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

[2daMoon]

Did you drop an "/s"?
Won't backup -> port not at rear
Won't frontup -> port not at front
So... the only option is the middle?
The issue is general parking spaces are not for vehicles towing. Must be a pull through, which Tesla also installs. Would be nice if it could redirect power from a blocked second pedestal to the truck.
View attachment 762167

Getting back to the future of CT, by the time production ramps, Tesla will likely have pioneered Mr. Fusion and charging port location becomes less of an issue.

 

[traxila]

So enquiring (and gambling) minds wanna know: What will TSLA do next week?

The answer may depend on what caused last week's stock behavior. I've seen two competing explanations for the price plunge after earnings:

1) According to Gary Black and others, institutional portfolio managers are short-term thinkers who need hard numbers to plug into their spreadsheets. All of Elon's talk about FSD and Optimus scared them, because they can't assign a valuation to those pie-in-the-sky future products. They want to see Tesla focused on auto production.

2) According to @Artful Dodger and others, the stock plunge was a pre-planned bear raid by stock manipulators to profit from naive call buyers. Everyone knew the ER would beat estimates, and the manipulators knew naive investors had bet on the stock going up. So they crashed the price and profited from shorting and expiration of the calls they had sold.

So who is right? Or is it both? I lean toward #2 for the following reasons:

Managers of big money may be short-term focused and ignorant about engineering, but I doubt they are dumb. They have seen the track record of Elon's companies in delivering innovative products and services, from the best cars in the world to rockets that land on barges. They know that Tesla's demand is off the charts, and new products are not needed soon for Tesla's growth, and they heard Zach and Elon say the growth will be "comfortably" over 50 percent per year. Only a fool would bet against Elon's juggernaut now. I doubt they are all fools.

And maybe the portfolio managers knew a bear raid was coming, or helped it, and held off from buying because they expected to get in lower after the bear raid.

So how do we determine which explanation is correct? If #2 is correct, I'd expect the PMs to wait until they think the raid is over, playing chicken with each other, then start buying with a vengeance, shooting up the stock price. And I would expect the same pattern to occur after every ER this year, since each one is likely to beat published street estimates.

I won't get fooled again.

There is no mention here of macros.

On WS everything is about overshooting in both directions. Usually for reasons that are made up after the fact. Hertz made no sense. Last week made no sense. Are we done declining? Where is TSLA with the Nasdaq at 11,000?

Tesla is the most important company in the world and IMO on the way to becoming the most valuable. When? 2026? 2028? Would love 2024. That can be very far away in stock years .

Ignore interest rates and QT in the short to medium term at your peril.

They are looking to punish MSFT and AAPL for their 30 P/E, their growth rates be damned. TSLA is on their list in a big way. The sin of having exploding profits which allows for a P/E ‘calculation’ will not be easily forgiven in this environment. And a recovery next week does not say much about next month.

I will close with the beaten horse: Buy and HODL should work just fine. Anything else, be sure you can afford to lose it all.

 

[mongo]

the combination of 1,2 would roughly align with Gary Black three day rule ... i think he said to wait at least three days to jump back in ... if my memory serves me we have seen this behavior after good ER before.... HODL

From the Gary & @DaveT video the 3 day rule is when there is an earnings miss...
Drop on a beat is more of an unchartered territory.
30:47 or so:

 

[Paul_SF]

I think a lot of people will switch to an X Plaid while they wait for a CT:

 

[Knightshade]

notice the SP tanks well before ANY retail investor who is restricted to trading off-hours could sell. Here's the Realtime Pre-Market chart from NASDAQ

View attachment 762116

...wut?

Retail can sell just fine 15 minutes before open.

Most brokers allow pre-market trading starting either 1.5 or 2.5 hours before market open. Some allow it was much as 5.5 hours before market open (4am)

 

[The Accountant]

Legacy will find it harder and harder to find buyers of new debt, especially if the collateral are fast-depreciating ICE cars with little resale value where finance commitments might be reneged on, and ICE cars handed back in huge numbers. Will the OEMs be tempted to hold the debt themselves? Oil-company proxies, banks?

I think legacy ICE collapse will be fast when it comes. They do not have the cells for switching to EVs.

This has been mentioned by other members but maybe worth pointing out again. If the EV business gains traction at OEMs and they get to a point where the ICE business is creating a drag on their business, the OEMs might spin-out the EV business as a separate company.

Let's say Ford stock is at $20/share. After a spin-out, a shareholder would be holding FORD at say $10/share and Fordev at say $10/share.
Today, cash flow from legacy sales will fund EVs but later after a spin-off, the EV business may be able to go to the capital markets for cash injections.
FORD may run down to $0/share while FORDev could run up to $100/share.

Back in my CPA years, I had an audit client that did just this. The client was a conglomerate in 7 different industries. They took their 4 losing divisions and carved them out into a separate company, leaving their 3 winners in the current company.

 

[jbcarioca]

I recommend watching the Hollywood movie Syriana. It's a graphic depiction of the lenghts Big Carbon will go to in order to get there way.

Spoiler: Syriana movie trailer

You really don't even need the movie. Big oil did the following, quite blatantly and obviously:
1. - Deposed democratically elected Mohammed Mossadegh, Premier of Iran because he had the audacity to nationalize The British oil holdings.

64 Years Later, CIA Finally Releases Details of Iranian Coup

New documents reveal how the CIA attempted to call off the failing coup — only to be salvaged at the last minute by an insubordinate…

foreignpolicy.com

As this shows Kermit Roosevelt led the final solution. FWIW Kermit Was later an emissary to some Gulf States from The Chase Manhattan Bank.
David Rockefeller, Chairman of Chase at the time wandered the Gulf States together with Kermit in his Lockheed Jetstar.

64 Years Later, CIA Finally Releases Details of Iranian Coup

New documents reveal how the CIA attempted to call off the failing coup — only to be salvaged at the last minute by an insubordinate…

foreignpolicy.com

The young Shah became deeply connected with the Rockefeller family and US oil interests, since that was his only link to power. Among the conscious accomplishments of Shah Reza Pahlavi was the appointment fo at least one cabinet minister who did not know Farsi.
2.- while the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia officially is dated from 1932, the discovery of oil by Chevron in 1938 spawned a joint venture called Aramco. From that day forward deep involvement in Saudi political affairs was driven by Aramco. Much of that has been rewritten for public consumption, but sanitized.
The list goes on.
Any modestly inquisitive person during the 1960's and 1970's who also lived in the Gulf, Iran or the Levant anywhere has tons of personal stories about those events.
Not much of the reality has ever been publicly reported except in fictionalized versions.
FWIW, the very creation of Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria were all post World Wa II spoils distribution. Those accomplishments included putting a foreigner with no connection to the territory that was named Iraq, another similar one in what became Jordan. At the time the connection to the massively expanding oilfields were the driving forces.

As we consider the resistance to Tesla just think that these forces stop at nothing to maintain the status quo, even selling 'clean' hydrogen extracted from natural gas. There is much more powerful opposition to clean energy than we really can imagine.

My apologies. I really try to avoid these discussions. They are, however front and center behind Tesla opposition.

 

[Artful Dodger]

I’m sure Hertz will take all the 2170 cars if no one wants them.

Hertz of course wants LFP cells. It's about the "million mile battery" for them, not the form factor. The fact the 3SR+ are less expensive is just a bonus, but having a car with 5x lifespan vs a comparable ICE is significant for costs, thus profitability.

 

[Zero CO2]

From the Gary & @DaveT vidro the 3 day rule is when there is an earnings miss...
Drop on a beat is more of an unchartered territory.
30:43 or so:

I guess i heard the three day rule the way i wanted to hear it .... thanks for the clarification ... looking to pick up more shares on sale

 

[Webeevdrivers]

Luckily for Tesla, there are enough people not willing to wait for 4680. Like everybody getting a company car. And most first time Tesla buyers have barely enough info about driving an EV that they are not aware of the 4680 arrival. And Tesla will definitely make sure that anybody wanting 4680 will pay a premium for it until there is enough 4680 supply. EV’s are expensive enough that demand can be easily steered by pricing.

I’m in that “we just don’t give a crap what battery is going to be in our Y“ that’s coming in March group. In three years when we get our next Tesla it will have the latest greatest proven tech, and they’ll be some new tech just in the edge of coming out again. Meh. I’m sure the Y we’ll be noticeably different than our ancient model 3. And I’m sure the car (or truck) we get in three years will be noticeably different again.

It would be nice if this FSD thingy worked someday. Or maybe a summon feature that wasn’t guaranteed to crash into everything and break 20 laws in the 250 feet from the parking lot to the pickup area in front of Walmart.

JMHO.

Cheers.

 

[CanadaEV]

Worth repeating if it’s already been posted.
Very good comparison of where ICE is going and where Tesla is going

 

[saniflash]

So enquiring (and gambling) minds wanna know: What will TSLA do next week?

for me the biggest sign that WS has not interpreted the conf call as a major change in the growth plan is the fact that price targets either stayed the same or have increased. thus I expect (hope?) that the current downtrend is rather shortlived.

 

[TN Mtn Man]

16128

100% agree.

About a 3rd of my entire network of friends who I see in real life is either about to order a Tesla, has one on order, or took delivery in the past six months. Out of all of them only one came to me and said “so when are the 4680 Model Ys hitting the market”? He worked at Bell Labs Back in the day.

Wow, I find that really surprising! When I spend the money on any major investment, let alone one as expensive as a Tesla (or most new cars for that matter), I research the crap out of it. In fact, that's why I'm on this form as well as some Tesla FB pages and other forums, to learn (I don't own an EV, but plan to for my next car). I do see some people on those forums considering putting off deliverables, but then, these are the more knowledgeable, enthusiast buyers. I compare an Freemont car vs an Austin car as a current gen iPhone vs one a generation back. Either will do the job and most users will never know the difference. If I go into the store to get the new gen and they say, all I have is the old one, but you can have it for the same price...I'm probably going to wait. And if I find I've been sold the old version without being told there is something better available, I wouldn't be happy. But, frankly, that's just me-most people aren't as anal before they spend their money-and I'm not saying that's a bad thing.

 

[Singuy]

So enquiring (and gambling) minds wanna know: What will TSLA do next week?

The answer may depend on what caused last week's stock behavior. I've seen two competing explanations for the price plunge after earnings:

1) According to Gary Black and others, institutional portfolio managers are short-term thinkers who need hard numbers to plug into their spreadsheets. All of Elon's talk about FSD and Optimus scared them, because they can't assign a valuation to those pie-in-the-sky future products. They want to see Tesla focused on auto production.

2) According to @Artful Dodger and others, the stock plunge was a pre-planned bear raid by stock manipulators to profit from naive call buyers. Everyone knew the ER would beat estimates, and the manipulators knew naive investors had bet on the stock going up. So they crashed the price and profited from shorting and expiration of the calls they had sold.

So who is right? Or is it both? I lean toward #2 for the following reasons:

Managers of big money may be short-term focused and ignorant about engineering, but I doubt they are dumb. They have seen the track record of Elon's companies in delivering innovative products and services, from the best cars in the world to rockets that land on barges. They know that Tesla's demand is off the charts, and new products are not needed soon for Tesla's growth, and they heard Zach and Elon say the growth will be "comfortably" over 50 percent per year. Only a fool would bet against Elon's juggernaut now. I doubt they are all fools.

And maybe the portfolio managers knew a bear raid was coming, or helped it, and held off from buying because they expected to get in lower after the bear raid.

So how do we determine which explanation is correct? If #2 is correct, I'd expect the PMs to wait until they think the raid is over, playing chicken with each other, then start buying with a vengeance, shooting up the stock price. And I would expect the same pattern to occur after every ER this year, since each one is likely to beat published street estimates.

I won't get fooled again.

Well PM has a 3 days rule. Monday is the 3rd day. We already see green on the second day due to macro reversal so things are looking bullish to wash unwind the put buyers.

 

[UkNorthampton]

This has been mentioned by other members but maybe worth pointing out again. If the EV business gains traction at OEMs and they get to a point where the ICE business is creating a drag on their business, the OEMs might spin-out the EV business as a separate company.

Let's say Ford stock is at $20/share. After a spin-out, a shareholder would be holding FORD at say $10/share and Fordev at say $10/share.
Today, cash flow from legacy sales will fund EVs but later after a spin-off, the EV business may be able to go to the capital markets for cash injections.
FORD may run down to $0/share while FORDev could run up to $100/share.

Back in my CPA years, I had an audit client that did just this. The client was a conglomerate in 7 different industries. They took their 4 losing divisions and carved them out into a separate company, leaving their 3 winners in the current company.

Sensible, they should do it. I think most won't. Also, may allow disentanglement from previous entanglements such as dealerships.

Lack of cells remains. Partial answer, the best legacy have IMO but it will be brutal nevertheless.

 

[JRP3]

A whole lot of motors/actuators/sensors. A car has at worst 4 drive motors (well, when CT comes out). Every single joint emulating a human joint will get a motor or actuator of some sort, some form of position feedback device and many will probably get some sort of tactile (touch/force) sensor.

Sure but small motors are much much cheaper. I'm just not seeing 100K or anything close to that once production gets going.

 

[TN Mtn Man]

This has been mentioned by other members but maybe worth pointing out again. If the EV business gains traction at OEMs and they get to a point where the ICE business is creating a drag on their business, the OEMs might spin-out the EV business as a separate company.

Let's say Ford stock is at $20/share. After a spin-out, a shareholder would be holding FORD at say $10/share and Fordev at say $10/share.
Today, cash flow from legacy sales will fund EVs but later after a spin-off, the EV business may be able to go to the capital markets for cash injections.
FORD may run down to $0/share while FORDev could run up to $100/share.

Back in my CPA years, I had an audit client that did just this. The client was a conglomerate in 7 different industries. They took their 4 losing divisions and carved them out into a separate company, leaving their 3 winners in the current company.

Interesting thought. Keeping that ICE business alive is going to be more and more difficult in the face of declining sales and revenue. That approach gives them a way to spin up their EV business without the baggage of their ICE business. And they can at some point allow the ICE company to go bankrupt. There go your obligations to long-term union contracts. No ties to a dealer system. No need to support those ice vehicles with spare parts. Or...pay creditors (which I figure is the least likely to happen). Lots of problems, both ethically and legally with that approach. But not really such a great leap, considering GMs bankruptcy and how they screwed their salary employees and creditors, let alone stockholders.

 

[Beltsbear]

What's in the 120lb robot that would cost 100K vs a 4,000lb Tesla which only costs $60K?

A lot of very high precision, small metal parts made of alloys. The real answer is mostly design and engineering labor, but also a lot of manual labor assembling it at least at first.

 

[Ipcress]

How much does the employer pay for the robot’s health insurance? Zero.

How much for 401k/retirement benefits? Zero.

How many hours does it work per day? Maybe 22?

How many lawsuits does it bring against the company? Zero.

Worker’s comp? Disability? Zero.

Does it require a manager to keep it motivated? No.

Does it require annual reviews? No. Does it have to stop for lunch? No. Pee break? No.

Does it get tired? Get distracted? Take holidays? No, no, no.

I could go on, but a robot provides so many benefits over just comparing an hourly cost to a human worker. Apples to oranges. Cost of a $100k robot easily pays for itself within a couple of years.

I notice we're all talking about the technical "can it be done" questions. of course it can. Solving the technical problems behind humanoid robots will be nothing compared to solving the social, political, and economic problems around their introduction. Especially with the instability, paralysis and irrationality in our current politics. Zero political ability to prepare and restructure our economy, massive unemployment combined with our failing educational systems, social polarization, etc is pretty scary to me. Not to be a Cassandra, or anything!

 

[Lessmog]

Better leave the humans out of your civilization . Remember Caïn and Abel?

Please don't deify Elon. He is not god.
God v2? Maybe ...