TSLA Market Action: 2018 Investor Roundtable

[Jayjs20]

This year alone, it's hit 350+ after sinking sub 300 around 4-5 times, which is pretty ridiculous. Last time it hit 250~, it jumped to 370 in only 2 months, then sank back to sub-300, then back to 380. Just buy more, sit back, and wait for it to hit 350+ again. We all know all of this is noise and nothing has happened with the company other than them making more cars than ever before by a large margin.

AMD stock spent a year and a half in a narrow range, and now it's skyrocketed. So did TSLA, pre-Model 3. We may get 6-12 more months of this volatility before jumping again, but it's likely that it'll happen.

If you're a short on principle, good for you. If you're a short looking to make money, I think it'd make more sense to ride the swing back up. You can short again once it's 350+ if you'd like.

 

[Tslynk67]

Well, quite a day!

Obviously Morton was hired to be the "go private" guy and when that fell through it wasn't his gig any more. I don't buy the idea that he couldn't take the heat in the kitchen, he surely would have done some due-diligence on Tesla before joining - hell a couple of days on CBNC's $TSLA ticker page tells you all you kneed to know.

Joe Rogan, I like, as I said if before, but the interview never really clicked. Usually the guests are more "bro" and there's a lot more banter, whether Elon wasn't up for that, or what, I don't know. Did seem to me that Elon was a bit tired, but given everything, who wouldn't be? Other than that, he came across as very thoughtful and as always, sincere - because he is. My take-away from it all is that Elon wishes he could switch-off his crazy, genius mind from time to time - it was quite shocking when he said "you wouldn't want to be me", and he meant it. The guy needs a good woman, a nice long vacation and probably a meditation retreat.

For the pot thing - WTF is wrong with people? Get out of your own rear-ends! I do't like it either, but I try it from time to time, most recently about a month ago - makes me feel sick.

As an aside, one of the things I love about Elon, is that he knows the physics, engineering and mathematics as deep as anyone, as well as being a CEO and sales-man all rolled into one. This came across very well in the interview, as well as the fact that despite his crazy brain, he's a regular guy like the rest of us, and wishes well to everyone.

Price action seems to be manipulation in pre-market that dragged the SP down and making it look like it was a reaction to all of the above. I don't believe it was a big investor closing a position, because you don't sell like that in one go, and certainly not as $237 when the market price is $278, you'd exit in little packets of 100 shares at a time. So some deep pockets have thrown some money down the drain to try and kill us. I'm glad to see that a few of us were able to take advantage of the fire sale.

And some trolls really showed their true colours today, I hope there's a decent cull, if it hasn't happened already.

 

[LordAstinus]

"
$TSLA short interest is 9.17 bn, 32.64 mm shares shorted, 25.60% of float. Short are up $578 mm in mark-to-market profits today on almost 6% price drop, shorts are up $2.5 bn since The Tweet and $805 million year-to-date. https://shortingtesla.com/ https://www.s3partners.net/research.php
"

Ihor Dusaniwsky on Twitter

$TSLA number of shares shorted has been increasing since the 4th of September. From 31.83m to 32.64m. Surprising at this low price. So dumber/less informed shorts must be entering the stock, inferring some weakness.

Miguel PeraIv0 on Twitter

I expect several other batches of bad news in the coming days/couple of weeks.

On the other hand, deliveries for September promise to be stellar:

Model 3 Order Tracker (Published Web Version)

Someone was complaining this morning about the missed opportunity for the short squeeze. We may get another shot at it (or a mini-short squeeze) in several weeks' time: 3 to 7 weeks?

Place your bets.

 

[neroden]

No. He was hired to be the CAO of Tesla reporting to Ahuja. He was not a member of Musk's "go private" team. In leaving, he is walking away from a $10 million equity grant that would have vested in four years in addition to his salary. We may never know why he left.

Donn, Mr. Morton said why he left. Read it. Do *you* like working 80-hour work weeks ("pace") while watching a non-stop smear campaign against your company ("public attention")? Me neither. And apparently not Mr. Morton either. This is an actual problem for Tesla. Not a financial problem, but an employee retention problem.

The CNBC "anonymous sources" say that Morton felt that Musk wasn't listening to him. That could also be true, of course. Several people have had trouble getting Musk to listen to them...

 

[beachbum77]

I gather your firm wasn’t successful nor technologically oriented. At mine, CFO/CAO’s worked long hours and we delivered results.

All fast paced technology companies have an uncommon work pace.

Geez...

Then switch over to large-scale real estate development like I did over a decade ago. Much better work/life balance and you will live a lot longer.

 

[neroden]

Can someone tell me what this (TOSV) means? It is a link to a Bloomberg article.

"Terms of Service Violation" means you linked to a Bloomberg article. They all do that for some reason -- you'd have to ask Bloomberg.

 

[cheshire cat]

I know, I know .... its unusual here but I thought I post something about the stock and market action.

Today its like me in a high quality chocolate/ praline shop and everything is on 50% discount.

Feels just great and I could not resist and grabbed some from the table. The market will not see them again for the next 10 years. Love it.

For those people who are nervous today: intellectually I understood Warren Buffet quickly when I read many years ago " be greedy when other people start panicking ...." (or similar). To absorb this emotionally it took me many years training and it was really hard work. To learn how to act against your "run or fight" instincts is a long bumpy road.

Most people believe the stock market is kind of easy, you just need to find the right stock and then you get rich quickly. Well, its not at all that easy and in particular not if you find the right stock.

Congratulations to everybody who added today you won't regret it on the long run.

Picked up a few today with some "dry powder" left, As my current hero "Uncle Terry" says, "now the hardest part is to put your hands in your pockets, sit down and do nothing"

 

[TheTalkingMule]

Tesla Erupts in Chaos After Senior Execs Leave, Musk Tokes Up

"Erupts in chaos"? Who is writing this stuff? lol

 

[Joe F]

Oh god...

CNBC was practically gushing over Tesla from the start of August - they have Gene Munster on every day talking up Tesla, they have Kramer there talking up Tesla (at least until today) and they have guests on all the time who have long Tesla or Dec calls in the 400's on very regularly.

I don't watch it directly, just the highlights Yahoo repeats, but CNBC seems to have a very strong pro-Tesla contingent. The fact you see it the complete opposite might indicate they're showing both sets of opinions.

My M3PUP is due on Oct 6th BTW...

Watching cherry picked highlights of invited guests does not provide an accurate picture of the CNBC writers, web site content creators, and talking heads who always (yes, always) put a negative spin on all things Tesla and Elon Musk. Okay, always is a stretch, but about the only quasi positive thing I've ever heard from crazy Cramer is "don't short Tesla, it's a "cult" stock."

It's on 12 hours a day in my office, 5 days a week. You need to get less of a life and waste time watching CNBC more closely before making claims as you made quoted here.

 

[cheshire cat]

Fixed

Wrong type of lime, don't you guys grow spuds? Or do you know something us limey's don't

 

[neroden]

Whatever your personal views are on recreational weed, it was a horrible example of how not to lead by example. What do you suppose EM might think of people building his cars while chemically impaired? If it's OK for him, why not them?
That was a huge issue when Tesla Fremont was NUMMI, and we know how that ended.
Robin

Um, if you watch it he says negative things about it and expresses dislike. And he wasn't on the job.

 

[neroden]

My speculation is that Saudi fund had a change of heart since the going private move was cancelled and they are actively unloading their 5%. Why do it so aggressively I have no idea... Would have been smarter slowly over longer time period, IMHO.

If you're right and the Saudis are unloading, then all of this has achieved the goal of keeping the Saudis out of Tesla.

 

[UnknownSoldier]

This year alone, it's hit 350+ after sinking sub 300 around 4-5 times, which is pretty ridiculous. Last time it hit 250~, it jumped to 370 in only 2 months, then sank back to sub-300, then back to 380. Just buy more, sit back, and wait for it to hit 350+ again. We all know all of this is noise and nothing has happened with the company other than them making more cars than ever before by a large margin.

AMD stock spent a year and a half in a narrow range, and now it's skyrocketed. So did TSLA, pre-Model 3. We may get 6-12 more months of this volatility before jumping again, but it's likely that it'll happen.

If you're a short on principle, good for you. If you're a short looking to make money, I think it'd make more sense to ride the swing back up. You can short again once it's 350+ if you'd like.

The people who swing-traded and bought at 300 and shorted at 350 have made a mint. I feel like holding and shorting long term is a loser's game if you're looking to make steady money. The people who were swing trading AMD while it spent almost 2 years parked between $10 and $15 also made a lot of money.

 

[omarsultan]

Look, if Tesla were attempting to penetrate the ICE market you would have excellent points. But then, we wouldn't be having this discussion because they would have gone the way of delorean.

I guess we might just have different PoV on Tesla's end game. I think for Tesla to meet Elon's goal, its not just about dominating the EV space, which is a niche which I think the incumbents are happy to cede to Tesla. Rather, I think the goal is to attack the mainstream ICE market and take away ICE sales as the lever to force incumbent manufacturers to introduce compelling EVs as part fo their portfolio.

In my mind, the long-term risk is if incumbents aim to be just successful enough to deny Tesla oxygen but at the same time, never fully commit to sustainable transport and undermining their core business. Once Tesla is marginalized or eliminated, they can revert to their usual ways.

 

[neroden]

I suppose short sellers and trolls are synonymous - or maybe we represent a different side of the story some folks might not want to hear. I don't care how you play this - but if the company runs through its second Chief Accountant who only lasted a month, this has got to raise red flags for anyone who is a shareholder. People who are on the inside and know the company better than any of us are leaving for a good reason - and its not because the company has an unrivaled future.

It's because the workplace environment is verging on toxic, with everyone expected to work 80-hour weeks and massive internal disorganization to deal with. I'm a bull, and I can tell you that that's quite clear. I mean, Mr. Morton pretty much says it outright -- "pace" is a polite way to put it.

The thing is, the financial situation is great. Employee retention? That's more of a problem.

 

[Tslynk67]

Small aside - I think Elon could well have got into simulation theory from his Iain M Banks reading, it's discussed quite a lot in The Algebraist, which was one of his few non-Culture novels, but a book I enjoyed greatly, in this novel it's a religion known as The Truth.

But of course it's a philosophical construction which actually states that the most probable conclusion is that we are in fact a simulation. Why do we arrive at that conclusion? Because before too long, computing power will be close to infinite and as such an infinite number of simulations will be run, ergo... OK, maybe it's tautology, but...

For more reading: Simulation hypothesis - Wikipedia

For those that don't know, neural lace and backing-up ones-self are also Banks things.

If you want to understand Elon, you need to read Banks and Douglas Adams, of course.

 

[bhtooefr]

"
$TSLA short interest is 9.17 bn, 32.64 mm shares shorted, 25.60% of float. Short are up $578 mm in mark-to-market profits today on almost 6% price drop, shorts are up $2.5 bn since The Tweet and $805 million year-to-date. https://shortingtesla.com/ https://www.s3partners.net/research.php
"

Ihor Dusaniwsky on Twitter

So short interest went up.

At these low prices.

So some of today's price action may well have been new shorts jumping in and selling to smarter shorts that are covering at a damn good price to cover at.

 

[Ratanpara]

Another ugly day in a book, but in some chart trading it’s a positive thing stock closed above opening price, but hard headed long like me looking out 5 years , it’s just doesn’t matter.

 

[Tslynk67]

It's because the workplace environment is verging on toxic, with everyone expected to work 80-hour weeks and massive internal disorganization to deal with. I'm a bull, and I can tell you that that's quite clear. I mean, Mr. Morton pretty much says it outright -- "pace" is a polite way to put it.

The thing is, the financial situation is great. Employee retention? That's more of a problem.

I would like to think once we get some green bars on the quarterly profits chart, that things might begin to calm a little and more thought can be given towards structuring things a bit better.

 

[loky]

Tesla Erupts in Chaos After Senior Execs Leave, Musk Tokes Up

"Erupts in chaos"? Who is writing this stuff? lol

Please, post the source for the article, don't wont to donate free clicks.