Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable

[Criscmt]

@Everyone
@Artful Dodger @FrankSG @StealthP3D
1. Is there a case for Tesla to not let TSLA from going too far? If yes, at what SP do you think Tesla should start getting concerned about too high a rise in SP. One reason perhaps is not letting big swings in SP impact employee morale.
2. Do you think a SP equilibrium gets reached without special steps happening, like the company having to issue new shares as a step to stop front runners from totally driving the SP to "unhealthy" levels, level where a huge drop is likely?
3. Do you think Tesla very likely raises more capital at $700 or $800?
4. What surprises are plausible from S&P that could lead to a drop in the SP. Is spreading the weightage across several quarters likely?

 

[Criscmt]

Volumes low, none of the big players are purchasing yet apparently. Are they waiting for the S&P announcement on Monday, Nov-30?
I am going by the point made by many here that big players are yet to start purchasing the shares.
Could it be that they prefer to wait for the S&P announcement before buying, just in case S&P throws surprises on Monday?

 

[JBRR]

Herbert Diess: "The change will take place in ten years - with or without Volkswagen"

„In rund zehn Jahren werden wir autonom fahren können“

Google Translate

How we transform Volkswagen

 

[LiveLong&Profit]

Nope. The revenue from capturing 100% of the NN training market even if it was 10x the size now would not be that much. Tesla built a very good neural chip and Dojo has the potential to be great, but others are doing well in this space too. Tesla will not get anything more then 50% of the NN trading market. Most neural network training can be done on available equipment and does not need Dojo.

I would think Tesla’s Dojo , battery and network building experience will make Tesla robotics a much bigger deal then Dojo alone.

hm... Dojo is fascinating to think about.
Yes, other companies are doing great re. having their own custom ML chips. But AFAIK most current ML application are done processing and optimizing internal workflows and guessing customer behavior and optimizing for ad revenues and such. Teslas FSD chip is optimized for low watt-usage as well as raw FSD compute power.
I am not sure you can equate being very good at ML and having custom ML hardware with being good at robotics. Given that FSD cars are truly robots with wheels not feet, Tesla might have a real advantage here.
Even so, the business opportunity of FSD and robotaxi seems so huge that Tesla should go all-in. When that is pretty much locked in they could offer Dojo as a cloud service. If there is even a chance that a competitor could shave off some months or years using Dojo maybe that is not Tesla duty to enable. On the other hand, Elon is very fair-minded and may actually allow this to happen. Perhaps he rightfully trusts Teslas speed of innovation to be able to counter any competitor.
Also, as StealthP3D points out in another post, using Dojo does not solve the data problem: Any competitor must have date to supply to Dojo before using Dojo makes sense. That work Tesla will not absolve competitors from.

The more I think about this, allowing competitors to use Dojo even early on is a very Elon move:

• It de-fangs any future anti-monopoly government regulation attempts: "But your honor, all our competitors can access our bleeding-edge FSD-tech-stack at low cost. Why, given such benevolence, should we be punished by their lack of effort or competence?"
• It add revenue and profit to Dojo, and Tesla - and thereby drives cost down.
• It aligns with the mission
• It enables and furthers other forms of robotics which can used also by Tesla: Delivery androids in near human shape, for Tesla Semi, and/or Tesla Robotaxi. (Think future robo-cars having a locked trunk, and a humanoid-robot of some shape or form, which can do deliveries. The humanoid robot rides along with robo-taxi passengers. How is that for a future SOME-post: "Riding Robo-taxi - met a nice person/entity!" #RoboBuddy)

 

[UkNorthampton]

New video from Giga Shanghai with first Model Y doing the test track:

Yason Yang:
"I have seen Tesla Model Y for testing in GF3 many times, which means that GF3 will soon be able to mass produce model Y, just waiting for the production license and sales license."

I'm not up to speed.

They have a model 3 line. I thought they had a separate Model Y line. Now new deep/strong foundations for more stamping/gigapress. More buildings being built nearby (assuming Tesla). Are they going for Semi, China-designed (but can be built/sold anywhere) small car? Shanghai production of 1 million 3/Y/2 in 2022?

Tesla Giga 3 Shanghai Plans To Boost Capacity By 73% In Bid To Expand Localized Parts Production

Possibly body stamping workshop - I'm probably wrong. I need a lie down.... I'm having a case of the vapours

 

[LiveLong&Profit]

I agree and where the AI is, the data, compute and websites will follow. Dojo>data>compute>websites could be bigger $$$ than AWS. Plug that into your exponential s-curve spreadsheets - go on - I dare you!

Marc Andreessen: “Software is eating the world", 2011.
TMC: "Tesla is eating the world!", 2020.

 

[kanweg]

Site suggestion: implement an option for moderaters in case a subject is/becomes off limit to remove the Reply button for a post, including its daughters posts and parents (so, the whole family of citing and cited posts). Then it is obvious that the subject is closed for discussion. Would be more clear for users of the site and save the moderaters a ton of work/lots of frustration.

 

[Artful Dodger]

"Progress on Tesla's Gigafactory 3 East Expansion Road (Jiangshan Road) \ Tesla Gigafactory 3 #shortclips" | Wu Wa

 

[Artful Dodger]

I'm not up to speed.

They have a model 3 line. I thought they had a separate Model Y line. Now new deep/strong foundations for more stamping/gigapress. More buildings being built nearby (assuming Tesla). Are they going for Semi, China-designed (but can be built/sold anywhere) small car? Shanghai production of 1 million 3/Y/2 in 2022?

Tesla Giga 3 Shanghai Plans To Boost Capacity By 73% In Bid To Expand Localized Parts Production

Possibly body stamping workshop - I'm probably wrong. I need a lie down.... I'm having a case of the vapours

Lol! That old plan for Giga Shanghai is years out-of-date and inaccurate even for existing Model 3 facilities. Best to just view a few drone videos from local Tesla enthusiast Wu Wa.

Cheers!

 

[replicant]

hm... Dojo is fascinating to think about.
Yes, other companies are doing great re. having their own custom ML chips. But AFAIK most current ML application are done processing and optimizing internal workflows and guessing customer behavior and optimizing for ad revenues and such. Teslas FSD chip is optimized for low watt-usage as well as raw FSD compute power.
I am not sure you can equate being very good at ML and having custom ML hardware with being good at robotics. Given that FSD cars are truly robots with wheels not feet, Tesla might have a real advantage here.
Even so, the business opportunity of FSD and robotaxi seems so huge that Tesla should go all-in. When that is pretty much locked in they could offer Dojo as a cloud service. If there is even a chance that a competitor could shave off some months or years using Dojo maybe that is not Tesla duty to enable. On the other hand, Elon is very fair-minded and may actually allow this to happen. Perhaps he rightfully trusts Teslas speed of innovation to be able to counter any competitor.
Also, as StealthP3D points out in another post, using Dojo does not solve the data problem: Any competitor must have date to supply to Dojo before using Dojo makes sense. That work Tesla will not absolve competitors from.

The more I think about this, allowing competitors to use Dojo even early on is a very Elon move:

• It de-fangs any future anti-monopoly government regulation attempts: "But your honor, all our competitors can access our bleeding-edge FSD-tech-stack at low cost. Why, given such benevolence, should we be punished by their lack of effort or competence?"
• It add revenue and profit to Dojo, and Tesla - and thereby drives cost down.
• It aligns with the mission
• It enables and furthers other forms of robotics which can used also by Tesla: Delivery androids in near human shape, for Tesla Semi, and/or Tesla Robotaxi. (Think future robo-cars having a locked trunk, and a humanoid-robot of some shape or form, which can do deliveries. The humanoid robot rides along with robo-taxi passengers. How is that for a future SOME-post: "Riding Robo-taxi - met a nice person/entity!" #RoboBuddy)

I hope Tesla will put a condition to require all Dojo-trained model to run on machine powered by electricity only (in other words: no ICE). Always the mission before the profits (which will not lack).

 

[Todd Burch]

Referring to this Twitter thread:
https://twitter.com/truth_tesla/status/1332613785572532224?s=21

It’s been funny to watch Gary Black’s tweets the last few weeks.

When S&P inclusion announcement came, he was pumping TSLA and calling an expected top around $550.

This seemed quite low to me, and it seemed obvious that we would go higher, even though his experience and knowledge of Wall Street far surpasses mine. (I am expecting $700-800, but what do I know? At least I admit I have no idea where this beast is headed, lol).

Just a few days later, his tune has changed again, drifting like a fart in the wind now that he has taken a position against the stock’s further rise.

He also doesn’t see how the stock could rise nonlinearly when you remove a big chunk of the float?

A basic economic principle is Price Elasticity of Demand. Cost on the supply/demand curve is nonlinear.

Stock prices tend to be price elastic. That is, as increase in the demand and decrease in supply of a stock occurs, the price tends to rise more quickly. This is because stock can be sold back for a profit, therefore it is an investment. Other things such as groceries tend to be price inelastic, because they are not investments and alternatives can be found. For example, if the price of beef goes up, you can just buy chicken instead. If the price of Tesla goes up, there tends to be MORE demand for TSLA as it rises, because investors can sell shares back at a later time for a profit. Investors want to ride that train.

Sorry, but he doesn’t seem to be any more prophetic than a typical retail investor. I posted as much here a few days ago, and it boggles my mind that a guy with an engineering degree and a total of 2 college economics courses under his belt (me) can understand this whereas a big-time Wall Street guy doesn’t.

Most of these Wall Street types, as well as the “vocal” traders on Twitter such as Squawksquare, Valueanalyst, etc. don’t have any more of a clue where the price is going than the average Robinhood investor. They can just “speak the language” which makes them look like they know what will happen.

The people who REALLY seem to know what’s happening, such as @DaveT, Rob Mauer, Truth_Tesla, Artful Dodger, and Nafnlaus spend far less time talking Wall Street nonsense such as P/E ratios to value the stock and far more time talking about the core businesses of Tesla itself.

I’ve taken note of this and my investment strategy is following accordingly.

 

[OrthoSurg]

FTFY. Now, wanna bet it hits 695 next week? And it's still a long way to Dec 24th.

TL;dr HODL

Officially a dream coming true.
Doubling my cost basis

 

[OrthoSurg]

Personally, it's Apple I question the value of. Phone hardware is becoming commodity (how many pixels do you need in your image. Really.) And they don't get "it's the information, stupid" as well as Google. I know the vast majority will disagree with me on this (yeah, about $2T disagree!) Not an Apple hater. I just don't think they have done paradigm shift design in years. My $0.02 worth.

They have locked in their user in their interface and consumers buy new iPhones every 2-3 years and they keep increasing the price. As long as profitability increases and margins increase and they keep operational costs low by subcontracting, AAPL stay interesting.

TSLA, on the other hand, will catch AAPL and become 2-3x their valuation by 2030, maybe more

 

[charlesgres]

Referring to this Twitter thread:
https://twitter.com/truth_tesla/status/1332613785572532224?s=21

It’s been funny to watch Gary Black’s tweets the last few weeks.

When S&P inclusion announcement came, he was pumping TSLA and calling an expected top around $550.

This seemed quite low to me, and it seemed obvious that we would go higher, even though his experience and knowledge of Wall Street far surpasses mine. (I am expecting $700-800, but what do I know? At least I admit I have no idea where this beast is headed, lol).

Just a few days later, his tune has changed again, drifting like a fart in the wind now that he has taken a position against the stock’s further rise.

He also doesn’t see how the stock could rise nonlinearly when you remove a big chunk of the float?

Basic economics. Cost on the supply/demand curve is nonlinear.

Sorry, but he doesn’t seem to be any more prophetic than a typical retail investor. I posted as much here a few days ago.

Most of these Wall Street types, as well as the “vocal” traders on Twitter such as Squawksquare, Valueanalyst, etc. don’t have any more of a clue where the price is going than the average Robinhood investor. They can just “speak the language” which makes them look like they know what will happen.

The people who REALLY seem to know what’s happening, such as @DaveT, Rob Mauer, Truth_Tesla, Artful Dodger, and Nafnlaus spend far less time talking Wall Street nonsense such as P/E ratios to value the stock and far more time talking about the core businesses of Tesla itself.

I’ve taken note of this and my investment strategy is following accordingly.

I agree.. I derive little value of what he's saying.. He'll always confidently state what will happen, and it never happens..

 

[OrthoSurg]

While that is true there are several new dynamics at play here.

Reduced importance of brand - I talked about Tesla sell selling a wide range of cars under the one brand. While other car makers e.g. VW own different brands, VW, Audi, Porsche. Up to now "brand loyalty" has been important for ICE cars as lots of tiny aspects go in the look and feel of a brand. Brand is now less important, because specifications and aesthetics are changing rapidly.

Specifications are equally important perhaps more important than brand, Tesla has the brand and the specifications.
With the right specifications and battery volumes, EV market share us up for grabs, once there is a race, there are always willing runners.

Rather than being something fixed and permanent, battery factory plans are very fluid, changing rapidly and constantly being upscaled. There is a 5 year lag on spinning up new mines and factories, but there are always ways of dragging forward timelines we people are highly motivated, or putting it more accurately, some are desperate.

China will at least match Tesla in scaling battery production IMO, that is 40 Million EVs by 2030. The rest of the world Japanese, Koreans and Europeans can probably do 10-15 Million by 2030 if they can find the raw materials.

Very few will buy an ICE due to brand loyalty, when they want an EV. if they can't get an EV, many will simply delay purchase, that should be a trend 2025-2035.

Those buying an ICE in 2030 are people that want an ICE even though gas stations are closing, fast chargers are everywhere, and EVs are better than ICE on every single metric, including purchase price. The word for that is hobbyist, or someone with a strong sense of nostalgia.

One of my coworker always dreamed of a Porsche because he consider himself a “purist”. What does it mean theses days? Who knows
But the range of the Taycan ended up being so ridiculous particularly with the cold weather here in Canada, that he just told me he decided to buy an etron. Damn brand loyalty and childhood dreams.

 

[Todd Burch]

One of my coworker always dreamed of a Porsche because he consider himself a “purist”. What does it mean theses days? Who knows
But the range of the Taycan ended up being so ridiculous particularly with the cold weather here in Canada, that he just told me he decided to buy an etron. Damn brand loyalty and childhood dreams.

The Etron? I assume you reminded him that he overlooked the elephant in the room?

 

[OrthoSurg]

Mostly agree, but there's one class of people that will resist robotaxi, and that's parents. Hauling the child seat in an out of a robotaxi is a real pain--and what do you do with it while your shopping? Robotaxi will only be a success if it's also more convenient. If it's not more convenient (say you have to wait fifteen minutes for the robotaxi to arrive--five minutes is about the maximum) just lower cost alone won't drive the numbers you are suggesting.

To really make this work Tesla owners have to be convinced to use their car as a robotaxi. That would put enough cars in the area to get within the five minute time. Certainly robotaxi will eat normal taxis and Uber type services, and people where the cost sells them (of course, these are pretty large numbers, but nowhere near 50% as the taxi and Uber are often people who don't own a car to start with).

I will be happy to let my Model Y with 5 kid seats on the Robo-taxis network for other parents.

right now I have a dodge caravan and a Model 3 and waiting for the 7 seater model Y, I am used to installing 3 kid seats in my Model 3 within a minute and we travelled with the kids and 4 kid seats we managed to install them in rental cars within 2 minutes. Kids are so used to the kids seats swap they they are helping us better than any grand parents could do.

just have to get used to it. Now they just get their seats out of my Model 3 without me even asking because they bring it in the Dodge Caravan after when my wife is using it during the day for groceries.

getting in and out couple kid seats and a stroller takes less than the time of getting the grocery out of the car when your used to it. That’s why I was reluctant to agree with Dave Lee’s point about parents wanting to pay $500 monthly for the privilege to own a car because of car seats, baby clothes, diapers and kid seat. I have all that in a bag and can do the swap in less than 2 minutes.

I would prefer to have no car at home and hail Robo-taxis for a monthly $50 subscription service than pay $500 monthly just to have a car parked in my driveway where the kids constantly play anyway.

I might be an outlier though, we live from walking distance to school, local market, restaurants and stores. We take the car only to go at Costco once every 2-3 weeks.
Disclosure: I am an early adopter and own all disruptive stocks that exist through TSLA and all ARK funds.

 

[jerry33]

(If you say 'merger' then I invite you to ruminate on how fast-moving fail-forward sillicon valley thinking will align with slow-moving traditional automakers. I think take-over or buying the production capacity of traditional automakers is more likely)

Given the issues with the Fremont factory compared to a Gigafactory, I can't see anyone purchasing the production capacity of a traditional automaker and succeeding.

 

[OrthoSurg]

The Etron? I assume you reminded him that he overlooked the elephant in the room?

He’s Colombian, I guess he doesn’t mind as long as the name doesn’t change to eZurullo. Haha

 

[LiveLong&Profit]

Given the issues with the Fremont factory compared to a Gigafactory, I can't see anyone purchasing the production capacity of a traditional automaker and succeeding.

Right.
Kinda strange that it is actually easy to believe that traditional automakers are not cutting edge. A few years back I would have thought that the traditional automaker were paragons of efficiency and innovation. Tesla was accused, FUD'ingly but also partially truthfully of being bad at manufacturing and QC.
With mega-castings, structural batteries, people like Munro calling Tesla electronics 'aviation-grade', teams for building factories with a uniform streamlined process together with manufacturing, supporting real-time changes across continents - what a change!

So all the automakers hoping Tesla would either die, or never *really* learn manufacturing are out of time and out of luck.