TSLA Market Action: 2018 Investor Roundtable

[BioSehnsucht]

Those production choices were made at least 6 months ago, and the equipment has been ordered, paid for, and is being shipped and installed as we speak. They're not going to undo that now, nor do they have the ready ability to change the product ratios. We have imperfect, outsider knowledge of their plans. But whatever their plans are, that ship is leaving port right now. All aboard!

But examine again your assumptions on gross margins and the product mix. With EAP+FSD, a Model 3 SR gets a bonus $9K in gross margin, since there is zero incremental cost to enabling a feature already present in software. So with 2.5K Model 3 SRs, what does the take rate need to be on EAP/FSD before the SR is more profitable than the LR, due to the lower production cost of the battery?

Personally, I'm confident Tesla's new AI chip will make FSD much more popular, and further, that Tesla know much better than I what it needs to do to maximize profits in the long run.

Do we know that the new systems are only capable of building SR packs? I thought they were redesigning the packs for both SR and LR, so perhaps the new equipment can do both and they can slowly replace the old equipment with more copies of the new equipment and then have whichever mix they want.

Also, I recall the new lines being said to be faster so the mix might not be a linear extrapolation of the ratio of lines, if it can only make SR packs. Though I've heard anything from 30% to 3x faster so who knows if the news of being more efficient is accurate ...

 

[ZachF]

Don't forget Omega, Orbital, then O-ATK now we're NG regularly sends flying bits into space..

OmegA: Can Orbital ATK's New Rocket take on SpaceX and Blue Origin?

That rocket is a dinosaur built from SLS parts. Totally uncompetitive with reusable launchers

 

[wipster]

Are you Spartacus?

I'm Spartacus!

 

[bdy0627]

As he used to work for Johnson and Johnson, maybe McAnear is getting a big raise to go put a bandaid on a company. Or even more likely, he got passed over for the CAO position, so he's going elsewhere.

Thanks for your help and good luck in your future ventures.

Yep, looks like he was ready for a higher position and jumped ship for CFO.

 

[TradingInvest]

Back to market action, the latest daily short interest numbers by S3 Partners (Ihor Dusaniwsky) are out:

Ihor Dusaniwsky on Twitter

This shows that the recent drop from $300 to $252 was in significant part driven by shorting, and was interrupted by the 'circuit breaker' uptick-rule triggered last Friday. Tesla short interest increased to 33.5m shares.

My observation is that today's $TSLA price action was very bullish and impressive in face of mixed macro, negative Tesla headlines and a drop in NASDAQ.

Also note the last two days in Ihor's chart: even after the big drop shorts increased their positions by about 0.5m shares, against the rise in the stock price. This supports the notion that there's significant accumulation/buy interest present - it was probably not caused by shorts covering.

Also, those who worried that $252 would allow shorts to cover way too cheaply, that's clearly not what happened: the drop was caused by shorting and the subsequent 'bounce' caused even more shorting and a larger short interest.

"Number of shares shorted" is not the full picture. Option is a big part too. For example, if I have been shorting a lot of shares, I could have increased my short shares slightly, but closed my Puts and added Call options in significant size, end up my overall short size could be significantly reduced.

 

[wipster]

Yep, looks like he was ready for a higher position and jumped ship for CFO.

Happens all the time in business... but if it happens at Tesla that must mean "The tents are falling, the tents are falling!!!"

 

[Xpert]

This is a post I made two weeks ago while the stock was above $300. Technical indicators do work. I guess those who purchased on margin at $295, $290, $280 didn't work well.

Don't sell covered Calls near the bottom, because after rally, the buyer could gain a lot on those and leave you empty handed.

If you got in correctly based on valuation and technical indicators, don't rush to sell for a few dollars. Try to estimate the next best selling point.

Tesla has very low risk at this level. If you bought with free cash, you probably can hold the shares for another 10 years. Meanwhile, accumulate cash for the next buy point. If you bought with high margin, then you need to watch closely. You don't want to become a victim of stock manipulators.

I will post it if I see a possible sell point for these trading shares. My investment shares will stay as long as Elon holds his shares. I think he plans to hold at least 15 years.

Was it Technical indicator or was it Elon smoking weed live that caused tsla to hit your target?
And how much of a drop do your technical indicators predict now? Charts seem super bullish I’m thinking trend has reversed and we might speed pass $300 soon...not an advice.

 

[Joe F]

Don't want to dominate this board, but aren't most of the model 3's parked in Raleigh? The last weather report on Florence shows the storm heading south and Raleigh primarily getting rain, away from the main portion of the hurricane. While I feel for all the folks there and hope this isn't as bad an event as forecast, the fact it's heading south is good news for the 3's awaiting delivery or sale.

Raleigh floods, apparently easily. Latest track and rainfall does not bode well for the area. Google it. Reports already sounding grim.

 

[mltv]

... so was Cloud Computing when Amazon was just a book seller. But again I agree with you that Automobile and Cloud are apples and oranges, since Cloud Computing was a non-existent industry that Amazon invented.

I really doubt Amazon invented it. Google have a large cloud infrastructure at the time. Many other as well. They just do not know how to monetize them.

 

[wipster]

Raleigh floods, apparently easily. Latest track and rainfall does not bode well for the area. Google it. Reports already sounding grim.

Damn... expect the worst, hope for the best. Good luck to everyone over on the right coast.

 

[ZachShahan]

I think Tesla is planning a massive quarter end delivery push. Each car generates $60k. You can estimate how much cash they will bring in in the next 3 weeks. Ask your local Tesla rep you may get a sense.

My local Tesla rep said interest has surged and seems to be on the hockey stick of a demand spike. Just one source. Well, I have another outside Tesla but related to it that said something similar. More coming ...

Curious what others have heard about demand at their local stores. Anyone ask around?

 

[RobStark]

Now I expect Bezos to either buy or start selling a Tesla competitor...

Lucid Motors tried to sell itself to Ford.

Then the Saudi's. Next on the list of least to most detestable would be Jeff Bezos.

 

[Skryll]

My local Tesla rep said interest has surged and seems to be on the hockey stick of a demand spike. Just one source. Well, I have another outside Tesla but related to it that said something similar. More coming ...

Curious what others have heard about demand at their local stores. Anyone ask around?

11 million views on the Joe Rogan interview as of earlier today, demand high?

 

[ZachShahan]

11 million views on the Joe Rogan interview as of earlier today, demand high?

Good point.

 

[Zaxxon]

I really doubt Amazon invented it. Google have a large cloud infrastructure at the time. Many other as well. They just do not know how to monetize them.

This is incorrect, as far as the big public cloud platforms go. AWS was first, in mid-2006. Google App Engine came in 2008, and Microsoft Azure in 2010.

 

[KarenRei]

11 million views on the Joe Rogan interview as of earlier today, demand high?

Pun intended?

 

[RobStark]

... so was Cloud Computing when Amazon was just a book seller. But again I agree with you that Automobile and Cloud are apples and oranges, since Cloud Computing was a non-existent industry that Amazon invented.

How about running high end brick and mortar supermarkets?

 

[uselesslogin]

@Fact Checking

So people are wondering what the big overlap between Amazon and Elon Musk could be. I believe it's mainly the huge, over 10,000+ satellites large Starlink constellation SpaceX is planning to launch in the next couple of years:

Amazon sits in data center that have tens of thousands of strands of fiber running through them. The bandwidth in the fiber in the ground is essentially unlimited. The satellites will serve the least served, as Elon has already tweeted. I don't have time to write more now but Starlink isn't going to replace the existing infrastructure but instead supplement it.

 

[Remus]

Tesla uses AWS for autopilot data storage and many computing tasks.

I find the argument that Jeff Bezo is behind all those FUDs hard to believe.

 

[neroden]

...should be taking over with a big wall schedule or a spreadsheet where the manager and his staff can monitor the activity live. Customers who are traveling can be entered into the system as well with their constraint dates.

The essential problem is that Tesla does not have a solid computer system for doing this sort of communication and does not have a solid non-computer "human protocol" system for it either. It's a lack of internal communications. It doesn't really matter who's in "charge" of scheduling deliveries -- it could be anyone anywhere -- what matters is that there's some sort of database tracking the status of all the cars, that the database *works* and is maintained, and that all the people involved have appropriate access to the database (ability to update it, espcially) and ability to communicate with each other (particularly necessary when the database is inaccurate to figure out who put bad data into it / didn't put updates in). This all clearly isn't happening. It's a communications problem as well as an Information Technology weakness problem.