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

[ZeApelido]

With no heirs and no sensible way to spend it all, I’m starting to have to think real hard where I want it to go. I could have them bury me with it in my Cybertruck on my mountain. Problem is I don’t actually trust anyone to do that unless I’m standing there supervising. Of course, I’d also need them to booby trap my grave. I’m thinking The Mummy kind of stuff. That’d be cool. Or maybe I’ll just leave it to CORPX. Yes. Getting to be a bit of a dilemma.

HI Mom

 

[M|S|M MYP]

This hits close too the heart:

Bloomberg - Are you a robot?

 

[vikings123]

I'm guessing a lot of active S&P benchmarked fund managers are waiting for Monday when they know there will be a lot of sellers who were deferring for tax reasons. They're all going to be trying to buy at the same time, and on the same day P/D numbers are coming - what a mess. They had the perfect opportunity to buy well below the S&P inclusion price. How do such foolish people come to manage such large amounts of money?

Because they continue to value Tesla based on old valuation metrics. ZOMG look at the PE, Tesla is expensive. Sometimes these valuations and traditional way of looking at things blinds you from seeing the obvious. That said 2021 is all about execution. This is still a capital intensive business and we are entering a very critical phase of the ramp-up; aka the machine that builds the machine. I think Elon is closely involved with Berlin and of course Austin.

Personally I would also like to thank shorts and wall street for missing on Tesla. I would not have been to build my position to where it is today if Tesla was fairly valued. They kept the lid on the stock price with constant FUD, or like Chamath said in 2018 it was controlled by vulture like hedge funds who were betting against humanity.

It’s been a blessed year and we are just getting started with the next phase of hyper growth in energy and auto; Looking forward to all the catalysts in 2021 and most importantly FSD.

 

[kanweg]

I just want to thank you for taking one for the team.

The bad news is that my wealth is not that much. But it (the wealth tax) will be a first for me and it is better to pay more taxes than less. I’d love to pay millions in taxes.

 

[4chi]

This sounds like your sort of thing: Someone Found a Buried Treasure Hidden in the Rocky Mountains

Forrest Fenn, a New Mexico art collector who created the treasure hunt, announced over the weekend that someone had found the bronze chest that he had buried in the mountains, filled with gold nuggets, coins, sapphires, diamonds, pre-Columbian artifacts and other items. He has estimated the hoard is worth $2 million.

Forrest was my Dad's pilot training instructor in the late 60's. Dad says he was very proud of the fact that the first time Forrest took him up he managed not to throw up until they were back on the ground. Forrest died shortly after all the new on this story came out this year.

 

[Tslynk67]

That's curious, I've never met a Tesla owner who told me they had a subscription to another charging network. Perhaps this is a more local phenomena.

It would be nice to hear from others. You can count me as a Tesla owner who has never used a non-Tesla charger.

I have a ChargeMap card, which works on a multitude of public charging stations in Europe, but it's more for contingency, I never actually use it... TBH I mostly bought it to support the site as they've been there since the beginning and were useful for locating public chargers in the pre-Supercharger era.

 

[kanweg]

S&P would be red if it weren’t for TSLA.

 

[2daMoon]

The bad news is that my wealth is not that much. But it (the wealth tax) will be a first for me and it is better to pay more taxes than less. I’d love to pay millions in taxes.

I sincerely hope that you may find yourself paying an increasing wealth tax going forward.

 

[Silentk]

It definitely was a great year for Tesla investors.
I wish to thank everybody here for the sharing of all your knowledge and wit.
Tonight I will drink from this special bottle with gratitude for this and will toast to the health of you all.
Have a lovely evening and to reading in this thread with pleasure next year.
Stay safe and healthy!

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Where are the Bollinger Bands they talk of, pray tell?

 

[Nocturnal]

S&P would be red if it weren’t for TSLA.

Surely we will see an article from Marketwatch saying something like "Tesla made average index investors 18 billion dollars today".

 

[StealthP3D]

One thing I try to avoid talking too much about is the use of various derivative instruments in hedging. To very knowledgable people there is high value, but even very adept ones make drastic mistakes. Check Delta Airlines oil hedging history for reference, although many other dramatic cases, some fraudulent, have caught experts flatfooted. Check:
The Vanishing Salad Oil: A $100 Million Mystery (Published 1964)
Hedging acquired a bad name when 'hedge funds' stopped hedging and began outright speculation.
With TSLA we have giants of Enron discoveries and others who find something they think is fraudulent or weak and try to force it down and out. Every single one of us should know that TSLA is the most-shorted stock in recent memory by many standards. In such conditions it is foolish to try to deal in options except in cases such as @Lycanthrope describes.
There are nearly endless stories of huge losses in derivatives including every option category.
The industry began in 1848 as a means to help farmers predict prices and purchasers to do the same thing. Anybody dealing in this arena ought to know the history, lest one runs a large risk of repeating that history.
Start here with the wiki, if you really want to know how all this began:
Chicago Board of Trade - Wikipedia
Then look here to see how Nobel Prize winners blew it triggering near destruction pf the world financial system:
Long-Term Capital Management - Wikipedia
Then just think about the Black-Scholes-Merton Model:
How the Black Scholes Price Model Works

I admit my reticence about this subject comes from being in seminars taught by two of those people in 1971 while the work was being done that won the Nobel Prize.
Just know that in the really fine print the model was intended for a specific subset of European options. Nearly everyone has forgotten that, including two of those people.

Bluntly, these instruments are now roughly on a par with betting systems. The technologies are largely identical. The house wins, all others have net losses.
When one does true hedging those costs are often reasonable. When one speculates, one loses! The house makes sure that their takes does not make everyone lose, nor anybody lose all the time. Like betting systems, the occasional wins generate false confidence.

Once again, 2020 is analogous to 1972 and early 2008, maybe even 1928, Elon sees us in the Roaring 20's, after all. Longs will not be harmed and will probably thrive. Many speculators will have a sad year in 2021.

Probably the people making all those sweet profits will not heed these warnings from some of us. I am keeping at it because the Tesla community is precious to me and I really will be sad if some of us end out paying the price for irrational exuberance. Frankly, following this advice will not make anybody lose any money, so long as they do not sell. Staying in is another story.

Of course I am older than most of us. I bear the scars of 1973. I learned soon enough that I managed to recover before too long. A financial life doing many workouts and liquidations taught me how often those same mistakes keep being repeated. The failures disappear and new smarter people reinvent the same mistakes.

Anybody who wonders how this might happen now might study the career of, say, Steve Mnuchin. Don't leave out the details of Sears and IndyMac, or Trump Tower Chicago.
Superficiality in investment is just like superficiality in any major decision.

I'll nominate this post for Moderators choice! People need to understand what you have presented here in outline form on a deeper level and this post is a good start to thinking about these things. Especially the part about false confidence born out of a string of wins. This is a very common failing, not understanding the true odds. Humans are terrible at this while constantly over-estimating their ability to understand risk/reward.

What I find interesting is that some people look at investing in general, that is, taking a long position in a productive company, in the same "gambling" light that you have used to illuminate options speculation. I am not against gambling at all if the odds are in your favor. But the key to this is fully understanding the risk/reward relationship, risk management and knowing that your ability to judge the risk/reward is not perfect and never will be.

But buying stock for the long term, while still speculative, is a completely different animal. It should not be looked at as gambling (as many do) but as a long-term store of wealth. The differentiator is time. "Long-term" does not mean one or even two years. So I'm always surprised when I run into people who think "stocks" are "risky" and they frown on them for that reason. Where else will you put your savings to work?

 

[mekberg]

Are you going to pick TSLA again for 2021?

BTC if I’m allowed.

 

[corduroy]

We are coming for you FB!

 

[AudubonB]

Was that price target just for today?

No, it was for year’s end.

 

[StealthP3D]

With modern processing techniques, LiDAR can actually see almost right through fog, snow and rain BUT your point about needing to solve the vision problem regardless still stands. It's also possible to apply similar processing techniques for vision so it's not solely something only LiDAR can do.

People say this all the time as if it's true. It's not.

What is true is that processing techniques help LIDAR see through weather that was previously not possible (using LIDAR). It does not bring it anywhere near to what radar (or even cameras) are capable of. Cameras use very similar processing techniques to improve vision in inclement weather that LIDAR cannot match no matter how much it is processed. LIDAR is crippled in poor visibility far earlier than radar (and even cameras) no matter how much processing you throw at the problem. The limit is the brightness of the LIDAR must remain eye-safe and LIDAR must make a two-way trip through the weather.

Cost and inability to function adequately in expected weather conditions are the two Achilles heels of LIDAR.

 

[chronoreverse]

I mean, I only saw the results of the public research papers. And they certainly aren't using higher than normal laser energy.

I'm not going to discount real work that has been done in LiDAR even if I am convinced it's not necessary and most likely a waste of resources for autonomy.

 

[Krugerrand]

HI Mom

FYI, Maury Povich is a very good friend.

If we were basing ancestry solely on the smartass meter, you could totally be my offspring.

 

[ConcordeSST]

We are coming for you FB!

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For. Some reason this post reminded me that I need to go have a drink.

 

[Discoducky]

We are coming for you FB!

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Wow, that's the last company to beat and then it's onto 1T!

 

[Yoona]

Can we not invite Pat Robertson this time.

THIS IS REALLY, REALLY FUNNY. I almost fell off my chair and my false teeth nearly fell out!