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

[UncaNed]

You can be whatever you want....I am made of star dust pppfffttt,

We are ghosts, driving our meat coated skeletons made from stardust riding a rock which is floating through space.

 

[Sudre]

ABTW., I begin to share @neroden's thesis that existing institutional investors probably helped maintain the $360 price barrier: they certainly didn't want 2.5 million new shares on the market, so in Q4 and earlier this year they kept unloading excess shares they picked up in the $250-$300 price range.

This will prove itself out after the bonds are paid and miraculously the SP will start to rise again as the institutions reload.

 

[Artful Dodger]

This is not made up at all. They would still cover conversions this way but no one will convert if the stock price is under $360.

We can not know if it was "made up". What we do know is that it was unsourced, and Tesla "did not immediately reply to a request for comments".

We also know that Bloomberg Reporters are paid bonuses for stories that "move the market" and exactly zero reporters have gone to jail for lying about Tesla.

The only person interviewed for that Bloomberg story was another reporter who was asked in effect "if this is true, what would be the effect?" Self-referencial reporting, golden...

Call it what you will. Hull is a paid shill and many were suckered by this carefully contrived story.

 

[SteveG3]

Yeah, you do not recall correctly. That was a BS story cooked up by Dana Hull on Bloomberg. Elon said no such thing.

Tesla Is Said to Plan Using Stock-Cash Mix to Pay March Debt - Bloomberg

I thought I'd heard Elon say it, rather than my having read it. That said, I just scanned the Q2 & Q3 earnings call transcripts from 2018 and didn't see it. So, unless Elon made the comment on some other broadcasted event, such as the annual meeting, I was not correct in thinking I'd heard Elon say it ("fairly high level of confidence" is not as if 'certainty.')

 

[CaliBear1]

And, possibly* the ONLY such species in the entire universe. Really scary since we may truly be on the brink.

*See Fermi's Paradox.

We do suck. We are petty,greedy,mean,many ways stupid.

Yet here we are on the cusp of either wiping our self's out ...or maybe just maybe ....growing up enough to become a multi-planetary species. With universal replicators for whatever we can imagine.

 

[AudubonB]

Silly girl: Some of us are made up of pizza and beer, and the occasional aged NYstrip steak.

You were saying?

 

[AudubonB]

Yeah, intellectual capacity and long term vision were never strong traits of Bill Gates:

"I see little commercial potential for the internet for the next 10 years," Gates allegedly said at one Comdex trade event in 1994, as quoted in the 2005 book "Kommunikation erstatter transport."...​

So I'm not sure why anyone would want to listen to Bill Gates's opinion about EVs, other than to reinforce the above impression.

Now - wait a minute! Time out.

Although I know I was very much supremely incommunicado with the universe, and it with me, through most of this millennium's first decade, still....

...can someone come up with just how much commerce DID exist on the internet in 2004? I ask out of sincere curiosity. Sure, the promise was there and the paths had been laid, but was Mr Gates truly wrong?

 

[Swampgator]

We can not know if it was "made up". What we do know is that it was unsourced, and Tesla "did not immediately reply to a request for comments".

We also know that Bloomberg Reporters are paid bonuses for stories that "move the market" and exactly zero reporters have gone to jail for lying about Tesla.

The only person interviewed for that Bloomberg story was another reporter who was asked in effect "if this is true, what would be the effect?" Self-referencial reporting, golden...

Call it what you will. Hull is a paid shill and many were suckered by this carefully contrived story.

I don't think Dana is a shill. I think she is a good reporter in an age when very few reporters, or people in general, are able to think critically. From what I have read she is smart, thoughtful, but overtly susceptible to emotional reasoning. Probably a wonderful person to know. Like most of us. No, not a Glen Greenwald critical thinker, but very, very few reporters are.

 

[Carl Raymond]

Again agree to disagree. I don't really think it's worth looking up, but, my recollection, with a fairly high level of confidence, is that Elon said a couple of earnings calls back that Tesla's preference was to pay back half in cash and half in shares. There is, of course, always a tradeoff between increasing share count and raising cash, but, Elon's statement makes it apparent that Tesla would have liked to have gone for that tradeoff for half of the debt if the share price was high enough (and, again, money had already been spent by Tesla that would have made this option more and more attractive as the price got further and further above $360, up to $500+).

Probably hard to anticipate having 3 billion in cash, and planning how best to act in that situation, prior to having 3 billion in cash. It’s sometimes best not to plan, or at least keep plans private, allowing new plans to be made closer to time without somebody piping up “but you said....”. Circumstances change, actions need to change accordingly.

 

[dc_h]

I dunno why everyone scoff at Bill Gates' statements about EVs. Yes, there will be many various great electric cars to choose. Other manufactures will come (mainly from China, completely new startups and survivors of ICE purges).

If you think Tesla will have world-wide monopoly on electric cars, you are delusional.

I am hoping their brand power and tech leadership does give them profit leadership. Perhaps not as much as Apple, but right now, they are the only company generating positive cash flow from EVs. Maybe BYD, but I think Tesla has a big lead in EV at a profit.

 

[anthonyj]

I don't think Dana is a shill. I think she is a good reporter in an age when very few reporters, or people in general, are able to think critically. From what I have read she is smart, thoughtful, but overtly susceptible to emotional reasoning. Probably a wonderful person to know. Like most of us. No, not a Glen Greenwald critical thinker, but very, very few reporters are.

She mocks our lord and savior Elon Christ (and his little angels) on Twitter fairly often. She does sometimes publish fair articles, definitely short side biased overall.

 

[reddit_tl]

Benchmark Mineral Intelligence provided the following testimony to the senate last week.

https://www.energy.senate.gov/publi...?File_id=9BAC3577-C7A4-4D6D-A5AA-33ACDB97C233 (PDF Warning)

Their comments on planned battery production are extraordinary. (emphasis mine)


Planning for batteries is already at a quarter of needed global vehicle production, up from 5% of target just 18 months ago (estimate 100m vehicles per year). When you see numbers like this the biggest question I have around Tesla is why aren't they growing faster? They're doing wonderfully well but if 20% of the market is being planned in just 18 months then all the needed production may be planned within the next few years. Tesla is still likely to outcompete many of these planned facilities but surely it is easier to claim a larger stake of production when there is less competition, othewise they will end up competing against battery manufacturers who have already sunk the cost of factory production.



This bodes well for any future downturn. If Tesla is of national importance then a bailout is virtually guaranteed should they get into trouble in the future.

The article provides a very nice high level overview of the battery supply chain with the sources and uses of the major raw materials that are used in battery production. It's well worth a read.

Thanks for the link and informative discussion.

I have the same question really. Maybe Tesla is strategically holding back because they really see a high possibility of an economic downturn coming up?

 

[Beltsbear]

Now - wait a minute! Time out.

Although I know I was very much supremely incommunicado with the universe, and it with me, through most of this millennium's first decade, still....

...can someone come up with just how much commerce DID exist on the internet in 2004? I ask out of sincere curiosity. Sure, the promise was there and the paths had been laid, but was Mr Gates truly wrong?

Commerce (if you are trying to restrict it to ecommerce) is quite different then what was being asked of Gates. What was being asked is the commercial potential, which is all of the money made from providing and selling internet, as well as the SOFTWARE and equipment required to do so. And the answer was even in 2004 it was a TON of money.

 

[AudubonB]

Aha. Might have helped me to have read the '05 book then.

 

[Beltsbear]

I dunno why everyone scoff at Bill Gates' statements about EVs. Yes, there will be many various great electric cars to choose. Other manufactures will come (mainly from China, completely new startups and survivors of ICE purges).

If you think Tesla will have world-wide monopoly on electric cars, you are delusional.

Tesla will be number one, but it won't be a monopoly. As of right now, BYD, Tesla, Nissan and Hyundai will be the biggest players next year. Jaguar, BMW, Chrysler, Audi, VW, GM and Ford won't make enough to matter until 2021.

 

[Beltsbear]

Official Tesla dog mode Tweet:

Tesla on Twitter

 

[mblakele]

Sentry Mode: Guarding Your Tesla

 

[MarcusMaximus]

Official Tesla dog mode Tweet:

Tesla on Twitter

And sentry mode right before it.

 

[anthonyj]

Official Tesla dog mode Tweet:

Tesla on Twitter

It’s little things like this that keep me super bullish long term. Not sarcasm. Can you imagine traditional OEMs ever releasing a sentry mode or dog mode without Tesla existing? Not in a hundred years. Elon truly cares and knows what people WANT. Other auto CEOs just pass the torch every 10 years, Elon builds the cars of his dreams.

 

[AudubonB]

Ugh. Sentry Mode available to Models S&X built after Aug. 2017? Grrrr. I'd better go find the appropriate thread for that, which isn't this one.....