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

[philw1776]

Exaggerated but...there are quite a few older people here who were in AAPL, then TSLA and gains multiples but probably 7 to10x would be more likely. I'd wager very few of them picked NVDA, but quite a few INTC and a few of the ancients actually were in PYPL, and some even pre-merger.

I will wager very few of those people think of themselves as 'genius stock pickers'. Nearly every one fo them probably realize a big part was luck and another big part was direct involvement in Silicon Valley in the 'dark ages' as all o this evolved from 1998 when ICANN was formed. Bluntly said, being there then provided a singular view of what the future could bring.

That made some of us bet on AAPL despite Mr. Jobs' horrible personal hygiene. That then led to an understanding of how highly eccentric people could make transformations so Mr. Musk seemed credible from Zip2.

Nearly everyone at that age never imagined that a clever video game outfit could transform anything.

I worked in high tech. NOT a genius stock picker.
I chickened out on doing a video game startup well before Atari. The other engineer working with me was a genius. Big miss. East coast VCs were too traditional to fund us even with a demonstrable working prototype.
Hit on companies like Apple stock & that was ages before I bought any apple products. Was a big Jobs fan as a marketing innovator. For some reason I sold my Apple stock after big gains and not because I needed the money either. Sigh.
Made LOTS of money on Tesla as a Johnny Come Lately buying in in 2020 along with placing a reservation for a non-existent Model Y.
As a technologist and not a marketeer I really whiffed badly on opportunities like Google because stupidly in retrospect I did not see how the search engine portal could be monetized. DUH.
Fortunately my aggressive (Heh) mutual fund portfolio and Tesla to a much lesser extend have me living very well in retirement.

 

[EQC_]

So you're being a wordsmith eh? Placing 'gradual' within the context of 'Acceleration', creating mini S-curves. I get it.

But like I said, if people who already do not care about the transition (my very ultra-conservative, Trump loving in-laws as examples) take his posts like that at face value, then he is causing more harm than good.

He really should be aligning his posts(thoughts) with the context of his company (Tesla). There should be no grey area on this subject.

I mean...it would be nice if certain groups actually read his post, and DID take it at face value. I'd assume that, as Elon's post is written, folks like the ultra-conservative trump lovers you mentioned would probably read it with their own bias in place, miss the parts about the "underestimated in the future" and "gradual change" and just use it as another excuse to claim their position of denail is fully supported; they'll continue to do nothing and/or become worse. But, if they could ACTUALLY read it at face value, and accept gradual change, that would be better.

I have had a few occasions where I was stuck listening to the conservative TV and Radio messaging. Pushing for rapid change just gets somebody labeled as a "climate change alarmist" and they are completely ignored...if not used as motivation to go roll more coal. I can recall conservative talk radio show hosts screaming about how "We all did XYZ, and the world has not gotten even 1 degree cooler!!" Obviously, there are many many problems and failings with a statement like that. The mouthpieces don't care about or even understand science; they'll shout complete nonsense at their followers and their followers will suck it up and repeat it. Taking a harder/more extreme stance on an issue they've been told doesn't exist isn't going to convince these folks...

 

[philw1776]

Not every technically astute science follower here or in science is a "climate hysteric", if we're going to use labels.
Back to stock talk.

 

[EVWatcher]

A propos... where is @Artful Dodger ?
I see now that @Kruggerand name doesn't turn blue... were they banned and then deleted their account?

@Krugerrand a bug i think

 

[GatorMeat]

Well that certainly isn't me. Although I've made nice profits over the past few decades on stocks like AAPL, AMZN, GOOG, MSFT, NVDA, etc, I "took profits" regularly and traded in and out of them fairly often. Truth is if I had simply held my shares in any of them I'd be much richer today than I am, and I've done the retrospective math to prove it to myself. And I lost money on many other stocks too, overall I made more than I lost but I made a ton of investing mistakes that never should have happened in hindsight.

Of course all of those stocks did not go up in a straight line, there were big dips and pullbacks, moments of lost conviction, tons of FUD against them all, etc. A very familiar story to what TSLA has been going through for the past forever and a while.

It's why I'm simply holding my shares of TSLA despite all the noise and flat years. I'm more convinced of Tesla's future than I ever was on any of the stocks I mentioned above, this time I'm not making the same mistake. I'm just being patient while I wait for the dough to rise in the oven I've set for myself, what I should have done for every one of the positions I had several times over above.

I'm just holding too, waiting for 400's to diversify (which I likely will get greedy and won't do). I suck at trading and just hold like a little old lady. I hate to go back and see what could have been if I didn't get scared into cash in 2007-8 for 10 years.

 

[GatorMeat]

He was clearly an idiot investor. That said....he's not wrong on his major thesis that EM has not delivered on many promises. As noted Autobidder is an exception as I think that is working and working well. The rest of it though spot on and that's the issue. EM failed to deliver on the 4680. They have no new chemistry, no increased density, no real volume production. The rest of it is mostly tied to FSD. I feel investors have a right to be upset and while it is good to see EM focused on Tesla, again, it is clear he wasn't. It's also clear that lots of his words and actions don't map. In particular in regards to 4680 and FSD. Having a giant battery day presentation and then completely failing to support battery investments- I think I'd be clawing back his comp if I were there chairman of the board.

It's nice to hear another person on this forum call it how it is. I was once a kool-aid drinker, and I should have known better. All the people, including Elon, calling it 'a deal is a deal' are ignoring that Elon has not held up his end since he hit the goals and has been awol until recently. In hind sight, most of many the "xxxx Day" presentations now appear to have been stock pump events. At best we were hoodwinked on the timelines by a decade.

 

[EVMeister]

@Krugerrand a bug i think

Not a bug, just incorrect spelling by aubreymcfato (Kruggerrand rather than Krugerrand).

 

[thx1139]

It's nice to hear another person on this forum call it how it is. I was once a kool-aid drinker, and I should have known better. All the people, including Elon, calling it 'a deal is a deal' are ignoring that Elon has not held up his end since he hit the goals and has been awol until recently. In hind sight, most of many the "xxxx Day" presentations now appear to have been stock pump events. At best we were hoodwinked on the timelines by a decade.

Yeah I dont think the goal of the compensation package was to hit and high and then have it drop massively over the next couple years while he plays lets spread conspiracies.

 

[SOULPEDL]

Holy Cow! (Can I say that still?)
Almost 300K Calls at 185 for tomorrow.
Fight-Fight-Fight!

 

[GatorMeat]

I worked in high tech. NOT a genius stock picker.
I chickened out on doing a video game startup well before Atari. The other engineer working with me was a genius. Big miss. East coast VCs were too traditional to fund us even with a demonstrable working prototype.
Hit on companies like Apple stock & that was ages before I bought any apple products. Was a big Jobs fan as a marketing innovator. For some reason I sold my Apple stock after big gains and not because I needed the money either. Sigh.
Made LOTS of money on Tesla as a Johnny Come Lately buying in in 2020 along with placing a reservation for a non-existent Model Y.
As a technologist and not a marketeer I really whiffed badly on opportunities like Google because stupidly in retrospect I did not see how the search engine portal could be monetized. DUH.
Fortunately my aggressive (Heh) mutual fund portfolio and Tesla to a much lesser extend have me living very well in retirement.

I was spending upwards of $10-20 per click on Adwords in early 2000s in a controversial industry. Had at least a 100% ROI spending thousands weekly. Wish I was smart enough to have bought GOOGL with my profits. I couldn't believe how much people were bidding up keywords and didn't think it could last.

 

[Singuy]

Been in Beijing for the past 3 days amd my observation is that the Chinese have indeed replaced many ICE cars with EVs. The air is so much cleaner than 20 years ago, last time I visited. I can actually see clouds !!

The variety of EV brand being bought here is pretty incredible and this is a major issue here. This mix will no doubt cause numerous companies to go under as they are having gross margin issues. Every taxi I have been in so far is a different EV from a brand I have never heard of. I was actually expecting more BYDs running around but actually noticed more NIOs so far for the Chinese brands. Some brands are definitely running AP visualization from Tesla (not fsd visualization). They are so lazy in their copying.

Was also in Dubai and the biggest mall had a Tesla model 3 refresh as a grand prize for something I didn't understand. That ad was everywhere. A tesla model Y was valet in front considered as a fancy car with the other G wagons Range Rovers.

 

[FastEddieB]

So he kicks me anyway. I was being honest and humble.
Maybe you were you impressed that I made all that money?

The effect of short term capital gains tax on performance should not be trivialized. It can knock as much as 37% off your actual gains.

But I guess it’s just human nature to gloss over such things.

 

[ggr]

Mod: 7 posts deleted for politics. Also, a little bit of back-and-forth banter is fine, but please don't take it too far. --ggr

 

[Singuy]

It's nice to hear another person on this forum call it how it is. I was once a kool-aid drinker, and I should have known better. All the people, including Elon, calling it 'a deal is a deal' are ignoring that Elon has not held up his end since he hit the goals and has been awol until recently. In hind sight, most of many the "xxxx Day" presentations now appear to have been stock pump events. At best we were hoodwinked on the timelines by a decade.

It has always taken years for Elon to hit his promised goals because theses goals were always near impossible.

First impossible goal was to hit a consistent positive NET margin using US workers/supply chain that doesnt exist (took 15 years since promise).

Second was to build 500k cars a year(6 years since promise)

Third was to create the most reliable and biggest charging network (8 years since promise).

Forth is L5 fsd using 500 dollars worth of equipments (WIP)

Fifth to replace the grid with batteries (WIP)

Robots (WIP)

Dojo( WIP)

4680 (WIP)

So Tesla have always taken many years to accomplish what was promised because they are not easy tasks. You didn't think investors who saw a 0% investment return from 2014-2019 after his promise of 500k car run rate and net margin were not frustrated? Maybe it was less painful to HODL because he was part of your political party?

 

[elasalle]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1796252445376749844

Semi's everyday

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

Been in Beijing for the past 3 days amd my observation is that the Chinese have indeed replaced many ICE cars with EVs. The air is so much cleaner than 20 years ago, last time I visited. I can actually see clouds !!

The variety of EV brand being bought here is pretty incredible and this is a major issue here. This mix will no doubt cause numerous companies to go under as they are having gross margin issues. Every taxi I have been in so far is a different EV from a brand I have never heard of. I was actually expecting more BYDs running around but actually noticed more NIOs so far for the Chinese brands. Some brands are definitely running AP visualization from Tesla (not fsd visualization). They are so lazy in their copying.

Was also in Dubai and the biggest mall had a Tesla model 3 refresh as a grand prize for something I didn't understand. That ad was everywhere. A tesla model Y was valet in front considered as a fancy car with the other G wagons Range Rovers.

Some of the brands are owned by the same group. BYD has 4 brands, SAIC has 7, Geely has 4 we don't see in the USA.
So knowing _actually_ how many different brands there are would be difficult.

 

[wipster]

I sold 25 shares?

So how are your balls feeling?

 

[Tony73]

When Nvidia crashes they'll be folks like that complaining on the Nvidia forums. It will crash.

TSLA is down 56% from ATH. Does that qualify as a crash ? I for one have a hard time seeing NVDA do that.

 

[Webeevdrivers]

The Tesla Energy business is far more than simple storage. The packaging is crucial, including Autobidder in the first instance, but also including direct energy supply in public supply form, as Tesla is so licensed and is active in many lucrative markets.

I am more prone to emphasize moderation in TE outlook when confronting with someone who sees minimal competition. Despite that and my own chosen deployments (which are Jinko/Huawei and second place BYD) it is unquestionable that where Tesla competes it is highly successful and will continue a high growth trajectory.

Objectively there is huge growth in this arena for nearly all competent competitors. A review of IEA data classifies the enormous potential. That potential has room for Tesla to grow exponentially for some decades. Even more so when understanding that Data manipulation in all its forms, but most strikingly in generative AI , is causing unprecedented growth in energy supplies. Those are most efficiently supplied with storage+wind+solar in most areas of the world.

What that also suggests is that Superchargers are highly likely to generate significant income and participate in the growth of VPP technologies, a Tesla strength.

Yah. I agree with some of that. I have no doubt tesla will be successful. But I also believe it is shifting away from cars. I would be surprised to see two new models the rest of this decade. And there doesn’t appear to be much interest in new markets.

Re superchargers, I’m sure they will end up being a profit centre but I doubt tesla will be involved in them by the end of the decade. This is already becoming apparent now. They will continue to finish the locations they have started but I doubt you’ll see very many permits or site surveys for new locations. They will leave that up to other market players and probably just sell them the equipment.

All jmho. Not an expert. I may be wrong. Meh.

 

[JoRoMo]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1796252445376749844

Semi's everyday

Wonder what the total range would be if they connected into their cargo ?