TSLA Market Action: 2018 Investor Roundtable

[Thumper]

Nice idea, but untrue -- a large proportion of the wealthy inherited it. Ever looked up how much inherited wealth there is in the US?

A good book on the topic is Wealth and Democracy by Kevin Phillips

 

[Artful Dodger]

So, do you have any insights into how long the "cap the stock price" game can be played? I freely admit I pulled 4Q earnings call out of thin air -- it just seemed like the nearest predictable event of note. Am I overlooking something closer? Another factor?

Tesla announcing an industry heavyweight as new Chairman of the Board? Due sometime around Nov 15th I'd guess.

I'd also mention the name Larry Elison as one that will put upwards pressure on TSLA. He'd be kickin' azz, and only the 2 new Directors need to be indepenant.

Larry personally holds more TSLA than Jebus, and he's up for the fight.

 

[Artful Dodger]

FYI - Dean Heller, republican Senator from Nevada, has the most generous EV credit bill in Senate at present - but he just lost his senate seat yesterday to the democrat challenger.

Lol, democracy hain't what it usta to.
Dead brothel owner wins Nevada state assembly seat - CNNPolitics

 

[Thekiwi]

Tesla announcing an industry heavyweight as new Chairman of the Board? Due sometime around Nov 15th I'd guess.

I'd also mention the name Larry Elison as one that will put upwards pressure on TSLA. He'd be kickin' azz, and only the 2 new Directors need to be indepenant.

Larry personally holds more TSLA than Jebus, and he's up for the fight.

Agree - he is near the top of my list if chairman isn’t required to be independent. Not only is he a big believer in Tesla/Musk, he is also willing to give people a lot of leeway in other areas which don’t directly impact company performance (see: Mark Hurd)

 

[humbaba]

Tesla announcing an industry heavyweight as new Chairman of the Board? Due sometime around Nov 15th I'd guess.

I'd also mention the name Larry Elison as one that will put upwards pressure on TSLA. He'd be kickin' azz, and only the 2 new Directors need to be indepenant.

Larry personally holds more TSLA than Jebus, and he's up for the fight.

See? I'm forgetting things left and right. First the buy pressure that's been going on since the earnings call and now the new board directors. Yep, that certainly could be market moving news. I hope so, as long as its in the right direction

 

[Thekiwi]

I wonder if we will see anything in the way of weekly model 3 production volume leaks. This is what Musk said in the Kara Swisher interview last week:

“Well, you never want to get complacent, so we still need to work hard, but I think we’re over the hump. We’re certainly over the hump on Model 3 production. For us, making 5,000 cars in a week for Model 3 is not a big deal. That’s just normal. Now we’re working on raising to 6,000 and then 7,000 Model 3s a week, while still keeping costs under control. We could probably do 6,000 or more, maybe 6,500 Model 3s a week right now, but it would have to stress people out and do tons of overtime.”​

If we see November average production hitting 5000-5500+ a week I think that would be a solid piece of positive news, and that 6000-6500 High Stress/Overtime mode happening in December seems probable yes?

 

[Curt Renz]

It’s not just shorts suppressing the price. Cathy Wood from Ark has been selling TSLA shares almost daily. I’m subscribed to their “trade desk”

Why would they do that if they think SP will go to $4000? Or do they expect to be able to buy them back at a lower price?

Ark Invest is a kind of Indexed Tech fund focused on innovation and growth. Because they are limited to the percentage of their holdings in any particular stock, when that stock rises they have to sell some to stay balanced. This is also when they make money.

The important question to ask for balance in judging Ark Invest is, were they buying 30 days ago when the SP was at $255?

The three ARK ETFs that own some TSLA are actively managed and not indexed (permanent holdings). Two of their other ETFs are indexed. Artful Dodger indeed gave the correct reason that ARK often must sell some TSLA, which is the top holding in three of their ETFs and must not be allowed above 10% of an ETF for very long. The proceeds are immediately invested in other stocks in the ETF. They make money through an annual fee (expense ratio).

A month ago they were buying TSLA for ARKW to bring it up closer to 10% of that ETF.

ARK Innovation ETFs

 

[homer214]

Lol, democracy hain't what it usta to.
Dead brothel owner wins Nevada state assembly seat - CNNPolitics

Must have run one helluva campaign.

 

[sub]

I suppose someone with access to large amount of capital enough to move market could always day trade this way to generate good profit: Dump a large amount of shares in one go to trigger trailing stop loss / profit taker, then slowly buy back shares. $2 movement could mean a profit of >$1/share!

In addition i think they watch the stop
Loss orders and when they see enough at a sp where they can dump into those stop losses to magnify the move, even better. They can then buy back slowly, rinse and repeat.

 

[Remus]

it just dawned on me, Tesla only need to worry about free cash flow in 2-3 years. After that, when star link start operating, Space X will be a money printer and a potential backer for Tesla for potential missteps.

 

[ggr]

Nice idea, but untrue -- a large proportion of the wealthy inherited it. Ever looked up how much inherited wealth there is in the US?

For example, on the Forbes billionaire list, there are at #8 (equal) the Koch brothers, 14, 15, 16 are Jim, Rob and Alice Walton, equal #34 are John and Jacqueline Mars...

 

[Artful Dodger]

The "last short positions" still owe ~30 million shares. YUUUUGE

Yeah. The mind 'wobbles'.
Insane Tesla Short Story — Is A Short Squeeze Coming On "Tesla Time" After All? | CleanTechnica

 

[Joe F]

Must have run one helluva campaign.

Only guys named “John” voted for him.

 

[bobinfla]

Lol, democracy hain't what it usta to.
Dead brothel owner wins Nevada state assembly seat - CNNPolitics

He's a proven winner, and I think he's the perfect candidate for Tesla chairman. Although he might miss a few board meetings now and then.

 

[Curt Renz]

...A month ago they were buying TSLA for ARKW to bring it up closer to 10% of that ETF...

ARKK too.

(It's too late to edit my earlier post, so I added that here.)

 

[Artful Dodger]

Never seen longs so scared about a few tweets. Yeah, it's been a rough couple months but we all knew this was a volatile stock. No one should have thought Elon wouldn't be Elon after he took that toke.

I don't think he's ever been more confident in Tesla than he is now. This is short-baiting. The share price really can't go that much lower with positive free cash flow all but confirmed. I'm calling green tomorrow because the market usually does the unexpected in the short-term. I think this is one of those "irrational fear" dips that we all look back on as obvious 6 months from now.

Well spotted, Mike. Yeah we knew it all along...

 

[neroden]

More data mining: in particular I took a look at the short sales transactions surrounding the infamous 'September 18 Bloomberg' article that caused a big ~10% drop in the $TSLA price from $300 levels to $270 levels.

I based this on the September transaction data available at:

http://regsho.finra.org/FNSQsh201809.txt.zip​

The Bloomberg news article apparently broke on 11:42:27 and caused a -$13 drop within 10 seconds of heavy trading.

But the 60 minutes leading up to this event show suspicious patterns of trading that might be evidence of insider trading - short sellers shorting TSLA in the knowledge that a very negative and deceptively worded and headlined article would be released about Tesla. For example these two larger blocks of sales just 5 minutes before the news was released:

Q|TSLA|20180918|11:37:28|S|2000|301.939900||
Q|TSLA|20180918|11:37:57|S|3000|301.844300||

These were perfectly timed sales of uncharacteristically big blocks of shares, seemingly unconcerned about the execution inefficiencies such large sales suffer from. These sales were perfectly timed to benefit from the near daily high price levels, just minutes before the Bloomberg article was released.

The SEC could use their considerable investigative powers to uncover the identity behind those particular trades.

Here's the misleading Bloomberg article that triggered the sell-off:

Bloomberg - Are you a robot?​

Here's the effect on the price:

That mystery mini-drop from the daily high of around $302, at around 11:30, and large block sales just minutes before the Bloomberg article was released?

If you look at the short-sales transaction log of only large block sales, then a pattern emerges:

Q|TSLA|20180918|10:00:46|S|2661|296.950000||
Q|TSLA|20180918|10:00:56|S|2700|296.855000||
Q|TSLA|20180918|10:01:21|S|2000|296.680000||
Q|TSLA|20180918|10:14:11|S|3000|299.459900||
Q|TSLA|20180918|10:17:50|S|3000|298.690000||
Q|TSLA|20180918|10:26:18|S|1800|298.865000||
Q|TSLA|20180918|10:32:03|S|2300|298.159900||
Q|TSLA|20180918|11:00:41|S|2000|299.685100||
Q|TSLA|20180918|11:03:59|S|1900|299.835500||
Q|TSLA|20180918|11:11:07|S|2700|301.072800||
Q|TSLA|20180918|11:13:11|S|2868|301.039300||
Q|TSLA|20180918|11:13:52|S|2100|301.070800||
Q|TSLA|20180918|11:15:37|S|2500|300.540000||
Q|TSLA|20180918|11:16:27|S|2400|299.898200||
Q|TSLA|20180918|11:21:20|S|2600|300.700600||
Q|TSLA|20180918|11:22:28|S|2167|300.634300||
Q|TSLA|20180918|11:23:48|S|3000|301.386100||
Q|TSLA|20180918|11:26:51|S|3000|301.900000||
Q|TSLA|20180918|11:37:28|S|2000|301.939900||
Q|TSLA|20180918|11:37:57|S|3000|301.844300||
Q|TSLA|20180918|11:39:17|S|1830|301.932400||

In this 120 minutes window more than 50% of large short sale transactions were executed in the 30 minutes preceding the Bloomberg news article.

Interesting coincidence.

We *really* need to collect these in their own thread, FactChecking.

 

[neroden]

Topic No. 456 Student Loan Interest Deduction | Internal Revenue Service

Oh right, they finally brought part of it back -- though it's severely limited. Well, that's a good thing.

I was doing taxes young enough that I remember when you could deduct interest on ANY loan, including personal loans and credit cards.

Then they abolished everything but business loan deductions.

They eventually brought student loan deductions back, partially, because of the crisis.

They abolished the unreimbursed employee expenses deduction, though, which is another nasty "businesses get to deduct it, workers don't" thing.

 

[neroden]

Silly time?

Yep.

Brian, learn some economics. While many businesses practice cost-plus pricing, they can't really get away with raising prices if their competitors don't. (As, indeed, happened to Tesla in China with the China car tarrifs. Tesla is production constrained, so it could simply redirect the cars elsewhere and make more money, but a company who did not have waiting lists in other countries would simply have had to cut the price of the cars it sold in China.)

*Income taxes* in particular only apply to companies which are *making income*, and they are never passed through to customers except by monopolies (or cartels, which are the same thing). (If a cartel colludes to raise prices together... it doesn't really matter whether they say it was because of a tax or not. It's really because they're a cartel and they can.)

Tarriffs are different because you have to pay them even if you're not making any money.

If a company is already making 0 profit, and a tarriff affects it and all its competitors at the same time, then the tarriff will be passed through to the customer. (This is happening in solar panels, a nearly perfectly-competitive industry where, as economics predicts, nobody is making any profits.)

When a company is making 0 profit and the tarriff affects it but not its competitor... then it just goes bankrupt. (Which is one reason businesses hate tarriffs.)

So it does have a special effect when increased tarriff costs hit companies which weren't making any profits. Many "fixed cost" taxes have the same problem; income taxes don't have this problem, because companies which don't have income don't pay income taxes.

This is actually the wonderful thing about income taxes. They're very generous. Unlike property taxes or sales taxes or tarriffs, you only pay them if you actually have the money to afford to pay them.

 

[InDaClub]

Lol, democracy hain't what it usta to.
Dead brothel owner wins Nevada state assembly seat - CNNPolitics

The other candidates expected some stiff competition but...