TSLA Market Action: 2018 Investor Roundtable

[Artful Dodger]

Anyone got a link to a transcript of the Earning Call yet? Bueller?

 

[KarenRei]

I can't do it.

I consider my TSLA position overexposed. My plan has always been to start selling at market open after the Q3 report based on the premarket, and then set various sell points above that. After seeing the disappointing after-market numbers, I scaled that down to, "Just sell enough at open - say, 5% or so - to not feel too overexposed, wait a day for the market to settle, and then decide on sell points after that."

But I just can't sell at $318 immediately after such a blockbuster report. That's nonsense of the highest order. Don't get me wrong, I still expect Tesla to get fudded down repeatedly this quarter, and the stock to remain highly volatile. And I want to be ready to buy the lows. But I simply can't let shares go this cheap after an earnings report like that. Just can't.

I don't think the market has time to really digest what this report does to their previous assumptions about the company, and I think there's too many people doing exactly what I was thinking about doing. Analyst upgrades might be a better time for selling.

 

[sweter]

This looks so funny on Yahoo... And it's gonna be even funnier for Q4 apparently

 

[TheMrX]

pre market creeping back up

 

[neroden]

Tesla's FSD valuation should be much more than $100b IMO, Waymo is valued at around $175b, and they have inferior technology to Tesla's

That's certainly true. Waymo is hopeless.

 

[anthonyj]

Wow, it hit 304.44 after opening bell yesterday, and now it flirted with $310 in the premarket. 2% after an amazing quarter... shorts aren’t covering. I feel like it’s going to pull a Netflix unless we get some crazy surprise news soon. I’ve attached my position to the post so I don’t get called a troll for being negative. To be honest I went all in at 380 after Elon’s tweet and happy to be green thanks to calls. Last 10 weeks have been absolute hell... I’ve learned why Elon hates the media and shorts.

 

[Yggdrasill]

Subheadline: "Under the hood: heavy debt, supplier IOUs and dwindling cash"

The sub-headline contains three parts: the first is true but irrelevant given their free cash flow; the second applies to literally every company (that's what accounts payable is), and the third is a flat-out lie. A FCF of nearly a billion dollars can in no way, shape or form be called "dwindling cash". That's a literal contradiction to the word "dwindling".

If you scroll down, what they're actually saying is, if we pretend that Tesla is forced to pay all of its 2019 debt today, and if every customer cancels today, why, then in this contrived scenario they'd be in a low cash position! They might as well have thrown a Godzilla attack into their scenario.

I suspect they wrote the article ahead of time, and then tried to shoehorn the actual numbers into the article...

 

[Fact Checking]

I just think it's irrelevant to the question of when we'll get full self driving, because they're not looking at the problem of how to teach the neural network to drive. Teaching it to recognize objects is all very well, but it still has to learn how to drive. When Tesla starts working on that, *then* I'll get optimistic.

There must be a big misunderstanding here: I don't think Tesla intends to use NN learning to learn to drive. The NN is largely used for vision, with perhaps a higher level NN on the side to recognize and label dangers.

Driving is currently implemented using procedural, deterministic programming, based on the 3D object space provided by the vision NN.

I don't expect this to change with FSD: and I think Tesla has this part implemented largely and it's part of the AutoPilot software stack.

This is a well defined problem space, where the most difficult part is to recognize, create and label the 3D object space from 8 HD cameras sending over 1 billion pixels of RGB data every second, which is a huge amount of data to process ...

"Driving" is still a complex part, but much less computationally intense, much more complete and mature - and also a lot more certain.

Put differently: it would be absolutely crazy to let an NN drive: it cannot be audited, has no real safeguards when sensors fail and is also largely non-deterministic with "weird" and largely untestable modes of failure.

(And yes, a logical conclusion is that it's crazy and dangerous to let humans drive - and there's a million dead people every year in traffic accidents as a result.)

 

[neroden]

It's odd how few people consider what adding production of 200,000 units/year in an existing factory does for the bottom line. The "Tesla looses money on every car" thesis was really weird.

It's beyond odd. I've been gawping, with my jaw dropping, about it for years.

The number of people who don't seem to be able to understand basic economies of scale (fixed costs vs. variable costs) is far, far larger than I would ever have imagined, and it includes far, far too many people working as Wall Street "analysts".

I mean, I thought Wall Street analysts were bad, and I knew most people who invested in stocks were incompetent, but before I witnessed this, I would never have believed that so many of them could be unable to understand something this basic. It really is Finance 101, Economics 101, Business 101 material.

It simply astounds me. I've explained this to so many people. While I understand that random people off the street might not be capable of understanding this basic math, anyone who is working in anything remotely related to business management or financial anything ought to understand it, and it seems like over half of them don't.

Gobsmacking.

 

[Leo9]

Apparently the new bear thesis is that Tesla is cooking the book.
I kid you not.

 

[Sancho]

I spend over 30 minutes, daily, reading this forum, an enormous allocation of my time. Perhaps it’s an obsession, but it’s not just about making money.

Only a tiny fraction of people I know (almost all highly educated) appreciate how transformative Tesla and Musk are. What Tesla and Musk are accomplishing is worth the time thinking about because they are game changing in so many important ways.

The advent of the internet has given this tiny fraction of people this unique place to meet and share our ideas.

As a greater part of the world wakes up this morning to our realization, perhaps this forum will not be needed going forward, but given Elon’s fertile mind and considerable resources, I believe the challenge of keeping up with him is just beginning.

Cheers to the longs, yes, and to all of you who have enriched my understanding of the predictable future.

 

[neroden]

There must be a big misunderstanding here: I don't think Tesla intends to use NN learning to learn to drive.

Then I stand by my statement that they haven't even started working on full self-driving.

The NN is largely used for vision, with perhaps a higher level NN to recognize and label dangers.

Driving is currently implemented using procedural, deterministic programming, based on the 3D object space provided by the vision NN.

Perhaps you're right. If so, this part is not even close to implemented yet; they haven't even given the problem specification. As I've said.

I don't expect this to change with FSD: and I think Tesla has this part implemented largely and it's part of the AutoPilot software.

:laughs: Yeah. That doesn't know how to drive yet, not even close.

This is a well defined problem space, where the most difficult part is to recognize, create and label the 3D object space.

This is where I disagree with you. It's a very poorly defined problem space and the problem hasn't been specified. I've given numerous examples in the past.

Obviously if they can't even recognize objects they have a problem, but even if they can, the driving problem is actually hard. You're acting like it's easy. It's not.

"Driving" is still a complex part, but much less computationally intense, much more complete and mature - and also a lot more certain.

Maybe less computationally intense, but neither complete nor mature. Not even close. I again repeat that they're not even working on it seriously yet.

Wake me when they are actually working on autonomous driving and not just on identifying objects.

 

[HG Wells]

Right. I have, there are three in my town. You don't know what to do when you encounter one, do you?

I do, because it's actually documented. And prescribed by law. A "thanks for good driving" prize to the first other person on this board who knows what it is. (Betcha nobody in Tesla's self-driving team knows.) You're gonna laugh when you find out.



It wasn't anything I didn't already know and it wasn't relevant. But I'll repeat myself for those, like you, who haven't gotten the point yet.

It is simply not useful to make an "average driver" car. Psychologically, people won't accept it: we have documentation that people will demand that an autonomous car be *substantially better* than an average driver; for some reason people are way more unhappy if hurt by a mediocre-competence robot than by a mediocre-competence human. Musk knows this, and has quoted a need to be 10 times better and 100 times better at various times. You will not get this by replicating average. It may reduce crashes if deployed as "enhanced driver assistance" (people will accept it if there's a driver to blame) but it will never be allowed as "full self driving".

Activate SONIC weapons perhaps ?

BEEP BEEP BEEP !

Drivers are to sound their horn three times when making a blind turn.

 

[WarpedOne]

Apparently the new bear thesis is that Tesla is cooking the book.
I kid you not.

You surprised?
Kid me not.

 

[neroden]

Activate SONIC weapons perhaps ?

BEEP BEEP BEEP !

Drivers are to sound their horn three times when making a blind turn.

You win. Sound your horn so that the potential people on the other side of the turn know you're coming and can get out of the way. (or if they can't get out of the way, can sound their horns back at you...) Yep!

This is actually the reason cars have horns...

 

[Stretch2727]

Subheadline: "Under the hood: heavy debt, supplier IOUs and dwindling cash"

The sub-headline contains three parts: the first is true but irrelevant given their free cash flow; the second applies to literally every company (that's what accounts payable is), and the third is a flat-out lie. A FCF of nearly a billion dollars can in no way, shape or form be called "dwindling cash". That's a literal contradiction to the word "dwindling".

If you scroll down, what they're actually saying is, if we pretend that Tesla is forced to pay all of its 2019 debt today, and if every customer cancels today, why, then in this contrived scenario they'd be in a low cash position! They might as well have thrown a Godzilla attack into their scenario.

Apparently Ford is in the same position.

Ford Accounts Payable = $23B

Cash on Hand = $18B

 

[BenPrice]

Apparently the new bear thesis is that Tesla is cooking the book.
I kid you not.

This is denial.

Next comes anger, but then bargaining.

 

[jeewee3000]

Apparently the new bear thesis is that Tesla is cooking the book.
I kid you not.

I can imagine. It is too easy to dispell this myth: IF Tesla would be cooking the books, quod non, they wouldn't make it so friggin' obvious with a blowout quarter that will be analysed with utmost scrutiny.

*drops mic*

 

[jeewee3000]

You win. Sound your horn so that the potential people on the other side of the turn know you're coming and can get out of the way. (or if they can't get out of the way, can sound their horns back at you...) Yep!

French Alps is where I learned this for the first time. Memories

 

[Yamantasdivar]

How is everyone positioned for today? What is a fair expectation?