TSLA Market Action: 2018 Investor Roundtable

[tivoboy]

What. You mean it doesn't make sense to brag that the tariffs are filling the treasury coffers? Or that China is screwing us because there's a net trade imbalance?

Well, technically there's no overall trade imbalance since China has to buy a lot of treasuries annually to fill in the trade deficit. God help us if they have to stop doing that as we're moving into record deficits again. But, I guess Americans will just step up and buy those treasuries if the Chinese stop or slow. But wait, wouldn't that take money in the USA OUT of the economy? And, as Americans, we'd need some higher interest rates for us to hold those treasuries, so that means rates will rise. Isn't THAT great for the economy too?

(must have been on page two of DJT's economics textbook.)

 

[Jayjs20]

So much blood in the water today.

OTM Calls are still up though. People are really expecting a jump after earnings.

 

[TradingInvest]

I suspect CR's reliability survey is flawed. They can't verify any truthfulness of the feedback. They don't even know if the person actually owns the self reported brand. This is generally not an issue for common brands. It's a major problem for Tesla. CR normally gets 200~400 samples for each model year, Tesla's sample size should be smaller than that. When the sample size is so small, the result can be easily screwed by intentional bad answers.

There are many people that hate Tesla so much: Tesla shorts, car dealers, people from ICE, oil and coal industry... whenever I read an article online, I see many posts that they really hate Tesla and Elon. Imagine how these people, especially the Tesla shorts, would fill the reliability survey?

Tesla should figure out a way to publish their true reliability data.

 

[lklundin]

These are all well known numbers: both Panasonic and Tesla are saying that Panasonic cell output is the limit.

Tesla disclosed that their current supply is 20 GWh/year. With 80kWh in a LR pack that's 685 packs/day, 4,795 LR packs/week.

That's a hard limit, to be increased to 35 GWh later this year but not fast enough to capture full tax credit customers.

That's the main reason for MR: they want to go beyond production of ~65k in Q4, and given the 80%+ take-rate of EAP they want to sell more units.

Taking a step back, this implies that at some point which can hardly be before June where 5k/week was reached, Tesla realized that their production was large enough that they would be battery constrained for the remainder of the year.

They then concluded that to maximize (Q4) sales they needed to bring to market a whole new variant of their already new car - and that while they were still striving to mass produce it in its default configuration.

So only about 3-4 months can have passed from Tesla realize that they need a new Model 3 variant until they have the specs out and start taking orders for it - for the purpose of delivering a significant number of it in the two last months of the year.

Naturally, Tesla could have had plans for the lemur conceived well in advance, but still with their ability to adapt their cars as they see fit I can honestly understand how the incumbent car makers see the Tesla way of making cars as unfathomable. I can't even begin to imagine how much longer it would take for an ICE maker to bring a new engine variant to market.

And now back to waiting for the Q3 ER...

 

[Leo9]

It's scary to hold in this market. Tesla could report excellent numbers and still take a huge beating like Netflix. I have some November 9 290$ calls purchased the day of the SEC lawsuit. I'm not sure if I should sell or hold.
I will hold my shares.

 

[beachbum77]

That trade lost about half a million dollars by selling in a dumb fashion (possibly more, as price was rebounding) - price immediately recovered. Even a simple VWAP sale would have netted much more.

So this was either a dumb sale, or a panicked sale, or price manipulation.

You joking? The stock just rallied over 10% yesterday. If they bought under $260 they are banking a whopper of a profit. I left money on the table yesterday when I sold Nov options at $5.50 that have since gone over $6.00. So what? I bought at $1.52. Not everyone owns TSLA over $300.

 

[RobStark]

And a base F-150 is only 30 centimetres longer than a Model X. Given that the bumper of a pickup usually sticks out about that much further behind the rear wheels than the bumper of a SUV behind its rear wheels, that's pretty much a match.

Come on now. Are you really going to make me point out that I repeatedly pointed out that you get a far better lightness-bank-for-your-buck by cutting cell cost-per-kWh and redirecting money into reducing frame mass, than you do by increasing cell energy density? I was literally talking about how chassis mass reductions are the affordable way to keep costs down.

Payload and tow rating for unibody Model X is no where near that for body on frame F Series, although the Model X drivetrain can handle it.

Reducing chassis mass reduces utility of the pickup truck.

Again, Tesla is gunning at F Series not unibody fuax pickups.

Even urban cowboys wont buy the Tesla pickup if real truck users ridicule the truck.

 

[UnknownSoldier]

So this is an overheated economy with hiking interest rates. What are the parallels? 2009 presumably but no one thinks banks are at risk this time. I don't understand the level of fear here... who's the macro wizards here?

Market volatility is bigger than ever due to HFT and algo-bots. Indexing and passive investing forces constant capital entry so there is more capital sloshing around than ever before. The market has never been this unstable but as usual no one will do anything about it until after another major crash. And this time the neoliberals aren't in power and populist sentiment is at an all-time high so trying to solve the next crash will be very interesting.

 

[sweter]

Interesting food for thought:

Ford today is expected to report Q3 revenue of ~$34 billion.

Luv's model is expecting Q3 revenue of ~$6.8 billion, or 1/5th of Ford for Tesla. Q1 Tesla revenue was $3.4b, or 1/10th of Ford... So since the beginning of the year Tesla has increased revenue by the equivalent of 10% of Ford's revenue.

Ford's revenue is the same as it was in 1998.

I hear you. But at the same time I think it's kinda unfair to compare revenue growth of companies at two very different stages.

I suspect CR's reliability survey is flawed. They can't verify any truthfulness of the feedback. They don't even know if the person actually owns the self reported brand. This is generally not an issue for common brands. It's a major problem for Tesla. CR normally gets 200~400 samples for each model year, Tesla's sample size should be smaller than that. When the sample size is so small, the result can be easily screwed by intentional bad answers.

There are many people that hate Tesla so much: Tesla shorts, car dealers, people from ICE, oil and coal industry... whenever I read an article online, I see many posts that they really hate Tesla and Elon. Imagine how these people, especially the Tesla shorts, would fill the reliability survey?

Tesla should figure out a way to publish their true reliability data.

So when CR publishes raving reviews of Tesla cars and are excited by OTA brakes fix we love them and they're the only ones who understand Tesla, but when they publish something negative they're being unfair and lying?

 

[Fact Checking]

You joking? The stock just rallied over 10% yesterday. If they bought under $260 they are banking a whopper of a profit.

Don, are you joking? If they bought at $255 and sold 280k shares in such a fashion with a nasty ~$5 slippage then they lost about 12% of their profits on that sloppy trade.

If they bought at $270 then this sloppy trade cost them 19% of profits.

Selling a single block of shares sized at about 5 times the average volume per minute at that time is inexcusable as a position closing move. If this was any professional firm then those ~$1.4m would go straight out of that trader's share or bonus pool.

 

[SO16]

So when CR publishes raving reviews of Tesla cars and are excited by OTA brakes fix we love them and they're the only ones who understand Tesla, but when they publish something negative they're being unfair and lying?

One is experienced first hand by consumers reports reviewers and the other is based on a possible small data set of responses from hopefully “truthful” readers.

 

[humbaba]

Maybe both? I have a pretty good idea I am “getting taken” at the traditional dealers. The price tweaking I have learned to do is helpful but incremental. (Their knuckles haven’t turned white yet either)

My best purchasing experience was when an ex-car salesman did the negotiating. It was eye opening. If you aren't shunted to a manager you are being taken. The whole thing went something like this:

us: "here's our offer $xxxx"
them: "lol"
us: "here's our offer $xxxx"
them: "let me know when you're serious"
us: "we are serious, want it or not?"
them: "um... let me get a manager"

dealerships know that most people who walk never come back. They will try very hard to get you to stay. In the above instance I got a very nice price. In part because they planned on getting over on me in payments.* That didn't work because I already had a loan approved from my bank. They told me the bank would never do it, including as I handed them the check.

the last vehicle purchased from a dealer, my wife went and checked and back and forth for months. Dealer was worn out, so when she offered 80% of blue book for a vehicle he took it without question.

* sometimes they get a bit over zealous and accidentally get usurious. That's illegally high interest rates. I know someone who that actually happened to. The salesman got carried away in marking the sale price down in order to get a sale (all they care about is payments/loan term) and accidentally hit something like 30%. After sale was done and this was discovered they had to reduce payments to the legal limit.

 

[EVNow]

So when CR publishes raving reviews of Tesla cars and are excited by OTA brakes fix we love them and they're the only ones who understand Tesla, but when they publish something negative they're being unfair and lying?

Either way we should be careful about the whole CR survey. It is simply not statistically sound - self selection, no weighting etc etc.

Its really no different at this time than a random survey on a website.

 

[hobbes]

Interesting food for thought:

Ford today is expected to report Q3 revenue of ~$34 billion.

Luv's model is expecting Q3 revenue of ~$6.8 billion, or 1/5th of Ford for Tesla. Q1 Tesla revenue was $3.4b, or 1/10th of Ford... So since the beginning of the year Tesla has increased revenue by the equivalent of 10% of Ford's revenue.

Ford's revenue is the same as it was in 1998.

Or in other words: Tesla doubled its revenue from Q1 to Q3 (if the prediction of 6.8 billion holds)

 

[dc_h]

I hear you. But at the same time I think it's kinda unfair to compare revenue growth of companies at two very different stages.



So when CR publishes raving reviews of Tesla cars and are excited by OTA brakes fix we love them and they're the only ones who understand Tesla, but when they publish something negative they're being unfair and lying?

I’m not sure it was questioning CR, more the possibilities of hacking the process. With teslove and taslahate such a religious issue, some loons trying to cheat the ratings is not unbelievable.
I’m not saying it’s not right, but would like to better understand the sampling methodology.

 

[abasile]

Elon did announce 2 days ago that V9 Nav to Pilot is "coming soon" so it must be making headway. Maybe we'll get a glimpse into that new AI chip eh? Then maybe a big deal with Saudi's on Solar farm (or not), but something else would be needed for the return to $350 in a down market, especially automotive. Coinciding with Ford's ER might be interesting in contrast.

In the near term, I wouldn't count on current AI advances moving the stock much. Nav on Autopilot will be great, but it seems to me that it's mostly a mashup of existing capabilities (nav route finding, Autosteer, and auto lane change).

Even on V9, Autopilot (actually Auto Steer) fails miserably on curvy roads. I have tried V9 Autopilot in our Model 3 on our local mountain roads, which are well marked and mostly well maintained. I still have to seize control to prevent the car from drifting over the double yellow line in the middle of the road. While I'm optimistic that the new AI chip will improve overall accuracy, I'm not expecting FSD miracles overnight. My confidence level will improve when Autopilot can reliably stay in a lane and maintain appropriate speed on any state highway.

 

[RobStark]

If CR doesn't have a viable sample for a particular car they don't report a rating for that car.

Tesla does not allow JD Power or Strategic Vision to get access to Tesla owners addresses through the DMV to mail them surveys.

So CR's self selected samples is the best statistics we are going to get.

Fans of every brand that ends up in the bottom third always bitch ad infinitum that CR methods are not valid.

And they still influence about 20% of new car buyers in the USA.

 

[printf42]

I would say the attempts to walk down the SP today ranges from “kinda cute” to “outright ugly”.

 

[beachbum77]

Don, are you joking? If they bought at $255 and sold 280k shares in such a fashion with a nasty ~$5 slippage then they lost about 12% of their profits on that sloppy trade.

If they bought at $270 then this sloppy trade cost them 19% of profits.

Selling a single block of shares sized at about 5 times the average volume per minute at that time is inexcusable as a position closing move. If this was any professional firm then those ~$1.4m would go straight out of that trader's share or bonus pool.

Who buys at $270 and sells at $275-272? You have no idea what their entry point was or their motivation for selling. Get over it. If you are selling off 280k shares to move quickly into a new position where timing matters, you are not going to sit there and make 56 trades @ 5k each to avoid a small drop.in SP. We see these large orders all the time.

 

[TradingInvest]

Be careful if you use a lot of margin.