Individual Stock Discussions

I predict EOD action on BABA will get interesting. Also Friday is triple witching.

ETA: wrong on EOD action. Pretty tight range last 2 hours.

Look at BABA getting pegged right at 200 on triple witching.

ETA: what a battle there at the EOD. The volumes that got moved to keep it close to 200 was amazing. It really seemed like a big buyer was trying to push it up, but someone kept selling into the buys. The last few seconds there were several thousand shares traded that came in.

Is anyone short NVDA?

Short NVDA? Now that sounds like a bad plan. I mean, donā€™t get me wrong, this thing will eventually stop going up so hard, but trying to time that is a mistake IMO.

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I agree, I learned my lesson about getting in front of a train. But man does it seem overpriced right now.

But the adrenaline rush!

For the engineer or the person on the tracks ?
:stuck_out_tongue:

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Yes.

Also, probably a bad idea butā€¦ In for 1 x AAPL Apr 06ā€™18 $165 Call @ $6.64 in my IRA.

This guy has some pretty good insights on shorts. TLDR- crowded valuation shorts without a clear catalyst will ruin you.

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down $15k+ and also find out the neighbor almost burned my house downā€¦ fun afternoon/day.

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You still bettinng forward on baba? I hope not, thatā€™s been gruesome.

3 months later and theyā€™re at $260 and Iā€™m starting to hear people actually questioning their financing situation.

Unless Elon Musk ā€œpulls a rabbit out of his hat,ā€ Tesla will be bankrupt within four months, says John Thompson of Vilas Capital Management.

How many shares did I need to short to pay for a Model S again? I didnā€™t do enough, clearly.

IMG_2026

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Please post when you cover.

I shorted more today, does that count? Itā€™s looking like Musk and his shareholders are going to get a lesson in Sorosā€™ reflexivity, i.e. The lower the stock goes and the less confidence people have in them, the lower the price goes and less confidence they will have in them. When youā€™re profitable and debt free, you donā€™t have to care what people think or what your stock price is as long as business is good. When your business is selling hope and shares (and a few cars, unprofitably), the perception of the state of your business and its prospects are more important than anything else.

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Q1ā€™18 benchmarks, total return YTD:

QQQ +3% tech stocks
GLD +2% gold
IWM -1% smallcaps
JNK -1% junk bonds
SPY -2% large caps
BND -2% bonds
BTC -49% bitcoin

Surely thereā€™s something you can outperform on this list :). It wasnā€™t a great quarter for my investments, but up is better than down.

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My IRA is outperforming. Itā€™s up 5.5%.

Not my taxable. It burned some when I was planning to sell down to lower strikes on F Fri and then Weds got a big hit before that ā€œcorrectionā€ even happened, 2 days sucks I shouldnā€™t have waitedā€¦ I suppose itā€™s only doing half as bad as BTC.

Other bright side is the the Feb correction was almost painless.

DJIA 1ST QTR WINNERS:
+12.48% > INTEL
+11.75% > CISCO
+11.17% > BOEING
+06.46% > MICROSOFT

DJIA 1ST QTR LOSERS:
-22.75% > GE
-13.31% > P&G
-12.20% > DOW/DUPONT
-11.15% > EXXON MOBIL
~~
S&P500 1ST QTR WINNERS:
+99.41% > AFLAC
+80.84% > NEKTAR
+57.17% > XL
+53.68% > NETFLIX

S&P500 1ST QTR LOSERS:
-36.55% > LBRANDS
-27.63% > ALBEMARLE
-24.00% > GENERAL MILLS
-23.61% > DENTSPLY SIRONA
~~
NASDAQ 1ST QTR WINNERS:
+53.68% > NETFLIX
+39.87% > SEAGATE
+26.48% > MICRON
+24.94% > WORKDAY

NASDAQ 1ST QTR LOSERS:
-23.61% > DENTSPLY SIRONA
-20.65% > DISH
-19.89% > KRAFT/HEINZ
-18.74% > NETEASE

If it quacks like a duckā€¦

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Yes, I appreciate your POV. Iā€™m always hesitant to find myself on the other side of one of your trades, because I have a ton of respect for you.

Confidence is certainly low right now, and looks to get worse with news over this weekend. I understand the cash-flow & profitability/valuation arguments against TSLA. Also, the mountain of debt with upcoming payments isā€¦ staggering.

However, none of this is a surprise. Musk said several years ago that they wouldnā€™t show a profit until at least 2019. Perhaps the valuation got ahead of them, but I donā€™t think they are doing as poorly as many SA contributors seem to argue. Seems more like things are going according to plan.

This is not a large position for me. Even after adding to it, itā€™s only ~0.5% so donā€™t take this as a strong vote of confidence.

I give little credence to SA authors (with a few notable exceptions). But Iā€™ve talked to industry professionals and smart hedge fund managers and they were pretty incredulous of the TSLA business plan. As you say, none of this is a surprise.

Tesla is one of those battleground / cult stocks like HLF. Generally I donā€™t like getting involved in large cap controversial names since itā€™s hard to have a clearly better-than-consensus view and being on the wrong side of a bunch of billionaires, especially on the short side when timing is unclear and upside risk is potentially quite large, isnā€™t a great setup for a high confidence bet.

That said, at some point things are starting to look less like HLF and more like SHLD (currently short also). Being in a situation where youā€™re burning cash fast enough that you need to raise money soon and everyone knows it isnā€™t a good place to be, especially if your debt just got downgraded so any raise is likely to be equity or converts that will come out of the equity holders one way or the other.

Itā€™s also a risky short position because even if they have to knock say 5-10% off the stock price to raise money, the fair value of the stock would be say 5-10% less than the current market price whatever it currently is. If Musk makes some tweet about giving a free flamethrower out with each new car who knows maybe the stock goes up 20% and even if Iā€™m right and the stock hit shows up, I could be underwater at that point. See ZSAN for a current example of that.

Still, I think the fundamentals are pretty bad here. Between the huge capital costs needed for national scale car production facilities and the dodgy pre-sale deposits and rental accounting, things arenā€™t looking good and thatā€™s before the recalls and autopilot accidents and other negative sentiment. Plus the business model of losing money on every sale and trying to make up for it in volume is alwasy a dubious one :).

TSLA April fools a little too close to home?