TSLA Market Action: 2018 Investor Roundtable

[SpaceCash]

You have got to be kidding me. Is this a joke?

NVDA
AMD
AAPL
MSFT
NFLX
FB

And that's just tech companies. The list of stocks where I could be a millionaire today right now if I had invested in them early on is probably at least half of the S&P 500. In fact just list out the top 100 in the S&P 500 and there you go. All of those would have yielded more than TSLA has if I had a time machine.

Hell, if I could time travel, I could travel back in time to 1902 and spend $5 on shares of Philip Morris & Co. You heard of them? I would be a billionaire if I went back to 1902 and did that and then came back to today and looked at my investment in what is today called Altria Group.

You misread the post and this is not constructive

 

[EVMeister]

You misread the post and this is not constructive

Indeed. He just reinforced the point he was arguing against. Also, there is a differerence between losing money and simply not gaining money.

 

[dondy]

Tesla is NOT a private business; that’s the whole point. Tesla is a publicly traded company owned by its shareholders, including Elon at about one-fifth of the company, but also tens of thousands of other investors, protected by rules and regulations.

I don’t know why fining Elon $20m would be anymore admittance of wrong-doing than settling. Yes, Tesla should have had the controls in place, but who decided that it doesn’t? The man, against whom no one dare speak up. Elon should be the first one to see this as a risk to mission and seek to remediate. Elon/Tesla need strong, reasonable, diligent bulls to point to the real risks, instead of leaving the dissent to TSLAQ nonsense. Just my 2c.

Indeed Tesla is a public traded company governed by existing rules and regulations, controlled by a board of directors voted and appointed by the biggest shareholders. Unless you performed control-share acquisition you opinion is just an opinion of a bystander.
As "everybody knows", and as Mark Cuban so eloquently explained the settling with SEC is useful even if you know you are right. Civil trials are buggy in US, SEC has no proper legislation brackets, and the whole system is just one big mess. So no, the settling with SEC provide no "mea culpa", it is even written in the text of it. Tesla's fine would do that on the other hand. And how are you going to fine Musk? Take his salary? LOL.

Tesla needs time and appropriate financial coverage. They don't need "bulls"- "bulls" brought 2017 and made mess from 2016.
Musk wants long investors who share his vision about what this blue ball needs.
Tesla is not a financial company, it was not established in order to quickly enrich it's investors, and it is not Tesla's duty or obligation to follow any arbitrary non clear defined rules of "CEO behavior", "controls" etc. You are always free to try to take company over (you can't because Musk keeps control package, in more ways apparently), or just leave.

To the normal members:
I feel very stupid I didn't see the obvious reason of this "disturbance of force" which manifested in April-September events. The reason which knocked Musk down for a good while.
While it is quite obvious if to look close enough.
As all of you know Musk got very special pay-package in the middle of march, which tied him to Tesla for another 10 years. Instead of eating fast-"food" you are so conveniently fed by MM, think a bit, and ask/ answer few obvious questions.
why did he get this package, who introduced it and why. Probably it is useful to refer to Musk plans he was voicing in 2016, 2017 but I don't think it is even necessary. It is just so obvious if to think strait for a second.

 

[UnknownSoldier]

Indeed. He just reinforced the point he was arguing against. Also, there is a differerence between losing money and simply not gaining money.

In a bull market, not gaining money is the same as losing money. Do you understand this? If a person can simply put their money into Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF and make more money than owning any individual shares of some single company, they have actually lost money.

You could have invested in Ford. Or GE. But holding a position in Tesla saved you from that fate.

I'm primarily a tech sector investor as I invest for growth. F and GE wouldn't even have been on my radar to begin with.

Now BA on the other hand, I missed out on that one. Sigh.

 

[EVMeister]

I understand the point you're making, but fundamentally disagree with your lack of distinguishing between a loss and lack of a gain. They're two different things and you're conflating them. Just like holding shares in a company as the shares go down in value is not a loss... Unless you sell or they never recover.

By your logic you're always losing money unless you make perfect investment choices. That's a very bleak way to look at things. And if you were a perfect investor unable to do things any better. Well... I doubt you'd be here.

 

[Artful Dodger]

I have a feeling this was taken out of context. Every manufacturer of driver's cars wants to make the car as stiff as possible. Aftermarket modders keep making and buying parts to make the chassis stiffer. What do you mean "too stiff"? Sounds ridiculous.

Early Model 3s were too stiff. Tesla switched to softer springs in production sometime in Spring 2018, and offered free replacements to all existing owners. Munro did their teardown on an early Model 3 with stiff springs.

 

[M3Rider]

If the government wants to be fair to all manufacturers, they need to limit the entire industry to a certain date or a certain number of vehicles they can all compete for.

The current structure is not only unfair, it is BIASED against Tesla. They make EV's only and first mover has to expend XXXXX effort to bring a product to market. 2nd mover expends XXXX. 3rd mover expends XXX, etc.

The time it takes Jaguar to produce and sell 200,000 iPaces might be infinite but each iPace has an unfair advantage over a Model 3, S and X.

I can’t believe this is needing to be elaborated and expanded on..

If Jaguar takes infinite time to produce and sell 200k, like 10k/year, then it doesn't really matter to Tesla. They are not a competitor. Eventually, once there's enough total supply of EVs, incentive will go away and companies that didn't use it early will lose out on potential sales. My opinion though is that U.S. should not be subsidizing R&D of non U.S. companies, which seems to be the point of 200k limited credits.

Once incentive goes away, then those who waited are the losers, so this is not particularly "biased against Tesla". I agree that the first ones encounter higher costs, but they also have a potential of higher rewards due to captured market share.

 

[KarenRei]

I don't think it is: the Ryukyu Trench is behind Japan when viewed from Shanghai - Japan is "shielding" Shanghai from most of the Ryukyu Trench waves reaching Shanghai directly.

The wave height of tsunamis also decreases with distance and Ryuku Trench is thousands of kms away from Shanghai.

(Difference between "predicted wave heights" and maximum recorded wave heights = local topography)

 

[SpaceCash]

If Jaguar takes infinite time to produce and sell 200k, like 10k/year, then it doesn't really matter to Tesla. They are not a competitor. Eventually, once there's enough total supply of EVs, incentive will go away and companies that didn't use it early will lose out on potential sales. My opinion though is that U.S. should not be subsidizing R&D of non U.S. companies, which seems to be the point of 200k limited credits.

Once incentive goes away, then those who waited are the losers, so this is not particularly "biased against Tesla". I agree that the first ones encounter higher costs, but they also have a potential of higher rewards due to captured market share.

I hadn't even considered it until today but that point about "US should not subsidize foreign EV companies" rings SO true. Wtf are we doing there...

In fact, all things considered I'm pretty much against any more EV subsidies at all. Tesla has established itself and deserves to reap the benefits.

 

[Brando]

They're adding GF1 cell lines now, but they could have done that previously and put the excess into TE instead of strangling TE. And they can likely add more lines yet to GF1 even without another building 'module' being erected, but if not, well, it might be a tight race but I think they can add a module to GF1 to add cell lines faster than from scratch (including bringing in utilities to the site, etc) build a module of GF3 in China to add cell lines there.

They should have just been printing money with TE for the past ~2 years until Model 3 finally ramped instead of letting GF1 cell production become a bottleneck right when it was needed (instead of shifting cell production from TE to Model 3 as needed). And if they had done that, and kept expanding GF1 accordingly to keep TE going, they could then shift some TE in the future to China and do Tilburg style assembly while they finish building GF3.

Instead, they can't, because they were too obsessed with Model 3 ramp to the exclusion of all else.

As I remember, it wasn't the CELL PRODUCTION, it was the PACK PRODUCTION that was the bottleneck.
Or am I wrong here?

And we know that storage vs vehicle use profiles are different, but are we sure that BOTH are using a different chemistry?
They were, but things are changing so fast it is hard to keep up - and no doubt a trade secret too?

 

[Esme Es Mejor]

Any longs who just sat there in TSLA while it has done nothing for 2 years has missed out on the opportunity cost of the broader market gaining in value.

Nope.

TSLA Oct 14, 2016 $196.51
TSLA today $271.78
38.3% gain

S&P 500 Oct 14, 2016 $2132.98
S&P 500 today $2809.21
31.7% gain

 

[mongo]

As I remember, it wasn't the CELL PRODUCTION, it was the PACK PRODUCTION that was the bottleneck.
Or am I wrong here?

And we know that storage vs vehicle use profiles are different, but are we sure that BOTH are using a different chemistry?
They were, but things are changing so fast it is hard to keep up - and no doubt a trade secret too?

Pack production was the problem, so they could have made TE cells instead of idling cell lines.

Yes on different chemistries, NCA for vehicles (heading to 0 on the Cobalt), NMC for TE.

 

[Thekiwi]

I hadn't even considered it until today but that point about "US should not subsidize foreign EV companies" rings SO true. Wtf are we doing there...

In fact, all things considered I'm pretty much against any more EV subsidies at all. Tesla has established itself and deserves to reap the benefits.

EV incentives arent supposed to be primarily about supporting local EV production - they are about encouraging the transition to carbon free transport.

For instance, most countries worldwide that have EV incentives do not produce Autos. Would you want all these countries to eliminate subsidies for EVs produced in other countries (like from the USA)?

 

[Fact Checking]

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(Difference between "predicted wave heights" and maximum recorded wave heights = local topography)

Indeed, today I get "F" in reading maps ...

My point about the islands is still valid: they'll act as wave breakers, significantly reducing the energy of the tsunami.

Then it would have to travel ~4km inland over a 5m+ buffer zone.

 

[BLSmith2112]

I keep looking for Market Action related stuff but I've barely seen any. I find myself coming here less and less and less. Most of this looks like General Discussion to me.

 

[UnknownSoldier]

I understand the point you're making, but fundamentally disagree with your lack of distinguishing between a loss and lack of a gain. They're two different things and you're conflating them. Just like holding shares in a company as the shares go down in value is not a loss... Unless you sell or they never recover.

By your logic you're always losing money unless you make perfect investment choices. That's a very bleak way to look at things. And if you were a perfect investor unable to do things any better. Well... I doubt you'd be here.

The goal is to always become a better investor. If your goal is to simply do as well as the market, buy the index fund. So yes, no one is perfect and that includes Warren Buffett. But you want to become better every day, because the alternative is to work your whole lifetime until the day you die and I'm not about that kind of life.

 

[Fact Checking]

As I remember, it wasn't the CELL PRODUCTION, it was the PACK PRODUCTION that was the bottleneck.
Or am I wrong here?

Panasonic said that they are the current bottleneck and that they are now expanding cell production.

 

[Esme Es Mejor]

if you had simply sold your entire TSLA stake every time it got to 350 and bought it again when it dropped to 260 the last 2 years you would have made a lot of money instead of just sitting on it.

I did something similar— selling above 360, buying below 300, buying hard around 250. Was nowhere close to optimal— I missed tops and bottoms by quite a bit— but it worked out well overall. People who tried the same strategy in 2013 got killed. No way to know in advance which approach is better at any given time.

 

[AWDtsla]

Early Model 3s were too stiff. Tesla switched to softer springs in production sometime in Spring 2018, and offered free replacements to all existing owners. Munro did their teardown on an early Model 3 with stiff springs.

I think that's even more context lost. He's talking about the chassis not the suspension.

 

[Thekiwi]

As mentioned by others over the last few days, the lack of an earnings date yet seems rather curious.

What are the odds Musk wants to surprise the market with a positive earnings announcement at short notice - which wouldn’t give the shorts time to position themselves properly and/or have the FUD articles ready to drop?

As I understand it (and I could be wrong) a company is not required to give advance notice when releasing results?