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

[mblakele]

This is just a rumor, but maybe worth discussing.

Toyota, NTT to invest in each other in smart city tie-up -NHK

TOKYO, March 24 (Reuters) - Toyota Motor Corp and Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp will form a capital tie-up to work together in smart-city development, making large investments in each other, Japanese public broadcaster NHK reported on Tuesday.

No other details were immediately available.​

Per NHK, NTT brings 5G to this deal.

How does this affect TSLA? Consider the technologies Tesla already has, or is developing — key technologies for smart cities: EVs, FSD, solar, battery storage, and connections with SpaceX's Starlink for communications.

This rumor may also be evidence that at least some companies are looking past the immediate crisis.

 

[MC3OZ]

Lots of interesting Musk tweets this hour.

I’ve been skeptical about smart home products (how much smarter can a refrigerator really get?) but I do see how if I was getting a Tesla solar roof and battery for my home, getting a Tesla HVAC system to go with it makes a lot of sense.

Whoa, that’s another multi hundred billion market for Tesla to disrupt.

If you have seen this patent:-
Tesla Steps Into The Utility Space With New Grid Controller Patent | CleanTechnica

The big opportunity is "smart controlled loads" home heating and cooling, hot water, pool pumps, car charging, clothes drying, robot vacuum cleaners are the big opportunities.

Clothes drying, pool pumps and some other devices, may be able to be controlled buy smart surge protection power boards, the problem for clothes drying is size of the load or swapping loads..

if robot vacuum cleaners and other rechargeable devices dock for recharging, at smart surge protection power boards, they can be charged...

There is more and more stuff in a house with a battery that needs recharging...

So the potential is to add more stuff to the list, I'm not seeing refrigerators as a strong candidate, except perhaps for things like ice making which can be done at anytime.

 

[vwman111]

Yeah, IV is pretty absurd atm.

I'm considering selling some of my Jun'21 $900s, because my confidence level in them has dropped since this crisis started, and they are trading way higher than they should be right now. I bought them for $20 in January when SP was ~$490, and now with SP at $430, they're trading at $52

That just makes no sense at all.

Wouldn't you wait until a bump from the stimulus package? IV is likely to stay high in the near term...

 

[MC3OZ]

And if they’re doing all that, why not use Boring Company bricks and just make the whole house. Prefab modular Tesla house.

Robots can 3D print a house of of bricks, and that method of construction will work on Mars..

 

[Fred42]

Tesla could be in line for substantial Federal low-interest loans due to the stimulus package now being considered by the US Senate. Question is wether the Bill as written leaves substantial wiggle room for the Adminstration to deny loans to green companies like Tesla, and not have the fact made public:

NY Times: Mar 23, 2020

"At the heart of the impasse is a $425 billion fund created by the bill that the Federal Reserve could leverage for loans to assist broad groups of distressed companies, and an additional $75 billion it would provide for industry-specific loans. Democrats have raised concerns that the funds do not have rules for transparency or enough guardrails to make sure companies do not use the funds to enrich themselves or take government money and lay off workers. They also argue the measure would give Mr. Mnuchin too much discretion to decide which companies receive the funds, calling the proposal a “slush fund” for the administration.

"As the legislation is currently written, Mr. Mnuchin would not have to disclose the recipients until six months after the loans were disbursed. Some Democrats also objected to loopholes in the legislation they said could allow Mr. Trump’s real estate empire to take advantage of the federal aid."​

Again, at the heart of the matter is a level playing field. If Boeing gets loans, or GM and Ford get loans but not Tesla, there will be hell to pay.

And that's NOT a low-interest loan.

So apparently the GOP plan is $500 billion the administration can hand out to their friends including oil and coal companies, and presumably nothing for Tesla, and they don't have to reveal to whom they gave the money until after the election. I recall years ago Republicans calling for transparency in government.

 

[Singuy]

HOW???

“Elon Musk: how about this? I told you a few days ago he was likely to have 1,000 ventilators this week,” Newsom told reporters in a briefing Monday. “They arrived in Los Angeles and Elon Musk is already working with the hospital association and others to get those ventilators out in real time. It’s an heroic effort.”

California Governor Says Elon Musk Delivered 1,000 Ventilators

 

[MC3OZ]

HOW???

“Elon Musk: how about this? I told you a few days ago he was likely to have 1,000 ventilators this week,” Newsom told reporters in a briefing Monday. “They arrived in Los Angeles and Elon Musk is already working with the hospital association and others to get those ventilators out in real time. It’s an heroic effort.”

California Governor Says Elon Musk Delivered 1,000 Ventilators

Tesla Ventilators - "We expect to have over ~1200 to distribute this week. Getting them delivered, installed & Operating is the harder part" : teslamotors

I'm seriously interested in how they are able to pull this off. I'm guessing they're just helping manufacture Medtronic ventilators using their diagrams and tech, otherwise designing their own and getting it approved on such short notice would be impossible. That still doesn't explain retooling and training, though.

That quote is a reasonable guess.

As is this:-

We can speculate TSLA is cloning Medtronic's production line with its own production capabilities.

 

[nygiants242]

^ Guys, seriously? Come on now...
Elon Musk
@elonmusk
Yup, China had an oversupply, so we bought 1255 FDA-approved ResMed, Philips & Medtronic ventilators on Friday night & airshipped them to LA. If you want a free ventilator installed, please let us know!

Elon Musk on Twitter

 

[deffu]

^ Guys, seriously? Come on now...
Elon Musk
@elonmusk
Yup, China had an oversupply, so we bought 1255 FDA-approved ResMed, Philips & Medtronic ventilators on Friday night & airshipped them to LA. If you want a free ventilator installed, please let us know!

Elon Musk on Twitter

Cybertruck needs to come with a ventilator, so to drive on Mars

 

[MC3OZ]

^ Guys, seriously? Come on now...
Elon Musk
@elonmusk
Yup, China had an oversupply, so we bought 1255 FDA-approved ResMed, Philips & Medtronic ventilators on Friday night & airshipped them to LA. If you want a free ventilator installed, please let us know!

Elon Musk on Twitter

I assume they are still planning to make them, unless they can buy more.

Why I assumed it may not just be a simple purchase is, that if supply was available, anyone could buy them

 

[MP3Mike]

Why I assumed it may not just be a simple purchase is, that if supply was available, anyone could buy them

Anyone with the connections, cash, and a process to purchase from a new supplier quickly could have. I can assure you that most hospitals don't have more than one of those things. So Elon using his boots on the ground to find, acquire, pay for, and ship them here is a help to the hospitals that are in need.

Sure, it only increased the supply of ventilators by about 1% in the US, but that could help save thousands of patients.

 

[Beltsbear]

Anyone with the connections, cash, and a process to purchase from a new supplier quickly could have. I can assure you that most hospitals don't have more than one of those things. So Elon using his boots on the ground to find, acquire, pay for, and ship them here is a help to the hospitals that are in need.

Sure, it only increased the supply of ventilators by about 1% in the US, but that could help save thousands of patients.

Each vent can save 2 to 4 lives a month in an overloaded system. If this drags on for 3 months overloaded, that is a lot of lives.

 

[StealthP3D]

HOW???

“Elon Musk: how about this? I told you a few days ago he was likely to have 1,000 ventilators this week,” Newsom told reporters in a briefing Monday. “They arrived in Los Angeles and Elon Musk is already working with the hospital association and others to get those ventilators out in real time. It’s an heroic effort.”

California Governor Says Elon Musk Delivered 1,000 Ventilators

Bloomberg just did a disgusting edit to the headline of that story. Now it reads:

Virus Skeptic Musk Donates Ventilators in California Crisis
instead of:
California Governor Says Elon Musk Delivered 1,000 Ventilators

They just changed the title of the article. I loaded it once and couldn't find the browser tab so I loading it in another browser tab and they had changed it! The original headline makes Musk out to be a hero of the State and the second one makes him sound like an egomaniac.

And it wasn't 1000 but a full 25% more - 1255!

 

[StealthP3D]

Bloomberg just did a disgusting edit to the headline of that story. Now it reads:

Virus Skeptic Musk Donates Ventilators in California Crisis
instead of:
California Governor Says Elon Musk Delivered 1,000 Ventilators

They just changed the title of the article. I loaded it once and couldn't find the browser tab so I loading it in another browser tab and they had changed it! The original headline makes Musk out to be a hero of the State and the second one makes him sound like an egomaniac.

And it wasn't 1000 but a full 25% more - 1255!

They also edited the story itself to paint Musk in a more negative light. Here is the original text of the story with the headline "California Governor Says Elon Musk Delivered 1,000 Ventilators":

(Bloomberg) -- Elon Musk, the billionaire chief executive officer of Tesla Inc. and SpaceX, delivered 1,000 ventilators to officials in Los Angeles to meet demand as the coronavirus pandemic becomes more severe, California Governor Gavin Newsom said.

“Elon Musk: how about this? I told you a few days ago he was likely to have 1,000 ventilators this week,” Newsom told reporters in a briefing Monday. “They arrived in Los Angeles and Elon Musk is already working with the hospital association and others to get those ventilators out in real time. It’s an heroic effort.”

Newsom also said six California companies have offered their facilities to manufacture gowns and he’s in conversation with another 25 providers that want to start 3D printing masks for health-care workers.

Updated models predict the state is currently 50,000 hospital beds short to meet needs as the pandemic spreads, the governor said. For the health-care workers who will staff those additional beds, Newsom said the state is looking to procure 1 billion gloves and more than 500 million masks.

“That’s not a typo,” Newsom said.

Related: Musk Talks Ventilators With Medtronic as It Doubles Production

For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com

But the same link now takes you to a more negative version: Virus Skeptic Musk Donates Ventilators in California Crisis

 

[UnknownSoldier]

Following @UnknownSoldier 's lead, I used SPY puts (280$) to a degree of success. My mistake was getting out too early, as I underestimated market's reaction.
This is a valid strategy, and I hope @UnknownSoldier can share an update for his 100$ puts...

This was last week when VIX hit that all-time high of 82. Their value has cooled off since VIX has been steadily declining since then.

I'm still holding about half of the original number of these contracts I had when this all began. Because of my hedging, my trading portfolio looks like this despite the fact I have not sold a single share of TSLA out of my portfolio. (My TSLA losses represent roughly 75% of my total losses from my share holdings.)

You can see the initial run-up from TSLA $180 to $962 (that seems so long ago now!), then the initial drop when the corona crash began, then the point where I began implementing my hedging strategy, and then the wild bounce when the crash hit it's peak and my portfolio actually gained in value because my hedges began to outpace my losses. Since then there has been a steady decline as VIX has begun to normalize.

Too bad my 403(b) is drilling down to the Earth's core while this has been happening in my trading portfolio. Not much I can do about that though, and it's not like I can touch that until I'm 59 and 1/2 years old anyways.

edit:

I would be remiss if I failed to mention that the only weakness of this hedging strategy is that naturally since I'm working with put options, everything gained is short-term capital gains and the tax bill from all this nonsense is going to be absolutely terrifying to behold. That is the one thing that makes a strategy like this is absolutely inferior to simply having sold all my holdings when the crash began, because a lot of my share holdings counted as long-term capital gains and would have been taxed at a lower rate. I'm going to owe the IRS an obscene amount of money this year because of this. I should just start a hedge fund or something and fund it with my own personal cash just to have fewer taxes than I would as an individual investor.

 

[CanadaEV]

Anyone with the connections, cash, and a process to purchase from a new supplier quickly could have. I can assure you that most hospitals don't have more than one of those things. So Elon using his boots on the ground to find, acquire, pay for, and ship them here is a help to the hospitals that are in need.

Sure, it only increased the supply of ventilators by about 1% in the US, but that could help save thousands of patients.

Exactly! Tesla has to souce difficult items all the time. Getting a shipment like this at such speed is impossible for almost anyone else, but it's child's play for Tesla. They are magicians at it. And they get what they need fast! And it doesn't hurt to have the admiration of key figures in China who know it will work equally well for them. Win, win, win.

 

[FrankSG]

Sell, sell, sell (best Cramer voice).

I'd probably use the cash to buy stock immediately, or Jun'22 calls. Not 100% sure yet.

Wouldn't you wait until a bump from the stimulus package? IV is likely to stay high in the near term...

I'd think so, yes, but it's still something to keep in mind. Something could cause IVs to drop.

Main risk is that there's more uncertainty for 2020, and in general the market is less exuberant and willing to attach less rich valuations to companies, Tesla included. This could change by Jun'21, but it could not.

I'm just less certain about these Jun'21 $900s than I was at the start of this year when I bought them. I'm not sure yet what I'll do. To hold on to them I should have some confidence that TSLA will go to $1,200+ by Jun'21. If my bull case is anything less than that, the risk is just not worth it, and I'd rather swap the options for stock which is almost risk free imo.

 

[StealthP3D]

Wouldn't you wait until a bump from the stimulus package? IV is likely to stay high in the near term...

How do you know the bump from the stimulus package isn't right now? It could sell off on passage/signing. The market is forward-looking and a big stimulus is pretty much guaranteed, it's just a matter of whether it's weighted more towards mom and pop or towards billionaires. The likely outcome is a bit more for mom and pop and a bit less for the billionaires. I'm assuming the market is probably already assuming a high likelihood of passage of something in between the two.

I like the solution weighted more towards the bottom because I think it puts the American economy on a more solid footing going forward and bolsters spirits where it's needed most. Most importantly, the amount of money is huge and I don't like the idea of non-accountable parties doling it out as they see fit. That's an issue I think Congress would be remiss to not deal with in advance. But there is unnatural pressure to pass something, anything, and quick. Because then there is plenty of pork to go around. But power and money corrupt and corruption is the last thing we need to dig ourselves out of this.

As to TSLA share price, you can't plan these things out with much certitude. The thing that will make TSLA pop could be a surprise or an unknown at this point in time. Thus, we don't know when it might happen. There's Q1 P&D coming up but it's uncertain how the market would react to a good report that shows minimum impact from CV while staring at a Q2 that might still be an unknown in terms of when G1 can start production and perhaps how much worldwide demand there will be. I'm somewhat optimistic we will get a reasonable lift from production and delivery numbers.

 

[Buckminster]

So from this picture, is it safe to say that the MY does not employ the Flexi pcb wiring technology?

Elon Musk: Tesla Model Y heat pump is some of the best engineering I’ve seen in a while - Electrek

Not very much wiring in view. Elon mentioned the great engineering in the heat pump and the rear castings but nothing on the wiring reduction. Maintaining 75% commonality with the M3 was probably considered more critical.

 

[Buckminster]

Has Elon cracked warp drive tech without telling us?

Wonder of Science on Twitter

Beautiful.