TSLA Market Action: 2018 Investor Roundtable

[neroden]

Pretty disturbing if true (buried in latest NY Times re-hash):

"At 6:30 a.m. on Aug. 18, three robots in the paint shop at the Tesla factory in Fremont, Calif., started malfunctioning. The incident forced a production halt on the Model 3, the key to the company’s future.

Made aware of the stoppage, Mr. Musk went to the factory and worked into the night. The problem was resolved, but Tesla reached a troubling conclusion: The robots had been infected with malware in an act of industrial sabotage. And though they could not prove it, executives suspected they knew the culprit: a rogue employee, working at the behest of short-sellers."

This does not even slightly surprise me. I've been warning that this would happen for a while.

 

[neroden]

So which of the four parts could they not prove?

1. That the robots were infected with malware?
2. That the act of the robots getting infected was an "act of industrial sabotage"?
3. That they know who did it?
4. That the person that did it did it at the behest of short-sellers?

I assume that they can prove #1, but #2 would be hard to prove without being able to prove #3 and/or #4.

Obviously they can prove #1, and #2 and #3 would be fairly easy to prove. #4 might be totally impossible to prove.

 

[neroden]

Does AI have the reasoning skill of a human?
Will it any time in the near future?
No? Then it needs better senses to compensate for its failings.

I fundamentally disagree with the idea that better senses can compensate for worse reasoning. I don't believe that works.

 

[Fact Checking]

There's a small $TSLA early-trading bump in the price, which started in the European session.

Maybe it's related to this very positive Model 3 Performance review posted today by Top Gear:

Tesla Model 3 Performance review: is it a BMW M3 and C63 rival?

Was written by Jason Barlow, with the kind of quotes that are going to convert people to Tesla. My favorite one is:

It just feels… right. Once you’ve acclimatised to the minimalist interior, you can’t help wondering why all cars aren’t designed this way. The air vents span the whole length of the cabin, there are two column stalks – wipers, and the drive selector – the 15in touchscreen is now landscape-oriented, and the hazard warning button is above your head. Whatever in-car feng shui is called, the Model 3 has it.
​

This is exactly what is needed to counter all the FUD and lies.

 

[FirebirdAlpha]

You can spare 20 minutes a day to counter some of this vile crap.

No one takes $tsla bulls seriously on Twitter because they often make some outrageous statements.

If you disagree with any one of these bullets, you're not going to be taken seriously by mainstream media or Wall St:

• The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Moody's are all generally respected organizations that have more trust and respect than Elon Musk
• Tesla's current cash position is very weak.
• There are signs of financial distress at Tesla:
  • Asking suppliers for refunds
  • Elon cracking down on contractors/suppliers
  • Elon personally approving every 1M+ expense
  • Laying off 9% of their workforce
• The Model 3 ramp has been a disaster. Q2 average production was below their Q1 target.
• Tesla is yet to verify that they have delivered 5000 Model 3s per week in any two consecutive weeks.
• SolarCity was a disasterous acquisition due to their liquidity problems and debt obligations.
• Tesla will need to raise billions for all of their projects if any are to happen before July 2020:
  • Semi
  • Pickup Truck
  • Solar Roof
  • Model Y
  • Roadster
  • Germany Factory
  • Shanghai Factory
• Tesla level 4/5 autonomous driving is still several years away.
• The $35,000 Model 3 does not appear to be coming in 2018.
• Elon Musk has been behaving erratically on Twitter and conference calls since Q2 began, to the detriment of his reputation and Tesla shareholders.
• The auto industry is unlikely to be a winner-take-all market.

You might personally disagree with these statements, but professional investors and fund managers won't.

 

[ggies07]

Mission statement requires the company to be successful. You repeatedly forget this in your selfish desire to get your car sooner, and get the full rebate. The mission is not dependent upon you getting your car.

oh get off my back And no, it's the company needs to be successful to fulfill the mission statement. I honestly don't care if people on here or in the world don't make that extra 100k because the stock didn't go up another $10 or whatever because the company chose to produce the SR to get more people driving electric. Glad people want to make money off the company, but not at the expense of keeping certain products off the market. Here, look at this again, it's from the company. It shows nothing about stock price, just the focus of expanding:

 

[Reciprocity]

Here is a nice upstanding Journalist offering to pay people for dirt on Tesla. This is the same lady who is idolizing a misogynist parking lot truther:

Sarah N. Lynch on Twitter

Her hatred for Tesla is so great, or her love for Clicks is so great, they she does not care if she is putting a misogynist up on a pedestal. These are the forces aligning against Tesla. Without smart people to counter this crap, it will only get worse.

 

[KarenRei]

I fundamentally disagree with the idea that better senses can compensate for worse reasoning. I don't believe that works.

Of course it does.

When I stare at the road ahead of me, I have to try to reason out... is that ice? Or is it wet? Is that a rock, or am I seeing things? Is that shoulder solid? Etc. Meanwhile, a vehicle which can analyze radar returns and know what's ice, what's wet, what's a rock, what the shoulder is made of, etc, etc doesn't have to reason; it already has the answer. When I look at water on the road, I have to reason out based on the surrounding contours, any objects I can see sticking up (and are they floating?), the way the waves move on the surface, etc, how deep it is - and I still might be wrong. Cars that have a past topo map of the road only need to know the current water height, and they know precisely how deep it is.

Extra senses and information can substitute for logic.

 

[lklundin]

You might personally disagree with these statements, but professional investors and fund managers won't.

I will not engage in a discussion of these points, except to say that this thread apparently have contributors that qualify as professional and as managers of funds (at least the - original - size of that of Mark BS').

 

[neroden]

Can someone tell me how is the TSLA stock valued right now? Is it I cheap expensive and on what basis? There is no EPS so that metric doesn't work. Then how do analysts come out with price targets and how do we know whether 300 is cheap, for example?

See the q3 / q4 earnings estimate threads for one example of how to value the company

 

[replicant]

overworked, depressed, stressed and without a girlfriend...
He's probably in a tough spot, lashing out at how it feels.
And since most immediate production problems are solved, there are no emotional highs and sense of achievement that come with solving issues and getting tangible results.
Just a guess...

But why do all Tesla's problem now appear related to Musk's fatigue/courage/emotions? It's a company with dozens of thousands of people!

Perhaps the boss could better highlight the work of his co-worker and stop making everything *his* problems.

 

[neroden]

Of course it does.

When I stare at the road ahead of me, I have to try to reason out... is that ice? Or is it wet? Is that a rock, or am I seeing things? Is that shoulder solid? Etc. Meanwhile, a vehicle which can analyze radar returns and know what's ice, what's wet, what's a rock, what the shoulder is made of, etc, etc doesn't have to reason; it already has the answer. When I look at water on the road, I have to reason out based on the surrounding contours, any objects I can see sticking up (and are they floating?), the way the waves move on the surface, etc, how deep it is - and I still might be wrong. Cars that have a past topo map of the road only need to know the current water height, and they know precisely how deep it is.

Extra senses and information can substitute for logic.

To some extent, but not sufficiently to really work in this case.

The classic example in driving is "That deer is at the side of the road; it has a high likelihood of jumping out in front of me." There is no sense which can substitute for this reasoning; none.

The topo map may be inaccurate due to recent road construction. Radar can give misleading signals. For full self-driving, the car has to do the reasoning, period, end of story.

 

[bdy0627]

Careful with today's and tomorrow's mandatory morning dips. With perhaps lower volume trading today and tomorrow due to upcoming holiday, TSLA may be rather vulnerable. I expect aggressive attempts to drive the share price down. If it can be driven decisively below $300 then the share price may well retest the lows. Lower end of range is around $287. It could get pushed down to the lower trend line around $265.

 

[replicant]

I think Elon's been through much worse personally (he has lost a child), but what is getting to him this time is the inherent injustice of the attacks against Tesla and him.

Elon was bullied viscously in school, and I don't think he ever expected to be bullied as a billionaire, often by being painted as a bully.

The thing is, most things Tesla are now Elon's.
Why? Does Elon has something to do with this development? Was this inevitable?

 

[FirebirdAlpha]

Here is a nice upstanding Journalist offering to pay people for dirt on Tesla. This is the same lady who is idolizing a misogynist parking lot truther:

Sarah N. Lynch on Twitter

This is blatantly false and should be deleted by mods. At leass @ggr would have slammed lies like this.

In no way is that Tweet an "offer to pay." It's just a phrase.

Reuters has a strict policy against paying sources for obvious ethical and legal reasons.

 

[Fact Checking]

Extra senses and information can substitute for logic.

Also note another dimension of this argument: it's important to have different senses with different physical characteristics:

• Human vision wavelength photons: they see details best, they are also the main visual format used by warning signs, traffic lights, clothing colors, etc. Color vision is also a very simple portable spectrograph in disguise.
  
• IR wavelength photons: improved vision at night
  
• Radio wavelength photons (radar impulses): they go through 'light' materials and get reflected by 'dense' materials such as metal or stone. They can see through foliage, rain, snow and fog. Due to the long (cm range) wavelength they don't see fine details very well.
• Air/sound waves (ultrasound phonons): they get reflected easily from any object not permeable to air, to determine closest object. Can also see objects hard to see for human vision or outside the regular camera angles: a white rock on white snow, a pet or child.

Note how flexible, redundant, fail-safe and overlapping this array of sensors is: it's very unlikely that something hazardous could approach the car without being detected by any of these sensors. Also note how superior it is to human senses: radar is able to see in fog 100m ahead, ultrasound is able to see a pet below bumper height and IR night vision has a higher chance to notice poorly illuminated people moving along the road.

Logic doesn't even play in this argument: it's the basics physics of vision that has to be robust in a self-driving sensor suit.

Also note how LIDAR doesn't bring anything unique to the above array of sensors: it's using visible/IR laser scanning to create a 3D point cloud. It's not superior to stereo (or 4-camera or 8-camera vision) in any way - it only makes the transformation of the visual scene into 3D objects easier.

And that's where LIDAR is a distraction, a dead-end, a trap: it gives a shortcut to 3D object recognition without actually helping what Tesla is trying to achieve: to improve upon the human visual cortex, which Tesla is trying to replicate with their AI chip, which works based on rasterized stereo vision. There's no "3D point cloud" representation anywhere in the human brain: it directly creates the 'Z' axis of 3D objects from stereoscopic deconstruction of textures/shapes.

 

[traxila]

No one takes $tsla bulls seriously on Twitter because they often make some outrageous statements.

If you disagree with any one of these bullets, you're not going to be taken seriously by mainstream media or Wall St:

• The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Moody's are all generally respected organizations that have more trust and respect than Elon Musk
• Tesla's current cash position is very weak.
• There are signs of financial distress at Tesla:
  • Asking suppliers for refunds
  • Elon cracking down on contractors/suppliers
  • Elon personally approving every 1M+ expense
  • Laying off 9% of their workforce
• The Model 3 ramp has been a disaster. Q2 average production was below their Q1 target.
• Tesla is yet to verify that they have delivered 5000 Model 3s per week in any two consecutive weeks.
• SolarCity was a disasterous acquisition due to their liquidity problems and debt obligations.
• Tesla will need to raise billions for all of their projects if any are to happen before July 2020:
  • Semi
  • Pickup Truck
  • Solar Roof
  • Model Y
  • Roadster
  • Germany Factory
  • Shanghai Factory
• Tesla level 4/5 autonomous driving is still several years away.
• The $35,000 Model 3 does not appear to be coming in 2018.
• Elon Musk has been behaving erratically on Twitter and conference calls since Q2 began, to the detriment of his reputation and Tesla shareholders.
• The auto industry is unlikely to be a winner-take-all market.

You might personally disagree with these statements, but professional investors and fund managers won't.

You lost me on the first bullet. All three of those organizations are run by the MAN. And so are you.

 

[scaesare]

I fundamentally disagree with the idea that better senses can compensate for worse reasoning. I don't believe that works.

I agree and said similar HERE, which might be a better place for it.

 

[replicant]

The thing is, most things Tesla are now Elon's.

I've accumulated TSLA shares since 2012. They now account for 90% of my financial assets. I also always supported Elon.
But his recent behavior makes it impossible for me to defend him publicly. It also makes it quite difficult to promote Tesla's mission with all the noise about to Elon's ego.

I won't support the company very long if Elon keeps taking all the spolight. For one, he could reserve the main annoucement for .@Tesla and retweet the company instead of mixing his personal hobbies with Tesla's business.

To those who invite TMC members to respond to trolls and FUDsters on Twitter: perhaps Elon could behave himself a little beforehand? I'm a supporter of Tesla's mission, not Elon's concierge.

 

[traxila]

I've accumulated TSLA shares since 2012. They now account for 90% of my financial assets. I also always supported Elon.
But his recent behavior makes it impossible for me to defend him publicly. It also makes it quite difficult to promote Tesla's mission with all the noise about to Elon's ego.

I won't support the company very long if Elon keeps taking all the spolight. For one, he could reserve the main annoucement for .@Tesla and retweet the company instead of mixing his personal hobbies with Tesla's business.

To those who invite TMC members to respond to trolls and FUDsters on Twitter: perhaps Elon could behave himself a little beforehand? I'm a supporter of Tesla's mission, not Elon's concierge.

Yeah I love Elon. He really needs to just shut up for a while.