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

[TesslaBull]

Since many are sharing investment strategies, I'll play along. I don't have the risk tolerance to be 100% single stocks. Tesla is the only single stock I own, and I own a larger share than my philosophy would normally allow. Once I realized the potential of TSLA, I decided to add more than I normally would while the price is/was as low as we would ever see minus day to day or month to month variations. Purchased all mine in the $180-$210 range and probably hold around 10% of my portfolio. Normally I would only hold about 5% outside of my normal asset allocation which is currently 100% S&P500 index fund. Almost no matter what happens in the country or world, or to any individual company, it's the guaranteed way to retire once I have 25x my annual expenses. I'm done buying TSLA for now, and my S&P position will continue to increase dramatically for another 6-8 years. If TSLA goes 10x, it will make a difference for me even though I'm not 100% TSLA i.e. would pay off my mortgage. I sleep better at night knowing that, almost no matter what, I can retire comfortably in 6-8 years no matter what any single stock does, including TSLA.

Will I purchase more TSLA in the future? Maybe. It's hard for me to see a scenario where TSLA does not go on to become the largest and most profitable company in the world. So maybe I will continue to allocate ~10% of my annual investments into TSLA. I will end up with quite a large position(to me) in that case, especially assuming 7-10x from here. Also, I can afford to lose that 10% and still have no worries.

Wish I'd become a TSLA shareholder back in 2013 as many of you have done!

Cheers, and best wishes and amazing success to all shareholders.

P.S. I definitely don't want to look back 10 years from now and figure out how much $ I lost by purchasing a brand new M3 LR AWD instead of TSLA with half that money while happily cruising around in a used Hyundai Ioniq PHEV, which is what I advised my daughter to buy!

 

[EVMeister]

I prefer this weekend's postings to the usual OT ramblings we get at the weekend. Keep it up!

 

[JRP3]

Weekend trading related topic, anyone on TD Ameritrade dreading the shift to Schwab, or have already experienced it? I've been seeing a number of complaints about the shift, I'm still on TD because I also have Thinkorswim.

 

[Max Plaid]

Is it just me, or does anyone else think that Craig Irwin often looks like he had a good cry just before being interviewed?

Not exactly...

 

[petit_bateau]

There have been a few comments from folks here regarding the additional supercharger load these deals will put on the system. Additionally, some have shared some more alarmist sentiments they've seen from others (some perhaps attempting to FUDify the deals...).

Overall supercharger capacity & expansion rate has been discussed here a number of times over the years, typically in the context of the total of current Teslas on the road, and the planned manufacturing and sales growth.

Phone companies modeled years ago their analog circuit-switched lines and trunks (the Erlang B model), taking in to account system capacity, total consumers, peak utilization times, and acceptable queue wait times. This model generally applies to any queued resource, like superchargers. As it turns out, the needed # of stalls isn't a linear function of total cars. This makes sense, as if you have 1 car on the road, you need at least one supercharger. But 2 cars don't require 2. There's a spot at which utilization is maximized with acceptable queuing. Thread on this some time ago HERE.

Long story short: doubling the number of NACS cars, won't require doubling the number of chargers. Likely significantly less.

What this means is that more NACS customers is a good thing for the Supercharging network, provided Tesla can quickly enough expand the capacity needed, and manage the queue times and bottleneck locations. Why? Because overall infrastructure utilization goes up. That means the number of customers paying that aforementioned 10% profit to Tesla may double, while the number of additional chargers needed may only go up by 50%.

That means more $$$ to Tesla for maintenance, powerpack installation, solar build out, or simply profit to the bottom line.

This is a big win, IMO.

Fully agree - queuing theory solves lots of problems. The number of times I've sweated buckets over some fancy dynamic system simulation model only to produce a result I could have gotten with queuing theory in a fraction of the time. (Proves I'm dumb. At least I recognise that and don't trade my TSLA shares, simply HODL).

For a similar reason a lot of the big gaps in the network in the in-between lands can be filled with 4-stall or 2-stall units. They certainly don't need to be 8-stall (etc) builds. And this is where they can be easier to build out even in a weak grid because genuinely one can take some storage and solar and plonk it in co-located in a lot of these places. I accept that the utilisation fraction will be low and so this is not yet the priority, but in time it will be more important. This might be a reason to build out skinny Megapacks with the central solar inverters also pre-plumbed, and hook straight in to 10-acres of solar (or so). Should be fun trying to home in on the correct design solution(s) to suit that type of site(s).

To my eyes Supercharger manufacturing needs to roughly double in volume - there is a lot of territory to build out. Recently I've been driving through southeast Europe (again) and as soon as one goes beyond Nis (Serbia) the Tesla count zeroes. On the other hand the Porsche and Mercedes and BMW count does not. It is not until one gets down to Patras/Athens (Greece) that the Tesla count starts to climb. People down here are not cash poor as one can observe just by looking at the cars on the road, but they are completely charger-starved. Same goes for a lot of the world.

So, lots more pre-fabbed 4-slot units to as a minimum build out the global transport corridors please.

 

[MP3Mike]

Does anyone know if a newly installed Supercharger with solar, in California, has the ability to dodge the current standard NEM 3.0 if Tesla is a "virtual power plant"? If not, then California's latest NEM 3.0 standard would force ANY energy sent into the grid to only quality for wholesale costs ~$0.08/kWh. That would seriously impact Tesla's vision to install PV and BES at Superchargers. They would draw energy for $0.50 to $0.60 per kWh (when cars exceed PV/batteries), but only receive ~$0.08/kWh once batteries are full and no one is charging? I just don't understand how Tesla can operate SCs in California for any profit....

Tesla doesn't pay residential rates, they have an entirely different fee structure. They likely pay less than $0.20/kWh all day, but they have to pay large demand charges as well. You would have to lookup commercial/industrial rates plans in your area. (Some power companies even have specific EV charging rate plans.)

 

[NicoV]

I've been travelling for much of the last six weeks: Denmark, Germany, New York, France, Spain, Holland, have seen many Teslas, everywhere, absolutely splendid!

I see there have been a number of confessions as of late, so in the spirit of openness I will admit that I sold out of ALL my TSLA in the recent dip via selling -c150's expecting a "fill the gap" down to $146. OK, for the record, a net sell of $164 taking into account the premiums I earned, but given that I'd bought these shares at $300, not ideal! On the other hand, these were bought with profits from shares previously sold in 2021 at the $240 - $260 (split-adjusted), that were initially bought in Feb 2015 for a split-adjusted ($8 - $10), and I made a lot of covered-call premium on the way down, so not too much was lost along the way, more churn than anything else and some profits to keep the tax-authorities happy

Yes, I could have kept the shares, but decided to de-risk into cash with all the recession worries, and not getting any younger. To counter the upside, I loaded up on December 2025 c140 & c200 LEAPS, but immediately sold July -c200's against the lot, along with straddled puts, to start to recuperate the premiums in the case they don't work-out, will start healing those calls as of tomorrow

In any case, even with capping the profits at net $220 (for the moment), it's still a substantial gain if I cash out the lot, and will still be up 27x my initial capital investments in TSLA, and that's with taking out quite a lot of cash over the years it's more like 35x, but not the 53x we hit in October 2021...

Easy to say "don't trade options", but if I had just bought and HODLed my shares then my portfolio value would be worth less than it is today, plus I have zero debt, don't trade with margin, and have an MX Plaid and MYLR, bought with cash sitting outside, so although it could be better, I'm not complaining either

I see a lot of euphoria on this thread recently about how many days to get to ATH... historically this kind of talk, along with the discussion around purchase of major land-masses, has been a great contrarian indicator. I hope this isn't the case, regardless of my personal situation, I would like to see TSLA longs richly rewarded, but please do take care, these rallies are often fuelled by call-buying and the resulting Delta hedging by the MM's, leading to a violent Gamma squeeze that can often reverse faster than it arrived, for sure noting much changed with Tesla the last two months, but a great shareholder's meeting and the Ford/GM deals have certainly shifted sentiment to the positive

Live long and prosper!

I learnt that one should never be sorry about selling a position at nice profit.

I too have sold some July 200 calls, but it’s against a very small part of my position. I feel that these 11 consecutive green days have been premature. Fuelled by the NACS announcements. These announcements won’t cause any short term profit, and by the time these calls expire the focus will have shifted to the delivery numbers and earnings release. We’ll see what that does to the stock price.

 

[Cult Member]

Weekend OT:
Google recession for the local VW dealer:
"Super competent, fast and friendly service. I get the ID3 back washed and vacuumed every time.
I had pre-reserved the car 2019 , as one of the first to get in September 2020 and still have not received the update 3.0 which was delivered yes more than 1 year ago. I would have liked (expected) from the seller that for customers of the 1st hours there at VW some pressure is made."
I'm trying to remember if my car was washed and vacuumed after the only visit at the SeC within four years...

 

[GhostSkater]

Lucid marketing game is on fire lately

Wonder it it's related to this @ 3:20

https://www.reddit.com/r/electricvehicles/comments/146gsou

 

[wws]

You can live in your car, but you can't drive your house to work....

Funny thing - I was at a Supercharger near Portland OR a couple months ago, and there was this beatup early Model S charging. Looked like a car a homeless person would live in. (Front end bashed in, trash piled in the inside...) Then I got to thinking he was pretty smart. No energy costs because his car had free Supercharging...

 

[philw1776]

I think you just need to recalibrate what you define as ‘intelligent’ buddies. I mean, I could tie my shoelaces by 5 years of age. You don’t have to be particularly smart to do it, just have a bit of dexterity.

But seriously, there’s different kinds of intelligence and people can be both incredibly intelligent and super not intelligent at the same time depending on the subject matter or skill. The people you speak of have little intelligence or ability of foresight, connecting the dots, or envisioning a complex, multi-faceted outcome.

Just be thankful you’re not their kind of intelligence. It’s the difference between being book smart vs common sense smart.

I rarely double knot my shoelaces because I still struggle mightily getting them undone.

 

[unk45]

Weekend trading related topic, anyone on TD Ameritrade dreading the shift to Schwab, or have already experienced it? I've been seeing a number of complaints about the shift, I'm still on TD because I also have Thinkorswim.

I'm mostly happy with Schwab although I dreaded it when USAA sold their accounts to Schwab. It ended out being seamless, just less convention for international issues than is USAA, with which moving around the world is standard stuff.

 

[jerry33]

Weekend OT:
Google recession for the local VW dealer:
"Super competent, fast and friendly service. I get the ID3 back washed and vacuumed every time.
I had pre-reserved the car 2019 , as one of the first to get in September 2020 and still have not received the update 3.0 which was delivered yes more than 1 year ago. I would have liked (expected) from the seller that for customers of the 1st hours there at VW some pressure is made."
I'm trying to remember if my car was washed and vacuumed after the only visit at the SeC within four years...

I think VW missed the part about how the friendly dealer would also sell additional service.

 

[JRP3]

I'm mostly happy with Schwab

Were you previously using TD Ameritrade?

 

[Webeevdrivers]

Good points. It’s true. One thinks if ford and GM as huge entities but as you mentioned, not so much for EV’s.

 

[Max Plaid]

In the beginning...

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FyLwc9zacAA8zxH?format=jpg&name=4096x4096

Almost 11 Years ago.

And this was the situation in Europe when I ordered my first Model S P85 - it was a leap of faith back then, but turned out quite OK in the end

 

[2Pearls]

Weekend trading related topic, anyone on TD Ameritrade dreading the shift to Schwab, or have already experienced it? I've been seeing a number of complaints about the shift, I'm still on TD because I also have Thinkorswim.

I have TD Ameritrade and I have not been converted over yet, although I have been told it will happen within the next few months.

 

[jerry33]

And this was the situation in Europe when I ordered my first Model S P85 - it was a leap of faith back then, but turned out quite OK in the end

View attachment 945891

Much better than me, where the only three SuperChargers were 2500 km away ;-)

 

[Cult Member]

I think VW missed the part about how the friendly dealer would also sell additional service.

Sounds like he is a frequent guest of this friendly dealer and I am sure that he's visits have been neccessary and definitely not for free.

 

[unk45]

Were you previously using TD Ameritrade?

No I was with USAA. I did use TD Ameritrade for a while.