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

[JSML]

What Schwab rumors? I haven’t heard anything in the past few days. Link?

Charles Schwab says it could ride out a deposit flight | Fox Business

 

[Buckminster]

Zach rn:

Buying carwashes (or Gigactories) doesn't get rid of cash fast enough. Buyback anyone?

The killer app of dividends and buybacks is that it will make the world (shorts and fence sitters) truly realise that TSLA doesn't need to raise cash to make more cars and that they are proper profitable.

Happenstance that Tesla might actually buy carwashes for robotaxis...

 

[jamaatta]

What is the market for unconventional massive pick ups. No one knows yet, we soon will.

My guess it's bigger than for conventional pick ups. At least I have a reservation for a CT. And I wouldn't consider a traditional pick up, no way!

It's a shame, that having CT to Europe is still so unclear.

 

[BioSehnsucht]

isn't it birds eye view already just in vector space not photo/video-realistic?

tbh - I'm not sure what I'd prefer, but birds-eye with cameras is never as clean and easy to read as this.

I'd like to see a hybrid approach - a high resolution voxel rendering of what's nearby using data from the cameras, with an outline projected onto the ground (and drawn on top so it's not occluded) of the distance and callouts for whatever is closest / most likely to be hit

 

[jerry33]

A question. I use TD Ameritrade. With the recent Charles Schwab rumours I did a little research. Security held at brokers should belong to the investors, however, since the broker loans out shares at times, it’s not 1 to 1.

Came across this at Investpedia

While securities held in street name are safe for retail investors, direct registration may be a better choice for larger investors. Stocks held in street name may be loaned to short-sellers and resold to others. So, it is possible for more than one person to own shares held in street name. If the brokerage should fail, it may not be possible to recover 100% of all securities. Investors are protected by up to $500,000 in insurance from the SIPC, but that may not be enough for high-net-worth individuals and large organizations.

My question is how big is this risk? that we won’t get close to 100percent if Schwab goes down.

My understanding is that they can only lend out your shares if you have a margin account, use options, or specifically give them the right to loan out your shares (happens when you open the account). Don't do any of these and you're protected 100% unless there is some major fraud.

 

[jerry33]

isn't it birds eye view already just in vector space not photo/video-realistic?

tbh - I'm not sure what I'd prefer, but birds-eye with cameras is never as clean and easy to read as this.

I have a car with bird's eye view. it's basically unusable for me. Bird's eye view sounds neat until you're actually stuck with a car that has it. (It might be okay if the screen size is one metre).

 

[unk45]

What Schwab rumors? I haven’t heard anything in the past few days. Link?

Not rumor. Schwab acquired TD Ameritrade brokerage customers. Check Schwab for customer conversion instructions. FWIW, I went to Schwab when they bought USAA brokerage customers. To my surprise Schwab has done well for me.

https://www.aboutschwab.com/announcement

 

[JSML]

My understanding is that they can only lend out your shares if you have a margin account, use options, or specifically give them the right to loan out your shares (happens when you open the account). Don't do any of these and you're protected 100% unless there is some major fraud.

Unfortunately I use margin and trade options. Hence my question.

 

[traxila]

Unfortunately I use margin and trade options. Hence my question.

Deutsche Bank going down. We all gonna die! We need some trillion dollar coins printed ASAP!

Deutsche Bank's Stock Drops About 9% in European Trading; Bonds Fall

Deutsche Bank's shares and bonds are selling off Friday, as investors turn wary on some European banks in the aftermath of Credit Suisse's troubles. "Deutsche Bank is under pressure now. People are repositioning

www.wsj.com

In all seriousness, don't see the present financial system existing if stocks get wiped along with bank deposits. Why worry about things you cannot control?

EDIT: And I don’t mean stock market crash. That would be pedestrian compared to major brokerages failing and stock shares and bond holdings going up in smoke along with bank runs.

 

[Artful Dodger]

My question is how big is this risk? that we won’t get close to 100percent if Schwab goes down.

Sasha Yanshin takes the lay of the financial land in this recent video. The TL;dw is your shares at a U.S. Broker are very safe (insert DTCC stuff here), but your cash balance at that same broker may not be:

HTH.

 

[mongo]

I'd like to see a hybrid approach - a high resolution voxel rendering of what's nearby using data from the cameras, with an outline projected onto the ground (and drawn on top so it's not occluded) of the distance and callouts for whatever is closest / most likely to be hit

The front of the car has camera blind spots so they can't make a direct 360 view. Only way would be to record camera feeds and preform transforms on the video based on vehicle movement to approximate the scene.
That's what they are doing now with the vision park assist, but it's a smoothed line from vector/ voxel space, not distorted video frames.

 

[Snerruc]

You are making an assumption. GM's plant in Tennessee is UAW. It will be up to the workers to decide whether to go with UAW, some other union, or no union.

True, but ask VW about the company wanting their Tn plant to be union. I believe the GM plant was originally Saturn and was a special case. As a former Tn stump William,I can say it may be an interesting fight.pretty much everyone I know in the area has a gun in their pocket or purse.

 

[1101011]

This is nonsense. Investment in capital items like plants and equipment do not hit the profit and loss statement directly (only through depreciation and COGS) and therefore do not generate a significant direct accounting loss. So if they are showing a $2+ billion loss, than that really is a $2+ billion loss. I mean sure, some portion of that is R&D expense and scaling up labor expense etc, but most of it is straight inefficient losses. Now Tesla experienced losses for a long time as well while scaling up, but not at the pace of $2+ billion in a single year.

If hard assets were deemed useless for future, they could be valued at - 0 - instead of depreciated, thus generating greater losses...

 

[Featsbeyond50]

My guess it's bigger than for conventional pick ups. At least I have a reservation for a CT. And I wouldn't consider a traditional pick up, no way!

It's a shame, that having CT to Europe is still so unclear.

Try FedEx.

 

[scaesare]

Installs tomorrow. Can’t wait!

View attachment 920813

Hmmm... what does "recall" mean here?

Recall of what? Is this the ability to "remember" and predictively track objects when temporarily obscured in the current field of view?

 

[EinSV]

At our Silicon Valley TMC investor meetup in February, I learned from @EinSV that San Mateo County now has 25% of all new vehicle purchases being Teslas. 1 out of 4, almost unbelievable. Indeed, per the CA Energy Commision dashboard, in San Mateo County in 2022 Tesla sold 11,320 cars out of 13,711 total BEVs (83% share) and 46,696 total vehicles (24.2% share). At a global scale, this market share would already put Tesla close to the 20M/year goal (this is not a reasonable extrapolation but it serves to give a sense of scale.) San Mateo contains much of Silicon Valley and tends to vote about 75% in favor of Democrats in most elections. Per Wikipedia, “Every city, town, and unincorporated area of San Mateo County has more registered Democrats than Republicans.”

Thank you for the shout-out (and it was great to meet you in person!)

A couple additional thoughts/data points I thought were worth sharing.

First, a clarification — Santa Clara County (just south of San Mateo County) is usually considered the heart of Silicon Valley. Minor nitpick but the story is the same — very similar political leanings and Tesla purchasing habits (22.4% Tesla share for full year 2022 per the California Energy Commission).

Second, as everyone on the forum knows but is worth emphasizing anyway — Tesla accomplished the sales dominance you describe with no federal tax credits when most of its competitors still qualified so was at a $7500 disadvantage for many buyers, plus an additional $2000 in some cases due to ineligibility for CA tax credits.

With federal tax credits now available (and $2000 CA state tax credit for some vehicles/buyers) Tesla continues to post staggering numbers in Silicon Valley.

For example, according to the Silicon Valley New Car Dealers Association Tesla had a remarkable 26.6% market share in Jan+Feb 2023, with full EVs taking 39.2% of the market. https://www.svautodealers.com/pdf/SiliconValley_Feb23_Data.pdf Tesla is by far the number 1 auto brand in Santa Clara County, despite having only two somewhat affordable models and four in total. So far in 2023 Tesla has almost double second place Toyota’s market share (26.6% v. 14.4%) and the gap is widening quickly.

IMO Tesla’s share and EV share should continue to rise through the year and it’s likely Silicon Valley will be 50% full EVs by Q4 2023. At the rate things are changing it’s pretty close to game over for new ICE vehicles in this part of the world.

It’s impossible to know whether Tesla demand would be even higher in this area without Elon’s antics. Anecdotally I believe it likely would as I have many friends and acquaintances who openly despise Elon, including long-time Tesla owners and current and former shareholders, and some of them have said they would prefer to buy a different brand next time as a result. But so far the advantages of owning a Tesla are clear enough that overall sales remain stellar and growth remains healthy despite Elon and despite all the new “Tesla killers” on the market.

 

[JRP3]

Agree completely. To add to that I am curious about sustained demand for cybertruck. Oh how I would be so much more comfortable if they did both a conventional pick up alongside the cybertruck.

That would be foolish considering the initial demand and production constraint of the Cybertruck. A conventional truck would pull resources away from Cybertruck production while at the same time delivering inferior specifications. The traditional 3 box truck design is less efficient than the Cybertruck shape and it's also much more difficult to build in stainless steel. So if you want a less durable vehicle with less range you can buy a conventional looking truck elsewhere for now.

 

[GOVA]

I wish that Cybertruck price(s) would be announced. I am a reservation holder for it and don't know the price which is just weird.

 

[Nocturnal]

Sasha Yanshin takes the lay of the financial land in this recent video. The TL;dw is your shares at a U.S. Broker are very safe (insert DTCC stuff here), but your cash balance at that same broker may not be:

HTH.

There are people out there who can keep cash in a broker and not spend it on TSLA?

 

[jeewee3000]

I wish that Cybertruck price(s) would be announced. I am a reservation holder for it and don't know the price which is just weird.

Should be there soon, given the launch by H2 2023. I find it no weirder than no-USS vehicle owners not knowing when they'll get the 2023.6.9 update (they just released it to some, but not to others, without any communication regarding the rollout).

Say what you will about Tesla: PR is not their greatest strength (ducks for the downvotes).