TSLA Market Action: 2018 Investor Roundtable

[Tslynk67]

On the big telly

 

[Cherry Wine]

OT AF.

OT

So that is where all of the manual transmission cars go. It has gotten harder and harder over the years to buy a manual transmission here in the states. Naturally, it doesn't help that I only buy used which limits my options, but it didn't used to be this bad.

In fact, one of the things I'm curious about is how much I will actually like driving an EV. I used to have a car with a manual choke and have missed that ever since. Not having to shift will be nice, but a lot of my driving uses shifting. It will be a whole new world.

While shopping for my current vehicle several years ago, I was adamant that whatever I purchased would have a manual transmission. I'm not as hardcore as some, but I'm definitely a "car guy", have in the past decried the decline of manual transmissions, and enjoy the process of and greater precision allowed by manual shifting -- downshifting for engine braking or acceleration, etc. I honestly didn't envision giving up manual transmissions until I was much older and had grown tired of the tedium of repeated shifts in gridlocked traffic, dealing with the hills of San Francisco and elsewhere, and other annoyances that balance out the fun of a manual.

With all of that said, the several different occasions I have driven a Tesla have been enough for me to set the desire for a manual transmission aside. The feel of instant torque almost anywhere on the powerband is quite enthralling, and though substantially different from churning through the gears, offers its own thrill. And my experience has been with the Model X! I imagine the P3D is a driving dream come true for someone like me. Perhaps somewhere down the line I would grow to miss the manual transmission, and I might keep my current car to scratch that itch from time to time, but as of right now, can't wait to ditch the shifter.

How is this remotely related to market action? Um, if the Tesla experience can convince an enthusiastic manual transmission-loving guy like myself to jump in with both feet and not even look back, they've got a lot of potential for growth among that segment....

/OT

 

[larmor]

It looks like FF is heading towards bankruptcy .... that'll be # 51 since the '50.

“FF’s recent financial crisis was brought about by investors Evergrande Health refusing to make its scheduled payments. The investor has further breached its contractual obligations to FF and refused to release its liens over FF’s assets as it was required to do. This has resulted in making it more difficult for FF to achieve short-term financing through asset-backed loans resulting in the current temporary cash flow difficulties. This action has unequivocally harmed FF employees worldwide, our suppliers, our partners, and all of our reservation holders.

We are filing the new emergency relief application on the main arbitral tribunal soon. Since the ruling may be delayed by two to three months, FF will continue to experience a negative impact on our deal with the current financial situation which includes putting additional employees on furlough beginning this week. We are grateful to all of the one thousand global employees, especially the hundreds of employees in the US who are willing to stay and continue to work on the FF91 production and delivery as well as those who will be on a temporary furlough.

This was an extremely tough decision to make, and we recognize the emotional stress and financial strain this puts on people’s personal lives. In addition, we take our relationships with our suppliers seriously, and we hope to receive support and understanding from our global partners as FF overcomes our difficulties."

Faraday Future is running out of cash and can’t pay employees, more furloughs

Chinese investors are tricky to deal with and any company needs to be extra careful. Kuka Roboters a company leading edge in the industry here in Germany that for reasons I do not understand has received a blessing for a Chinese takeover is suffering from their decision as well. We had Chinese investors that bought into airports and years later it came out the did not have the money.

Not that this is the case with all of them but their way to do business is very different and western business rules should not be taken for granted.

Above is super interesting, as other startups and traditional automakers get a free pass for non performance or wildly inaccurate projected timelines, but tesla gets a market hammer if they use paint with volatile organic compounds (newsflash alot of paint is, and if not then costlier) or paints cars at a rate of 1000 per day, instead of analysts expectations for 1,000,000 cars per hour...

 

[Tslynk67]

That's not looking good...

 

[Cherry Wine]

OT

Whoa what happened on that entry burn?!

 

[Fact Checking]

This has occurred several times in the past, such as when Tencent and Saudi Arabia were accumulating. But that short apparently didn't exit during those episodes. So there must be other reasons for the exit.

I think there's two new things:

• I don't think we had this happen while $TSLA was within ~5-10% of a new all-time-high share price? I.e. what's unique is that these patterns are happening well above $350, which is 90% of the ATH value.
• The short thesis had always been that those billions of convertibles were directly shorted against and that this explains much of the current short interest. This also installs a price ceiling of $360. I think that expectation is deeply flawed for several reasons, and the price action above $350 now appears to confirm it - so far at least.

But yeah, I agree that the small matter of Tesla generating 1.4 billion dollars from operations in Q3, without even trying hard to maximize cash flow (only $50m in ZEV credits sold for example), must have been a big warning sign for this particular short as well, but it's much easier to blame it on big buyers.

 

[Tslynk67]

Come on show it!

 

[NicoV]

Come on show it!

Water landing, was that intended?

 

[FrANce]

You can actually get the price on Yahoo Finance. Either way it closed at €317.60 or $360.50.
TL0.DE : Summary for TESLA INC. DL -,001 - Yahoo Finance

XETRA closes at 17h30/5.30pm, but Börse Frankfurt is still trading (until 20h00/8pm). The current price is in the green at 318.15 EUR.

 

[Buckminster]

Stage 1 was just taking the mickey out of the UK parliament - wobbly...
At least it didn't crash and burn....

 

[Cherry Wine]

Water landing, was that intended?

No.

 

[anon]

Water landing, was that intended?

It appeared to be spinning out of control shortly before the video feed cut out. Seemingly they did have some control in order to be able to land in water, but probably was too dangerous to land on the pad.

 

[Tslynk67]

Water landing, was that intended?

Absolutely not! But obvious it had gone AWOL when it started listing drunkenly after the penultimate burn.

No worries, Dragon is the main mission and it's been a long time since they unexpectedly lost a 1st stage.

 

[Cherry Wine]

Video of the landing:

Twitch

 

[PaulRocket]

Zach Kromer on Twitter

Here’s a video of the rocket trying to land. It looks like one of the grid fins got stuck which caused the stage to spin.

 

[anthonyj]

T Rowe Price:
“Yo China, we need one more big bear trap lols”

China:
“You got it”

 

[anon]

It was probably the wind - seems bad in that video.

 

[Tslynk67]

Yes, and also note that the #2 and #3 options require active action from the U.K. - otherwise the 'default' outcome is going to be a no-deal cash-out Brexit...

"Renegotiation" with the EU won't really happen - they already had 2 years for that and they didn't manage to get a good deal because a deal good for the U.K. doesn't exist. The best deal the U.K. will ever get is the one they got as founding members of the European Union: that gave them preferential treatment and special privileges. What are they hoping to 'negotiate' in a relationship where the U.K. has very little leverage?

To Europe the U.K. is a significant but minor economic partner.The EU financial industry will happily cannibalize the EU business of the former financial stronghold of London. Europe wants this to be over with one way or another, and if the U.K. wants to masochistically demonstrate how bad consequences crashing out of the EU has, the EU won't stop them from setting a stark example.

To the U.K Europe is like 80% of exports. Any of these outcomes that result in the U.K. leaving the EU will be economic suicide for many years to come, the question is only the time scale: with the 'deal' it gets spread out over 2 years, followed by a crash-out from the deal. With no-deal crash-out it's immediate economic crisis - also exported to a lot of other countries.

In the background you can hear Putin smirking: "divide and conquer", invented and perfected by the British, comes back to bite them in a big way ...

Well yes, I concur with all of this - don't forget I'm British and working in the European Commission, so I have a pretty good view of it all. I was just musing on how the UK government could manoeuvre into a new referendum with the public voting to stay in EU.

 

[jbih]

A study from the German Federal Employment Agency came out today, which means it was paid by taxpayer's money... The media has headlines like (translated):

• More than 100,000 jobs will be lost
  
• More e-cars, fewer jobs?
• Germany could lose tens of thousands of jobs through e-mobility

Link to the study: http://doku.iab.de/forschungsbericht/2018/fb0818.pdf

Abstract:

This study focuses on the economic effects of the phenomenon of electrification of
the powertrain in automobiles (e-mobility). This development involves considerable
challenges at enterprises and the political level. Using the scenario technique, a num-
ber of assumptions were made and integrated into the analytical tool QINFORGE.
In the beginning of the scenario, the underlying assumptions have a positive effect on
the economic development. However, at the long run they lead to a lower GDP and
level of employment. The change in technology leads to 114.000 job cuts in the end
of 2035. The whole economy loses nearly 20 billion Euro (0.6 % of the GDP). In the
scenario we assume a share of only 23 percent of electric compared to all cars in
2035.
The total turnover of the workforce resulting from the electrification of the powertrain
of automobiles will reach 150.000 in the year 2035. The electrification of the power-
train will especially affect skilled workers negatively. The demand for specialist and
expert activities also decreases with a time delay. In the long run there are negative
effects for all requirement levels.
A much higher market penetration could lead to stronger economic effects. Further-
more, a higher market share of domestic produced cars and traction batteries could
generate more positive economic effects.
At the moment this scenario includes a lot of assumptions where further research is
necessary. This applies in particular to the position of the supplier industry, the dis-
tinction between different types of fuel and the expansion of other mobility sectors.

 

[Open Interest]

I swear, way too many people here are incapable of seeing the market from a non-bull perspective.

Bears do not see Tesla opening European orders as good. They see it as a sign of a lack of demand. In their view, Tesla's US orders are "exhausted", just a trickle - and now Tesla will quickly exhaust its European and Asian orders - which they think have "waned" - and then be stuck with only a trickle of orders.

It's nonsense, but you need to be able to step out of this bubble, because it's not just bears that decide how the market moves.

I read the original comment more as, “what do we do all day without price action to follow”. But maybe it’s just me