Holy crap. I can take the rollercoaster of the Elon Musk Experience and the SP ride, but catching up with this forum twice a day is taking a massive toll on my available free time
So, after dredging through, 25 pages this morning - 20 pages = 1 hour in my experience, here's some responses rolled-up into one single post that you can easily skip.
TL;DR - not selling anything, I'm going down with the ship or up to Mars on the BFR, not sure which as of yet...
Musk has lost his mind. First he calls Montana Skeptic "Hannah Montana", now this.
Actually, he referred to MS as "she" and I responded that he mean HM, which he then responded to with the twerking photo. No idea if he meant HM from the outset, I guess Montana is a girlie name in the USA too, right?
The extreme hypocrisy on this board baffles me! 95% of the people on this board wanted Elon to fight the SEC and said they were helping shorts. If you can’t handle Elon saying what ALL of us were thinking, get out.
I wanted him to fight the SEC charges as I think they're not correct on this, but when he settled, I decided to move-on. So I'm not sure why he's stirring the pot again, but I do know he has a strong aversion to injustice, so can just be that.
But now the tweet about v9 rollout progress almost seems like business as usual, makes me think he isn't planning to step down after all!
Yeah, don't think he's drunk or anything, he's just angry.
Are we calming down now? Where did all these hysterical people come from?
Always the same when there's some kind of shitstorm ongoing - loads of trolls suddenly show up and a few that were borderline reveal themselves for what they truly are.
Apart from a few snide comments, I haven't really commented about this news. My take (and it starts with Elon's tweets:
In each case, I started writing a reply, about how yes, but the company's value is boosted by a perceived benefit of being a trendsetter led by a renegade upstart, and that Musk's actions eliminate this boost, as well as opening up the company to potential liability. But each time, I stopped myself, because, honestly, at a fundamental level...
He's right.
Tesla is not Musk. Musk could die in a plane crash tomorrow, JB would take over, and business would keep going as usual. I'm not even sure that there's an actual stock benefit to Musk's presence right now. I actually think the opposite, that he has a depressing effect on the stock. I don't believe that, fundamentally, Tesla's high revenue to market cap ratio is due to Musk; it's due to Tesla's reputation. Yes, the market would freak out if Musk was gone, but as soon as the next several pieces of good news come out about how the company is eating everyone's lunches in the march toward the future (electric vehicles), people would remember why they invested in the company to begin with.
Remember the freakout over Eberhard's departure? People left and right threatening to cancel their Roadster orders? How did that play out? People forgot about it amazingly fast, because... well, Tesla is Tesla. A damned good company making damned good things.
Once you stop caring so much about the "how will the market react if Musk is gone???" panic, you realize that what you're left with is... Tesla. And that remains a great thing. And even if people forget that for a few weeks, reality will keep butting its head in.
Does that mean I want Elon gone? Hell no; I love his aggressive moat-bridging strategies. Would I like him to be filtered on Twitter and to take a vacation? Hell yes. But ultimately, he's right. This is noise.
So Elon is having some "human time" right now on Twitter. I write "human time" because it's oh so easy to forget, Elon is a person too, a person who's going through some pretty awful times right now, and wants to vent. We take for granted that we can come here and vent our feelings and hear back from our peers who share our interests. Strangers. Friends. Foes who you love to hate. It's why we're bloody well here. But Elon can't do it without the entire world freaking out and billions of dollars disappearing overnight.
And he's clearly taken the attitude: "Well, F*** that." What matters "probable value of future cash flows". Wall Street can think he's the freaking devil, it doesn't matter; he has no plans to turn to them for capital. So long as Musk doesn't cut into Tesla's fundamentals - sales and margins - it's immaterial. And FYI, most of the things we freak out about, like him smoking pot on Joe Rogan, actually only serve to increase demand by increasing Tesla's publicity and establishing him as an iconoclast that you either love or hate. Yes, he does take it too far sometimes - he needs a filter to catch the actually damaging controversial statements (e.g. "pedo guy"), versus the ones that just freak out the market for a week or two.
But in general, he's right: it's noise. It's all those dips on the stock chart from months ago that you can't even remember why they happened.
Now, could the noise hurt him, rather than Tesla? Of course. Bit by bit, "outside forces" (pressure from institutional shareholders, mandates from the SEC, etc) have been weakening his hold on Tesla. He could be thrown to the wolves at any point. Does he fully grok that? Maybe; I don't know. But as a shareholder, it's not Musk's fate (and the temporary dip that would follow his ouster) that I care about. It's the long-term horizon.
Keep some dry powder. Expect freakouts. Maintain an investment horizon, and don't let it be too short. And watch the fundamentals. Elon is not a fundamental. The ability to massively scaleup sales while growing margins is what we care about.
Longs shouldn’t care about the daily stock price unless we are looking for buying opportunities.
This is a great post. Tesla is where they are today thanks to Elon's vision, ambition and determination. Does that mean he's needed to push it forward to the next level? I don't know the answer to that, but he has my total trust, regardless.
Maybe he is trying to trigger the up-tick rule?
Excellent plan - drop the stock 10% on purpose to stop it dropping 5% from shorting!
He *never* cared about that.
Don't actually agree with this. He's seemingly not motivated on a personal level by money, after all he has enough now that he can live any life he pleases. However, Mars colonisation needs funding, so that's what he's after.
What are you referring to? I don't see any follow-up tweets.
On Twitter you beed to go to @elonmusk and click on the "Tweets and replies"
Oh no - he is still on Twitter. Is there an app that can send notifications to me when EM is on twitter ?
Erm yes, it's called "Twitter" - you can set a notification for when Elon tweets
Short selling is often unpopular with retail and with the more ignorant or cynical kind of politician, but I've never met a serious economist or market participant who didn't understand it makes the market more efficient and less prone to over-shoot.
Sounds all very nice, but an idealistic and naïve point of view. When shorting is used as a tool to manipulate the SP, that's another thing, when the shorts spend all their time spreading FUD and lying about the company on social media that's another level again.
If you’re talking about TT007, from what I’ve seen, he plays options a lot and has lost a ton from that. Holding out doesn’t help much when your calls expire worthless.
He was holding around 55k common shares until the some months ago, then he converted all to options.
52 is young. For some of us 52 sounds very young.
Yah, I'm young!!
That’s almost 5x the average daily volume. How could 51m shares be accumulated without a significant increase in price?
So how long does it take for Deepak to work through the numbers for the quarter? Is it something that Elon would have known on Monday 10/1? Or does it take some days for confirmation? If they were good, would it be reasonable to expect Elon to somehow share this information, especially with the stock tanking? Because we haven't heard anything, is that a bad sign?
Thing is, are Tesla/Elon allowed to say anything before the Q3ER? And why aren't they allowed to say anything? Why do they need to wait? Is this this US company law?