TSLA Market Action: 2018 Investor Roundtable

[NicoV]

Who knows, but for sure if the SP spikes to $3000 on a squeeze, it's not going to stay at that point, it will drop back down. The question is to where?

I would be very happy with such a squeeze, but untill it happens, it’s just a dream. Personally I think TSLA will trade with a rather wide margin around the exponential traject corresponding to Elon’s bonus. And I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a crash or two along the way.
I am not trying to get the max out of this by timing entry and exit points, my experience with investing over the last 20 years is that my analysis is correct, but my entry and exit points (especially exit points) could be a lot better.
With my TSLA investment, I keep a core position of stock that I probably will never sell (my kids will pry them from my cold dead hands), and some deep in the money leaps that I intend to roll out every 2 years, hopefully extracting some money by at the same time rolling up to higher strike prices.

 

[Tslynk67]

I would be very happy with such a squeeze, but untill it happens, it’s just a dream. Personally I think TSLA will trade with a rather wide margin around the exponential traject corresponding to Elon’s bonus. And I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a crash or two along the way.
I am not trying to get the max out of this by timing entry and exit points, my experience with investing over the last 20 years is that my analysis is correct, but my entry and exit points (especially exit points) could be a lot better.
With my TSLA investment, I keep a core position of stock that I probably will never sell (my kids will pry them from my cold dead hands), and some deep in the money leaps that I intend to roll out every 2 years, hopefully extracting some money by at the same time rolling up to higher strike prices.

As I've said many times, I prefer a long, steady climb to a squeeze, I'm just trying to position myself to benefit should it happen.

 

[erha]

You’re basically saying Elon is wrong.

No, I’m not. But even if I were, it would be pretty reasonable. Don’t know how many years you’ve been around, but Elon has a long track record of hyping things too much. It works great for media coverage, but for investors it is important to keep expectations at a reasonable level.

From time to time we have some super bulls on this forum. Some of them loads up on options and margin based on comments made by Elon, and eventually lose their shirts even though Tesla is steadily growing. Many of these super bulls leave the forum and we never hear from them again. I’m afraid they lost their savings betting on the winning horse. Unfortunately, they expected the horse would win by too much and ended up loosing instead. I’ve got huge respect for @Zhelko Dimic who’s been very open about the money he lost when first investing in TSLA. I remember him coming into this forum being the #1 bull here. Too much margin (and maybe options) set him back years, but I think (and hope) he is doing great with his investment in TSLA now.

Just some cautious advice. I hope people don’t risk their savings betting on a short squeeze the next couple of weeks. Personally, I am 90% TSLA stock, 5% TSLA leaps and 5% cash atm. That’s a pretty bullish statement from me as I usually don’t hold options. Remember, we can all get rich here as long as we have some patience.

 

[Hogfighter]

No, I’m not. But even if I were, it would be pretty reasonable. Don’t know how many years you’ve been around, but Elon has a long track record of hyping things too much. It works great for media coverage, but for investors it is important to keep expectations at a reasonable level.

From time to time we have some super bulls on this forum. Some of them loads up on options and margin based on comments made by Elon, and eventually lose their shirts even though Tesla is steadily growing. Many of these super bulls leave the forum and we never hear from them again. I’m afraid they lost their savings betting on the winning horse. Unfortunately, they expected the horse would win by too much and ended up loosing instead. I’ve got huge respect for @Zhelko Dimic who’s been very open about the money he lost when first investing in TSLA. I remember him coming into this forum being the #1 bull here. Too much margin (and maybe options) set him back years, but I think (and hope) he is doing great with his investment in TSLA now.

Just some cautious advice. I hope people don’t risk their savings betting on a short squeeze the next couple of weeks. Personally, I am 90% TSLA stock, 5% TSLA leaps and 5% cash atm. That’s a pretty bullish statement from me as I usually don’t hold options. Remember, we can all get rich here as long as we have some patience.

Wise words. It is interesting, though, that Elon is more bullish now than anytime that I can recall. I’m with @Causalien that something may be brewing, but I’m sure not betting the farm on it. Okay, maybe the garden.....

 

[Tslynk67]

I agree that Elon's always a bit too optimistic and tends to hype things more than he should, but he's really pushing this burn narrative to the point where if Tesla don't produce something a bit spectacular he's really going to lose credibility, amongst his biggest supporters too.

And for the third time of writing, I don't think he'd open himself up for that. Not this time.

 

[AlMc]

Stanphylococcus Capitalus has acquired resistance to all evidence.

Not to the new antibiotic just released by Merck: Muskacillin

 

[neroden]

Looks like she was talking about paint shop being at 850, which means that’s one more bottleneck resolved.

r/teslamotors - Paint Shop No Longer a Bottleneck?

With the number of GA lines, I think this means they're cleanly and reliably over 5000/week, with everything having a maximum rate a little bit under 6000/week (giving allowance for downtime while still doing 5000/week).


Don't get optimistic about exceeding 5000/week quickly. It's becoming clear that a lot of duplications or changes will be necessary to get to 10000/week: probably an entire new paint line, major work on the GA lines and probably a new GA line, quite possibly some improvements to the body line (worst case, a whole new body line), and some more lines at the Gigafactory. I'm not sure where they would *put* new paint, body, and GA lines. I'm sure the target is still 10000/week by end of year, and due to learning from experience it should be a lot cheaper than the cost of getting to 5000/week, but I wouldn't expect to see anything in excess of 6000/week for at least three months -- even if they were ready to go with their plan for 10,000/week, there will be a lot of long-lead-time items involved, and after what Musk has said, Tesla has to be careful to make a profit in Q3.

 

[neroden]

Bloomberg has pegged Model 3 production at 4,500/week

We Set Out to Crack Tesla's Biggest Mystery: How Many Model 3s It's Making

They're always lagging. I suspect their number was correct prior to the paint shop problems being dealt with.

 

[neroden]

If this is correct (and I have no reason to believe it isn't), there are two possibilities:

1 Production is much better than expected; or
2 Production is the same or worse than expected, and the conversion/take rate is much worse than expected.

We will know which in a couple of days.

You're leaving out the most likely possibility, possibility #3.

3 The percentage of reservation holders who are:
(1) not in the US/Canada
(2) want the shorter-range model
(3) want a white interior but not Performance
or
(4) don't want to pay for "premium" interior

Is large. With roughly 34,000 Model 3s delivered with the current configurations and geography so far, they could certainly be depleting the demand for it.

I don't know how to guess these percentages but one plausible set of assumptions led to Tesla having only a month to use up reservations for these configs:
-- ~500000 reservations
-- probably ~40% US, so ~200000
-- probably ~1/2 don't want long-range, so ~100000
-- maybe 30% don't want black interior, so ~70000
-- maybe 20% want LR black but not premium interior, so 56000
-- ~20000 delivered through May, probably another 14000 in June
-- roughly 22000 orders to fulfill in the US with current options...
-- at 5000/week this is under 5 weeks...

I'm thinking Tesla has to remove the bottleneck on the white interior and/or get the short-range battery pack out soon. Or ship to Europe but they won't do that until 2019 to maximize US tax credit opportunities. Or get more reservations, obviously.

 

[neroden]

Anything Tesla does will be relative to it’s size (if only because the ability to attract capital will be relative to its size), which means that growth will be exponential, not linear. You’re estimating a size at a certain point in time, and are then linearly mapping a curve, but you should map an exponential curve.

I'm not sure about whether anything Tesla does will be relative to its size; at some point the size becomes a drag on growth. At some point you hit Mythical Man-Month problems. Tesla may be able to attract enough capital to build 10 Gigafactories at once, but will they be able to recruit enough competent people to actually build that much, simultaneously, effectively? Or will those people get poached by startups?

Tesla started out growing faster than the overall electric car business, but it is now growing slower than the overall electric car business is growing, as I would expect. I am very confident that the exponential growth curve for electric cars will continue with the same exponent it has had; but Tesla is likely to slip behind it a little more every year as the number of other growing companies (mostly from China) increases each year. I'm not sure what the right mathematical model for this is; subexponential but superpolynomial, I'd guess.

 

[JRP3]

I read the whole thing. I think he is losing it and his mental health may be teetering on the brink now.

He's always seemed like an unhinged lunatic to me, he's just getting more exposure now.

 

[ggr]

5k/wk has apparently happened:
Marsalis C on Twitter

 

[defc0n]

Well that alone should theoretically warrant 360+ on Monday...

 

[gene]

5k/wk has apparently happened:
Marsalis C on Twitter

Wow! Wow! Wow!

 

[Sancho]

The press has been disproportionately quoting disgruntled Tesla employees, but I’m betting that the vast majority are proud and pumped to be signing their names this morning.

The best part of watching the SpaceX launches is to witness the excitement of the assembled employees.

I’d give up all my TSLA stock to be able to work for a Musk-led company.



(But I’d keep my TSLA options)

 

[Seesaw]

Monday will be very interesting....

 

[Rarity]

I'm not sure about whether anything Tesla does will be relative to its size; at some point the size becomes a drag on growth. At some point you hit Mythical Man-Month problems. Tesla may be able to attract enough capital to build 10 Gigafactories at once, but will they be able to recruit enough competent people to actually build that much, simultaneously, effectively? Or will those people get poached by startups?

Tesla eventually will run up against the law of large numbers, assuming that it is hugely successful. 80%+ growth in revenues this year is awful extreme for a company this size.

But in the meantime, I wonder whether the auto industry of the future will follow the power law for a while, at least with regard to profits. The first company to get to scale in that industry has a tremendous advantage.

 

[TrendTrader007]

$TSLA no need to wait for official numbers clearly they already hit 5K M3 goal i can not wait for weekend to be over Expect major rally $TSLA starting tomorrow game over for shorts $400 next stop i really really love the short shorts @elonmusk

 

[HG Wells]

Headline Shortsville Times

Tesla employee's sign poster to join 5K track club.

 

[wipster]

Worth a read: Can Elon Musk and Tesla Reinvent the Way Cars Are Made?

I read it and frankly thought it was a typical hit job, very disappointing. This article read like something out of Seeking Alpha, not the NYT. Another write-up about the audacity of using a "tent" when in fact it's anything but! The use of the Sprung structure was IMHO a brilliant decision, a method to quickly add the quality space needed for the third line. Go to the Sprung website, their structures are much more like permanent installations than tents and used by the US military worldwide! Yet I don't believe the manufacturer's name was ever mentioned in this article.

And it was pretty obvious that the quotations from workers were highly selective and only included if they could be interpreted as negative. What Tesla has accomplished is a triumph in what can be done quickly, efficiently, and affordably to meet their goals and the article could have and should have reflected that.

Shame on you NYT, you're better than this.