. Specifically, they are trying to prevent such a rapid transition to sustainable energy because folks/companies need time to adapt, in theory. Call it the old guard or incumbent, but I'm talking about workers mostly. What are they going to do, and who will pay their pensions that dry up?
Imagine for a second, a world where Tesla truth went viral and nobody in their right mind bought another ICE vehicle. What's that economy look like while it transitions and the entire OEM supply chain collapses? What percentage of actual workers (that make actual products) would be affected by an overnight shift? I don't have a number, but I believe this country still runs on oil.
Exactly this, for as long as the company is innovating and growing ideas And branching out, which could be forever, even though all companies die eventually. I’ll check out that book. Another good on is Amazon.com: Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days (Audible Audio Edition): Jessica Livingston, Chelsea Kwoka, full cast, Upfront Books: Books. No direct Elon interview, but Max Levchin about PayPal.
Unfortunately he is right. i first began to understand this when I read America Alone In 2007. Demographics don’t lie. Look at women only having 1-1.25 children and do the math. If women only have 1 child per woman, the next generation is only 50% of the current. That’s 20 - 30 years! several countries are in this range.
The SEC isn’t tackling NSS probably because their buddies in the industry don’t want it to change. The SEC needs a new head that actually cares about this. While Elon doesn’t need Wall Street for Tesla, he does need it for his other ventures (especially Twitter!). So pissing off the street isn’t something he should be doing unfortunately.
To your point: Yes, I believe Elon absolutely is the right person to tackle this issue. Who knows? Maybe the legal team that he put together a few months ago (maybe more) is working on it. There is no doubt in my mind that Elon has a very keen view of what is going on in NSS.
I first invested in TSLA during late summer of 2013. The amount was only about $10k, but as a high school teacher who hadn't yet stacked my final two degrees yet, this amount was a pretty big deal. I wasn't new to investing, but TSLA was my first investment in a non-blue chip company whose earnings reports had been mostly negative. I teach AP Micro and Macro, and used to listen to NPR's Marketplace Morning Report on my morning commute, and in April (I think?) they had a little blurb about a company called Tesla that had surprisingly shown a profit, albeit mostly due to the selling of carbon credits to other automakers. For the next few months, I dove into researching the company and Elon. This led to discovering TMC, but almost as valuable was the discovery of TSLAQ on Twitter. TMC was (and still can be) prone to some irrational (or maybe just mis-timed to the early side) exuberance but TSLAQ ran the spectrum from logical to absolute looney tunes. Anyway, this led to my initial investment decision: the #1 ranked investing decision of my life.
Then for five years or so, nothing happened. To be sure, a lot happened with Tesla (Model X, various unveilings, increased volumes, Nevada Giga, Model 3 ramp). Just not much, zooming out, had happened with the stock. By this point, I had probably doubled my investment amounts. My investment in TSLA was doing fine, but from 2013-2018, TSLA was far from my biggest gainer. Everything was up during this time period. My initial thought was "I'll invest in TSLA and use the gains to purchase a Tesla". That hadn't happened yet but I was still confident it would happen eventually because Tesla the company appeared to be doing great. I felt confident enough in letting my oldest kid attend college out-of-state because TSLA and the market overall looked so promising. Go Hoosiers!
Then came a dark period between 2018-2019. The beginning of this dark period was the $420 tweet. We were on the road to Bloomington when it happened and the stock price was (I might be off a little) in the low $300's. Well I was pretty disappointed, but still saw the opportunity for a $120/share gain so I sold some other stock and invested another $5k or so in TSLA. This ended up being the #3 smartest investing decision of my life. I didn't realize this back then, however. In fact, within a few months I thought this might have been one of my worst investing decisions. This was due to the Great Model 3 Ramp Debacle of 2019. I remember the low point because it came at the very end of the 2018-19 school year. I went to the gym thinking "Well, I invested $25k and I'm about to sell for $17k. $17K is still a lot of money." By the time I got home, I not only didn't sell, but cleaned out the cash in my account buying 6 more shares at $180. This is my 2nd best decision ever. HODLing ain't as easy as it looks. Again, thankful for the existence of this forum, various podcast, YouTubers, TSLAQ, and even the financial media.
By the end of the late 2019-2021 explosion, we had bought a 2021 M3 Long Range, quit borrowing for my eldest's college, and sent my middle child off to college in-state (Go Dawgs!) and my youngest to his dream school (Go Griz!) on the other side of the country. We sold a few shares between splits, but surprisingly few because I knew TSLA was going to end up even higher within the next decade.
Which leads us to inflation/bad macros/Elon selling/Twitter purchase/disagreeable (to some) Elon behavior. We'll see if this dark period winds up being my 4th best decision or not, but I've been buying in dribs and drabs steadily from about $250 down to near $100. I am still way, way up but I've been a net loser on almost all lots bought during 2022. Most recent events, in my opinion are simply noise. I could be wrong, but I'm betting that negative opinion of Elon among liberals is an effect far more than a cause of the flagging stock price. In other words, once the stock price starts rising (and it might take a minute), we'll see those opinions of Elon improve or, more likely, they'll just stop being reported on.
More than any other factor, Elon's presence is what keeps me on board. His vision and the way he thinks is the only moat that matters. It brought us all the other moats that people hang their hats on now: superior engineering talent, big leads in autonomy and battery innovations, supercharging network, gigafactories. Elon's vision and way of thinking are the only things Tesla has that other companies cannot eventually attain. Do I wish he'd shut up at times? Absolutely. It's been a slight negative for sure. But I've known for a long time that the good comes along with the bad and the positive outweighs any negative by orders of magnitude. It's a free country and Elon is as free as anybody else. More power to those who use their freedoms to be critical or sell their shares if they see fit. Elon has done the same thing. But the only thing that would get me to sell my shares is Elon being forced out at Tesla.
Anyway, sorry for the text wall but getting contemplative today. Cheers to the longs!
Then for five years or so, nothing happened. To be sure, a lot happened with Tesla (Model X, various unveilings, increased volumes, Nevada Giga, Model 3 ramp). Just not much, zooming out, had happened with the stock. By this point, I had probably doubled my investment amounts. My investment in TSLA was doing fine, but from 2013-2018, TSLA was far from my biggest gainer. Everything was up during this time period. My initial thought was "I'll invest in TSLA and use the gains to purchase a Tesla". That hadn't happened yet but I was still confident it would happen eventually because Tesla the company appeared to be doing great. I felt confident enough in letting my oldest kid attend college out-of-state because TSLA and the market overall looked so promising. Go Hoosiers!
Then came a dark period between 2018-2019. The beginning of this dark period was the $420 tweet. We were on the road to Bloomington when it happened and the stock price was (I might be off a little) in the low $300's. Well I was pretty disappointed, but still saw the opportunity for a $120/share gain so I sold some other stock and invested another $5k or so in TSLA. This ended up being the #3 smartest investing decision of my life. I didn't realize this back then, however. In fact, within a few months I thought this might have been one of my worst investing decisions. This was due to the Great Model 3 Ramp Debacle of 2019. I remember the low point because it came at the very end of the 2018-19 school year. I went to the gym thinking "Well, I invested $25k and I'm about to sell for $17k. $17K is still a lot of money." By the time I got home, I not only didn't sell, but cleaned out the cash in my account buying 6 more shares at $180. This is my 2nd best decision ever. HODLing ain't as easy as it looks. Again, thankful for the existence of this forum, various podcast, YouTubers, TSLAQ, and even the financial media.
By the end of the late 2019-2021 explosion, we had bought a 2021 M3 Long Range, quit borrowing for my eldest's college, and sent my middle child off to college in-state (Go Dawgs!) and my youngest to his dream school (Go Griz!) on the other side of the country. We sold a few shares between splits, but surprisingly few because I knew TSLA was going to end up even higher within the next decade.
Which leads us to inflation/bad macros/Elon selling/Twitter purchase/disagreeable (to some) Elon behavior. We'll see if this dark period winds up being my 4th best decision or not, but I've been buying in dribs and drabs steadily from about $250 down to near $100. I am still way, way up but I've been a net loser on almost all lots bought during 2022. Most recent events, in my opinion are simply noise. I could be wrong, but I'm betting that negative opinion of Elon among liberals is an effect far more than a cause of the flagging stock price. In other words, once the stock price starts rising (and it might take a minute), we'll see those opinions of Elon improve or, more likely, they'll just stop being reported on.
More than any other factor, Elon's presence is what keeps me on board. His vision and the way he thinks is the only moat that matters. It brought us all the other moats that people hang their hats on now: superior engineering talent, big leads in autonomy and battery innovations, supercharging network, gigafactories. Elon's vision and way of thinking are the only things Tesla has that other companies cannot eventually attain. Do I wish he'd shut up at times? Absolutely. It's been a slight negative for sure. But I've known for a long time that the good comes along with the bad and the positive outweighs any negative by orders of magnitude. It's a free country and Elon is as free as anybody else. More power to those who use their freedoms to be critical or sell their shares if they see fit. Elon has done the same thing. But the only thing that would get me to sell my shares is Elon being forced out at Tesla.
Anyway, sorry for the text wall but getting contemplative today. Cheers to the longs!
So re plans of Tesla opening the supercharger network to other brands. I believe there are now two V4 superchargers in the US. (Canada and Mexico seem to be only installing V3’s yet). Are either of the two new V4 superchargers CCS compatible. (I believe one is in Yuma and the other one in California). There seems to be an information vacuum on this.
Cheers.
Cheers.
Gigapress
Trying to be less wrong
If we can pause endless rehashing of the same old political conversations, here’s something else to ponder.
Tesla Energy’s opportunity is a direct function of the total addressable market for kWh of electricity. We also need to stop, in Elon’s words, “the dumbest experiment in history” of rapidly increasing the CO2 concentration in our atmosphere and oceans, and we need to do this as quickly as possible. Oil and gas are mostly used for burning, but our civilization’s sustainability is also threatened by our utter reliance on mined hydrocarbons for chemical production.
It doesn’t have to be this way much longer. Synthetic hydrocarbon production from CO2 capture and solar power can solve both of these problems and I believe the capital markets have not done the math on the gigantic amount of demand for electricity this will create once solar and battery power reach sufficiently low prices. We already today have the ability to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, but the fundamental reason why all solutions thus far have failed economically is that CO2 at 420 ppm needs a lot of energy to be captured and an order of magnitude more energy to be ripped apart and reassembled into useful products like methane or ethylene. Doing this with renewable energy such that the overall process is carbon-negative has been prohibitively expensive.
Has been. If we extrapolate the solar and battery cost trends another 5-10 years out, in certain markets we will reach a tipping point—a disruption moment—in which synthetic hydrocarbon production will be cheaper than fossil-derived sourcing of the same chemicals. IRA subsidies for clean energy, clean hydrogen production and carbon sequestration suddenly pulled this schedule forward for American production by several years, maybe even by a decade. Likewise did the invasion of Ukraine and boycotting of Russian gas for European production.
But the plot is thicker. Interestingly, there is a single US state endowed with all of the following:
Texas and its Gulf Coast neighbor Louisiana account for a whopping 70% of American primary petrochemical production according to the US government in this report.
Was this opportunity to advance sustainability and make even more money an unsaid reason in favor of moving Tesla and SpaceX to Texas? I don’t know because Elon has never mentioned this in public to my knowledge. However, I do know that SpaceX is already getting involved in direct air capture of CO2, water electrolysis to produce green hydrogen; and Sabatier reactors in order to produce methane for rocket fuel. This is required for sustainable rocket fuel on Earth, but it will also be required from Day 1 of fuel production on Mars, because Mars has no natural gas. I also would note that the Musk Foundation has offered a $100M prize for carbon capture technology, indicating Elon is thinking about this and believes it’s very important.
The big question in my mind is, will SpaceX just stop at making methalox fuel, or will they (or their sister company Tesla) expand deeper downstream in this vertical by making stuff out of the methane? Methane and hydrogen are commodities and there’s nothing special nor unique about rocket fuel methane or the hydrogen used to synthesize it. With methane and hydrogen as building blocks, any hydrocarbon chemicals can be assembled. In fact this basic chemistry is how biologists believe life on Earth began, in deep-sea thermal vents where photosynthesis was impossible and there was no other source of chemical energy. For human industrial production, it would likely come from Fischer-Tropsch synthesis. The implication for the role it must play in a hypothetical self-sustaining civilization on Mars is obvious, which is why I still think SpaceX has got to be thinking about this for the long-term plans. Their mission requires refinement of this technology to have any practical chance of success. How else could a Martian colony produce its own fuels, plastics, fertilizers, lubricants, pharmaceuticals and everything else an advanced civilization needs to survive and terraform an entire planet?
SpaceX also needs enormous amounts of capital to fund this development. They hope to make big bucks from Starlink and from orbital transportation services, but these markets are tiny in comparison to the opportunity in the chemicals sector. At some point, money might be the limiting factor on making humanity a multiplanetary species.
Terraform Industries is the most credible startup outside SpaceX in my opinion and they are openly pursuing these goals for chemical production for something other than just Starship flights. They released a new white paper today with a lot more numbers and technical detail.
terraformindustries.wordpress.com
I hope some of you, especially the scientists and engineers, will read it closely and tell me if it’s as technically and economically feasible as it sounds. I have not seen analysis from any other TSLA investors except me on this topic and it’s such a humongous long-term opportunity if it actually is viable. On the other hand, I’m wondering if batteries will be irrelevant to this industry. Terraform’s white paper indicates that they’ll only be operating the hydrolyzers during daylight hours. If steady 24/7 operation is not the goal then this might not mean much for Megapack demand in the coming decades.
Here is their basic thesis which I currently believe is probably correct:
Tesla Energy’s opportunity is a direct function of the total addressable market for kWh of electricity. We also need to stop, in Elon’s words, “the dumbest experiment in history” of rapidly increasing the CO2 concentration in our atmosphere and oceans, and we need to do this as quickly as possible. Oil and gas are mostly used for burning, but our civilization’s sustainability is also threatened by our utter reliance on mined hydrocarbons for chemical production.
It doesn’t have to be this way much longer. Synthetic hydrocarbon production from CO2 capture and solar power can solve both of these problems and I believe the capital markets have not done the math on the gigantic amount of demand for electricity this will create once solar and battery power reach sufficiently low prices. We already today have the ability to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, but the fundamental reason why all solutions thus far have failed economically is that CO2 at 420 ppm needs a lot of energy to be captured and an order of magnitude more energy to be ripped apart and reassembled into useful products like methane or ethylene. Doing this with renewable energy such that the overall process is carbon-negative has been prohibitively expensive.
Has been. If we extrapolate the solar and battery cost trends another 5-10 years out, in certain markets we will reach a tipping point—a disruption moment—in which synthetic hydrocarbon production will be cheaper than fossil-derived sourcing of the same chemicals. IRA subsidies for clean energy, clean hydrogen production and carbon sequestration suddenly pulled this schedule forward for American production by several years, maybe even by a decade. Likewise did the invasion of Ukraine and boycotting of Russian gas for European production.
But the plot is thicker. Interestingly, there is a single US state endowed with all of the following:
- Strong sunshine
- Abundant cheap, flat land
- The fastest rate of solar power development in the nation
- The biggest hydrocarbon chemical sector in the nation
- Eastward-facing coastline that’s nearly at tropical latitudes
- Deepwater ports to the Atlantic Ocean ideal for shipping
- The headquarters of every Musk company including Tesla and SpaceX
Texas and its Gulf Coast neighbor Louisiana account for a whopping 70% of American primary petrochemical production according to the US government in this report.
Was this opportunity to advance sustainability and make even more money an unsaid reason in favor of moving Tesla and SpaceX to Texas? I don’t know because Elon has never mentioned this in public to my knowledge. However, I do know that SpaceX is already getting involved in direct air capture of CO2, water electrolysis to produce green hydrogen; and Sabatier reactors in order to produce methane for rocket fuel. This is required for sustainable rocket fuel on Earth, but it will also be required from Day 1 of fuel production on Mars, because Mars has no natural gas. I also would note that the Musk Foundation has offered a $100M prize for carbon capture technology, indicating Elon is thinking about this and believes it’s very important.
The big question in my mind is, will SpaceX just stop at making methalox fuel, or will they (or their sister company Tesla) expand deeper downstream in this vertical by making stuff out of the methane? Methane and hydrogen are commodities and there’s nothing special nor unique about rocket fuel methane or the hydrogen used to synthesize it. With methane and hydrogen as building blocks, any hydrocarbon chemicals can be assembled. In fact this basic chemistry is how biologists believe life on Earth began, in deep-sea thermal vents where photosynthesis was impossible and there was no other source of chemical energy. For human industrial production, it would likely come from Fischer-Tropsch synthesis. The implication for the role it must play in a hypothetical self-sustaining civilization on Mars is obvious, which is why I still think SpaceX has got to be thinking about this for the long-term plans. Their mission requires refinement of this technology to have any practical chance of success. How else could a Martian colony produce its own fuels, plastics, fertilizers, lubricants, pharmaceuticals and everything else an advanced civilization needs to survive and terraform an entire planet?
SpaceX also needs enormous amounts of capital to fund this development. They hope to make big bucks from Starlink and from orbital transportation services, but these markets are tiny in comparison to the opportunity in the chemicals sector. At some point, money might be the limiting factor on making humanity a multiplanetary species.
Terraform Industries is the most credible startup outside SpaceX in my opinion and they are openly pursuing these goals for chemical production for something other than just Starship flights. They released a new white paper today with a lot more numbers and technical detail.
Terraform Industries Whitepaper 2.0
Fuel from the sky: Cheap hydrocarbons from CO2 direct air capture and sunlight. terraformindustries.com At Terraform Industries, we believe our species and civilization should survive climate…
terraformindustries.wordpress.com
I hope some of you, especially the scientists and engineers, will read it closely and tell me if it’s as technically and economically feasible as it sounds. I have not seen analysis from any other TSLA investors except me on this topic and it’s such a humongous long-term opportunity if it actually is viable. On the other hand, I’m wondering if batteries will be irrelevant to this industry. Terraform’s white paper indicates that they’ll only be operating the hydrolyzers during daylight hours. If steady 24/7 operation is not the goal then this might not mean much for Megapack demand in the coming decades.
Here is their basic thesis which I currently believe is probably correct:
I even think that that last bullet point is probably right on. This industry at scale might use the majority of the world’s electricity in the future. Why is no one talking about this?
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Population collapse is a real national security issue in China and its something the national government is taking very seriously. Elon didn't decide to start building worker bots because he is bored, but to hopefully provide civilization with a soft landing.
MartinAustin
Active Member
Manufacturing drinking water might also consume a lot of electricity in the future. (Either by condensing humidity or from sea water) Seeing as there will be less rainwater in places humans are choosing to live
If we can pause endless rehashing of the same old political conversations, here’s something else to ponder.
Tesla Energy’s opportunity is a direct function of the total addressable market for kWh of electricity. We also need to stop, in Elon’s words, “the dumbest experiment in history” of rapidly increasing the CO2 concentration in our atmosphere and oceans, and we need to do this as quickly as possible. Oil and gas are mostly used for burning, but our civilization’s sustainability is also threatened by our utter reliance on mined hydrocarbons for chemical production.
It doesn’t have to be this way much longer. Synthetic hydrocarbon production from CO2 capture and solar power can solve both of these problems and I believe the capital markets have not done the math on the gigantic amount of demand for electricity this will create once solar and battery power reach sufficiently low prices. We already today have the ability to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, but the fundamental reason why all solutions thus far have failed economically is that CO2 at 420 ppm needs a lot of energy to be captured and an order of magnitude more energy to be ripped apart and reassembled into useful products like methane or ethylene. Doing this with renewable energy such that the overall process is carbon-negative has been prohibitively expensive.
Has been. If we extrapolate the solar and battery cost trends another 5-10 years out, in certain markets we will reach a tipping point—a disruption moment—in which synthetic hydrocarbon production will be cheaper than fossil-derived sourcing of the same chemicals. IRA subsidies for clean energy, clean hydrogen production and carbon sequestration suddenly pulled this schedule forward for American production by several years, maybe even by a decade. Likewise did the invasion of Ukraine and boycotting of Russian gas for European production.
But the plot is thicker. Interestingly, there is a single US state endowed with all of the following:
Texas.
- Strong sunshine
- Abundant cheap, flat land
- The fastest rate of solar power development in the nation
- The biggest hydrocarbon chemical sector in the nation
- Eastward-facing coastline that’s nearly at tropical latitudes
- Deepwater ports to the Atlantic Ocean ideal for shipping
- The headquarters of every Musk company including Tesla and SpaceX
Texas and its Gulf Coast neighbor Louisiana account for a whopping 70% of American primary petrochemical production according to the US government in this report.
View attachment 898156
Was this opportunity to advance sustainability and make even more money an unsaid reason in favor of moving Tesla and SpaceX to Texas? I don’t know because Elon has never mentioned this in public to my knowledge. However, I do know that SpaceX is already getting involved in direct air capture of CO2, water electrolysis to produce green hydrogen; and Sabatier reactors in order to produce methane for rocket fuel. This is required for sustainable rocket fuel on Earth, but it will also be required from Day 1 of fuel production on Mars, because Mars has no natural gas. I also would note that the Musk Foundation has offered a $100M prize for carbon capture technology, indicating Elon is thinking about this and believes it’s very important.
The big question in my mind is, will SpaceX just stop at making methalox fuel, or will they (or their sister company Tesla) expand deeper downstream in this vertical by making stuff out of the methane? Methane and hydrogen are commodities and there’s nothing special nor unique about rocket fuel methane or the hydrogen used to synthesize it. With methane and hydrogen as building blocks, any hydrocarbon chemicals can be assembled. In fact this basic chemistry is how biologists believe life on Earth began, in deep-sea thermal vents where photosynthesis was impossible and there was no other source of chemical energy. For human industrial production, it would likely come from Fischer-Tropsch synthesis. The implication for the role it must play in a hypothetical self-sustaining civilization on Mars is obvious, which is why I still think SpaceX has got to be thinking about this for the long-term plans. Their mission requires refinement of this technology to have any practical chance of success. How else could a Martian colony produce its own fuels, plastics, fertilizers, lubricants, pharmaceuticals and everything else an advanced civilization needs to survive and terraform an entire planet?
SpaceX also needs enormous amounts of capital to fund this development. They hope to make big bucks from Starlink and from orbital transportation services, but these markets are tiny in comparison to the opportunity in the chemicals sector. At some point, money might be the limiting factor on making humanity a multiplanetary species.
Terraform Industries is the most credible startup outside SpaceX in my opinion and they are openly pursuing these goals for chemical production for something other than just Starship flights. They released a new white paper today with a lot more numbers and technical detail.
Terraform Industries Whitepaper 2.0
Fuel from the sky: Cheap hydrocarbons from CO2 direct air capture and sunlight. terraformindustries.com At Terraform Industries, we believe our species and civilization should survive climate…
I hope some of you, especially the scientists and engineers, will read it closely and tell me if it’s as technically and economically feasible as it sounds. I have not seen analysis from any other TSLA investors except me on this topic and it’s such a humongous long-term opportunity if it actually is viable. On the other hand, I’m wondering if batteries will be irrelevant to this industry. Terraform’s white paper indicates that they’ll only be operating the hydrolyzers during daylight hours. If steady 24/7 operation is not the goal then this might not mean much for Megapack demand in the coming decades.
Here is their basic thesis which I currently believe is probably correct:
I even think that that last bullet point is probably right on. This industry at scale might use the majority of the world’s electricity in the future. Why is no one talking about this?
Abundant energy will only bring with it new, yet unforeseen problems with it. Just at a larger scale due to more energy!If we can pause endless rehashing of the same old political conversations, here’s something else to ponder.
Tesla Energy’s opportunity is a direct function of the total addressable market for kWh of electricity. We also need to stop, in Elon’s words, “the dumbest experiment in history” of rapidly increasing the CO2 concentration in our atmosphere and oceans, and we need to do this as quickly as possible. Oil and gas are mostly used for burning, but our civilization’s sustainability is also threatened by our utter reliance on mined hydrocarbons for chemical production.
It doesn’t have to be this way much longer. Synthetic hydrocarbon production from CO2 capture and solar power can solve both of these problems and I believe the capital markets have not done the math on the gigantic amount of demand for electricity this will create once solar and battery power reach sufficiently low prices. We already today have the ability to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, but the fundamental reason why all solutions thus far have failed economically is that CO2 at 420 ppm needs a lot of energy to be captured and an order of magnitude more energy to be ripped apart and reassembled into useful products like methane or ethylene. Doing this with renewable energy such that the overall process is carbon-negative has been prohibitively expensive.
Has been. If we extrapolate the solar and battery cost trends another 5-10 years out, in certain markets we will reach a tipping point—a disruption moment—in which synthetic hydrocarbon production will be cheaper than fossil-derived sourcing of the same chemicals. IRA subsidies for clean energy, clean hydrogen production and carbon sequestration suddenly pulled this schedule forward for American production by several years, maybe even by a decade. Likewise did the invasion of Ukraine and boycotting of Russian gas for European production.
But the plot is thicker. Interestingly, there is a single US state endowed with all of the following:
Texas.
- Strong sunshine
- Abundant cheap, flat land
- The fastest rate of solar power development in the nation
- The biggest hydrocarbon chemical sector in the nation
- Eastward-facing coastline that’s nearly at tropical latitudes
- Deepwater ports to the Atlantic Ocean ideal for shipping
- The headquarters of every Musk company including Tesla and SpaceX
Texas and its Gulf Coast neighbor Louisiana account for a whopping 70% of American primary petrochemical production according to the US government in this report.
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Was this opportunity to advance sustainability and make even more money an unsaid reason in favor of moving Tesla and SpaceX to Texas? I don’t know because Elon has never mentioned this in public to my knowledge. However, I do know that SpaceX is already getting involved in direct air capture of CO2, water electrolysis to produce green hydrogen; and Sabatier reactors in order to produce methane for rocket fuel. This is required for sustainable rocket fuel on Earth, but it will also be required from Day 1 of fuel production on Mars, because Mars has no natural gas. I also would note that the Musk Foundation has offered a $100M prize for carbon capture technology, indicating Elon is thinking about this and believes it’s very important.
The big question in my mind is, will SpaceX just stop at making methalox fuel, or will they (or their sister company Tesla) expand deeper downstream in this vertical by making stuff out of the methane? Methane and hydrogen are commodities and there’s nothing special nor unique about rocket fuel methane or the hydrogen used to synthesize it. With methane and hydrogen as building blocks, any hydrocarbon chemicals can be assembled. In fact this basic chemistry is how biologists believe life on Earth began, in deep-sea thermal vents where photosynthesis was impossible and there was no other source of chemical energy. For human industrial production, it would likely come from Fischer-Tropsch synthesis. The implication for the role it must play in a hypothetical self-sustaining civilization on Mars is obvious, which is why I still think SpaceX has got to be thinking about this for the long-term plans. Their mission requires refinement of this technology to have any practical chance of success. How else could a Martian colony produce its own fuels, plastics, fertilizers, lubricants, pharmaceuticals and everything else an advanced civilization needs to survive and terraform an entire planet?
SpaceX also needs enormous amounts of capital to fund this development. They hope to make big bucks from Starlink and from orbital transportation services, but these markets are tiny in comparison to the opportunity in the chemicals sector. At some point, money might be the limiting factor on making humanity a multiplanetary species.
Terraform Industries is the most credible startup outside SpaceX in my opinion and they are openly pursuing these goals for chemical production for something other than just Starship flights. They released a new white paper today with a lot more numbers and technical detail.
Terraform Industries Whitepaper 2.0
Fuel from the sky: Cheap hydrocarbons from CO2 direct air capture and sunlight. terraformindustries.com At Terraform Industries, we believe our species and civilization should survive climate…
I hope some of you, especially the scientists and engineers, will read it closely and tell me if it’s as technically and economically feasible as it sounds. I have not seen analysis from any other TSLA investors except me on this topic and it’s such a humongous long-term opportunity if it actually is viable. On the other hand, I’m wondering if batteries will be irrelevant to this industry. Terraform’s white paper indicates that they’ll only be operating the hydrolyzers during daylight hours. If steady 24/7 operation is not the goal then this might not mean much for Megapack demand in the coming decades.
Here is their basic thesis which I currently believe is probably correct:
I even think that that last bullet point is probably right on. This industry at scale might use the majority of the world’s electricity in the future. Why is no one talking about this?
Nature has many carbon capture technologies that should be used instead. These technologies have gone through countless iterations and real world stressors. The further we double down on human designed technological solutions the more fragile we make the system as a whole. Especially when you couple it with globalism and speed. Everything the same way everywhere all at once!
If we remove fossil fuel CO2 emissions, and animal agriculture emissions (as some think is necessary, then incentivize removal of CO2 from the air with cheap energy, we might find ourselves in a situation that is MUCH more detrimental than increasing CO2. In the end, atmospheric co2 is vital for life, and below iirc 200ppm plant life cannot properly sustain itself.
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Take care of climate change and give young people hope for the future and a decent economic environment.
I'll assure you'll have a new baby boom in 9 months time.
This really tells the reality that TSLA is an ideal target for the unclothed vendors.
In times past I may have mentioned that in 1973 as a very freshly minted banker (Very fresh, I'd joined them direct from graduate school a few months earlier) I was, with other new colleagues, sent to look at DTC from an operational perspective. Why, I don't know, my bosses bosses boss seemed to want to say they'd looked a bit. Skipping every detail, DTC was better than the bizarre 19th century habits preceding it, but had very minimal controls. I was not competent to say anything critical, given the only experience I had was some amazing seminars with Wall Street types and two memorable one in the early stages of the Oil Shock, and one two years earlier is Nixon quitting the gold standard. Perhaps that background was why they chose me.
The real shock was that no person I met at a senior level had even a vague clue about DTC rules nor even exactly how anything worked. Operations was beneath them. Thus, market makers ('whatever they are" from a renowned CEO on hearing our report) made the rules.
Everything that is important to us is not a secret at all, just excruciating. As much as people justifiably abhor the Madoff Rule, the reality is even stranger.
Honestly if anybody really wants to know exactly how the manipulators both generate volatility and profit from it. TSLA has every characteristic to encourage manipulation, beginning with a large, gullible, indecent thinking retail base that can be conned into accepting quantitative analysis foibles without examination, precisely because they do not know the details.
Here they are:
The Depository Trust Company (DTC)
DTC brings efficiency to the securities industry by reducing costs, immobilizing securities and making 'book-entry' changes to ownership of the securities.
www.dtcc.com
Last comment. In my humble opinion this cannot be really understood without going into all the details.
Subsets that also show why short selling will not stop and why no real investor protections exist:
-securities lending-read the details, otherwise you'll miss it.
-Custody and Master Trust- lose Global Custody and Global Master trust and lose the giants.
- clearing and settlement are the secret sauce for all of this. That is why Depository Trust Company is at the heart fo the matter.
This is all crucial to understanding how retail investors should evaluate the manner of investing in any US listed security, but especially TSLA.
After understanding DTC in all it's arcane glory, the next is CBOE, which even promotes itself as "The Home of Volatility Trading". That is even more obscure than is DTC and equally fascinating. I will not comment further on that one.
There are quite a few of us in TMC who have been directly involved in these processes.
For every one of us there is a 'tell', we all fairly beg people to have nothing to do with any derivative, option or future, not even margin (explicitly margin account- opening one lets your own shares to be involved in this with or without your knowledge, even though you can usually make a modest gain by officially lending your shares. Why that is so is another long arcane set of rules ending with the word 'custody'.
Anybody thinking about anything other than HODL should realize that dealing in US securities speculations is NOT in any way analogous to Casino gambling. Why? Casinos have strong and specific regulations everywhere they operate and are subject to serious regulatory oversight. The US securities markets are 'self'regulated' by intent. History is littered with Teapot Dome, The Great Depression, the Gold Standard, Oil Shock, 2008... all of those were provided courtesy of securities and banking industry lack of effective regulation.
If anybody really wants to know the nauseating list of banking, brokerage, processor and investment banking failures I personally have worked on in my four decades of all that I can discuss the non-NDA cases via PM with appropriate validation, including an NDA from me.
I mention that only because I really detest for people I like and respect to be harmed by avoidable risks.
I am writing this today because several people close to me have lost their life savings in the bankruptcy of Lojas Americanas, one which was also perfectly predictable in which highly competent billionaires did not pay attention to their own data. FWIW, a relative who was involved got out without undue harm. I cannot help but beg people to take only risks they understand and to, even then, do it very safely, i.e. HODL and watch every detail. TMC helps do that for TSLA, for which I am very grateful.
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