It’s time to make cash for another sales event that is coming up!
Looks like selling end of last week was a good move! Cash will become handy to buy back good stocks later this week.
H1’18 benchmarks, total return YTD:
QQQ +11% tech stocks
IWM +8% smallcaps
SPY +3% large caps
JNK -1% junk bonds
BND -2% bonds
GLD -3% gold
BTC -53% bitcoin
I should have stopped all this screwing around trading and just bought NFLX (+100%) and gone on vacation :). Hope you guys are doing well also.
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TSLA - more reading for anyone long or considering it.
wow, that’s harsh. I just a discussion with both of fellow techies, we all agree that Musk accomplish some great things but the number just doesn’t’ work in his favor.
It is amazing how many negative articles come out about TSLA.
I recently read a great post (admittedly on a Tesla message board) that tried to understand some of the negativity surrounding the company. (it’s a long read, TL;DR - known short sellers actively try to manipulate sentiment towards a company when it is reliant on outside funding in order to profit on the company’s demise):
As someone who’s excited about Tesla’s outright stated goal and who thinks their cars are pretty awesome, I have to acknowledge my own bias that I want them to succeed (and that I took a flier on some TSLA shares soon after their IPO). The sheer volume of negative articles does make me wonder who is right. Perhaps, as is the case with most things in the world, it’s a little bit of both: TSLA may be overvalued for its current state (and perhaps even significantly so), but it is not in danger of going under due to high demand and exponentially increasing revenue.
I’m inclined to not believe in the short position thesis, especially when it’s come to light that many of these investors know very little of the product (with the very obvious caveat that a good product != a good company). I am curious to hear what people think about the long thesis, knowing that it’s almost purely speculation from everybody on the outside. Shorters claim that Tesla loses $20k per car, whereas fans claim that Tesla enjoys up to a 25% profit margin per car. Neither claim has hard data to support it.
Short selling are very motivated to bad mouth a company but they are also very good at spotting real problem. While some of the facts are in flux… so to say it. Right now I would say with fair confidence that the short sellers got more the fact correct. I based this on the many neutral analysis out there as well as some contacts that verifies some of the more negative stories.
the big one, as most can agree, is the profitability or the lack of it. The 25% profit # came from one person while all the other analysis come from many unbiased teams of people. I know which one I would pick. Take Chevy Bolt for example, it’s no secret they lose $ every time they sell one.
The 2nd biggest issue, exclusivity of their technology. I can say that’s a fat 0 unless if one want to be charitable and count the Supercharger.
I should also note, that the electric car future doesn’t require Tesla.
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I 100% agree that an EV future does not require Tesla. I also think that Tesla has accelerated an EV future just by making exciting cars.
As you pointed out, manufacturers like GM and Fiat lose money on their EVs, in part because they make them as compliance vehicles. Having leased a Nissan Leaf at the previous great deals and also looking into the great lease deals for the Chevy Bolt, I can tell you that they aren’t particularly exciting. Mostly they have been EVs put onto their cheap, gasoline models like the Versa or Sonic, while levying a hefty premium on sale prices. In any case, I didn’t want to turn this into an EV discussion, which I know can run hotly across the political spectrum. Mostly I just wanted to point out that the demand for Tesla does exist because they produce a very real product that has yet to be matched. Whether the premium for that is for everybody - probably not, and I think that’s a different discussion.
As for other exclusivities - I’ll agree that the super charger network would be generous as you say. They give a real benefit for people who want to drive longer trips with EVs, but I think that’s trying to stretch EV functionality a bit too far. I would say that their battery technology is a significant advantage, though. While it’s always true that a competitor could have a breakthrough to mitigate this, Tesla certainly leads the pack here. Long term battery data on Teslas have also been pretty positive - I think roughly 10% degradation over 10 years, whereas the LEAF had major degradation issues even within the first year or two of ownership.
With Tesla not being a compliance car manufacturer, it is hard for me to imagine that they cannot achieve economies of scale with the Model 3 to become profitable. Granted, if they couldn’t successfully ramp up production as they were struggling to produce hundreds of cars a week in later 2017 and early 2018, it makes sense that their expenditures would exceed any sort of revenue. They’ve proven their profitability on the Model S in the past, and a delayed production ramp for the model 3, while costly, shouldn’t preclude profitability. Unless you think that their whole plan was to mass produce a vehicle at a loss and continue to do so until they ran out of money so that they could… do what, exactly?
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An EV without a fast charging network is about as good as a cell phone without a network. I understand that the vast majority of driving can be done with home charging, but that other 2% of charging can’t take hours.
I have 96k miles on my model S so I’ve become familiar with the ins and outs. There is a reason there are 400k people waiting for a model3 and Chevy can’t move bolts even at a loss.
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Just bought $45k worth of $300 July 20 TSLA Call Options around $22.50. Let’s see if will make or loss money by July 20th.
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I don’t think that’s quite the same, not even close, actually. As our resident T3 fan correctly pointed out, most people don’t travel beyond to the EV range of their home base. And for those rare lake cabin trip, Supercharger aren’t even in the way.
Bolt is actually selling very well where I am but there are very limited qty of them
Ooof
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I think we’re past the “it’s a growth / hype stock” phases where shorting on valuation is notoriously dangerous (see NFLX, +100% YTD, for Einhorn, oops). TSLA is running out of cash and running out of senior execs, neither bode well for the stock price.
For a company meeting their most recent production goals, the market is not rewarding them. They’ve fallen 20% in the past few days from $360 to $300.
Bought more TSLA calls around $298…need to thank Jim Chanos for today’s sale price. 4th of July special!
I wonder what it takes for Elon to have margin calls. $200? $100?
Is it public how much leverage?
What makes you think Elon didn’t pay full in cash? Did you read it somewhere?
There were lots of articles that came out around his last Twitter announcements of share purchases.
Here’s one of several examples. Musk Has Heavily Leveraged His Holdings Of Tesla While Tesla's Financial Leverage Has Risen
Article states ~41% of the Tesla shares are pledged as collateral end of 2017. Of course that doesn’t say where these loans are being used.
The number of shares he purchased recently are fairly insignificant so it doesn’t matter where that small amount of cash came from.
He is probably using money to support Space X and Boring. But I seriously doubt he has to worry about margin calls at this moment. If he needs money maybe he can sell more Boring hats. LOL!
ebay down after missing revenue. After all that aggressive coupon, I’m surprised. ANyone buying at this dip?