Spurious,
All of that bull**** you wrote is completely contradicted by the simple fact that the majors produce 1 million EV cars per year already, and growing exponentially at 30%/year. The Renault-Nissan Zoe, for example, a single model, outsells Tesla by a big margin in Europe:



There are more Nissan Leafs on the road - a single model - than every model of Tesla combined - Roadster + S + X + 3.
I repeat again that this is a SINGLE model. They have almost cracked 100,000/year in sales despite a slow rollout, which is equal to S+X combined. Oh yeah - and they're doing that at a profit, at a lower price than M3.

The notion that the majors can't or won't make electric cars is just you living in your head again, where evidence doesn't matter.

so it's nothing more than a symbolic purchase, but also this is true?

purely symbolic trade doing a lot of heavy lifting ITT

So he's nearly a billion dollars in the hole, secured against nearly $4 billion in Tesla stock given then 25% rule? That's a margin call and a half waiting to happen. No wonder he's so desperate to pump the stock however he can. His entire world collapses, not to mention Tesla stock, if it gets below $230 or so.

It's a great way for him to boost confidence in the stock without really doing anything at all. He bought $25 million worth of stock when he already owns more than $10b of it - it's not like he's doubling down yet it's being brought as breaking news. It's not deceiving, but tactical it sure is.

Feel free to believe this. You have been nonstop wrong on the car industry and basically every industry that has a new joiner before. Just because one company sells a low priced car that sold more in the past doesn't mean anything. Tesla had almost as many model 3 reservations in a day. What is your point?

The world you live in is determined by Greek letters and very short-term, driven. Everything is the end of the world to you, but this is never reflected in reality. Given your poor track record, you should have a look at how history has usually played out. You will see it won't be all that different this time.

1. He has $10bn in stock, not only $4bn.
2. He is the partial owner of SpaceX.

Feel free? I'm talking about facts bro, on how many cars they produce, which directly contradicts your narrative.
This is you living in your head again. Musk has been wrong non stop about robots, how he could revolutionize car production is, how fast he could produce, whether he could design a better factory than the majors (delusional ****stain of the year award for that one), autonomous driving, pretty much everything. I on the other hand have been right about these things.
I have no idea what the bolded means. EV sales for the majors are growing rapidly exponentially - by definition they're selling more now.

And my point is that you're utterly delusional. You say that the majors can't/won't produce EVs - yet they produce 10x more than Tesla, growing at 30%/year. Your view is completely at odds with reality.
I've mostly been the opposite of "the sky is falling " on Tesla, with the exception of when Model X was slow and Apple was widely reported to be starting up a car manufacturing business. I've long advocated against a short and been long plenty of times. I've always been "the sky will eventually fall, probably in the next recession or when they need an amount of capital that isn't a tiny fraction of market cap'. The bear case has always been that they're drawing stone dead long term, unless they get big enough fast enough.If Musk hit his own original timeline, he'd have a shot. He's failed massively, and even right now is reducing capital expenditure on even the current Model 3, pushing out timelines for the revenue needed to go to the next stage by over a year. That's too slow. The majors are far better at production and are entering the EV market in a big way, with many dozens of (finally) worthwhile to buy models hitting the market next year. The 2019 Leaf is hitting the market in 4 months, at half the price after subsidies of the current Model 3, and $10K cheaper after subsidies of the (fictional) $35K Model 3, with the same range and a much nicer top half of the car and much better reliability.

The long term is now. Tesla are out of money, have mortgaged everything they own, and have had to scale back capex and staff just to survive a few months more, in the hopes they'll get to a production level where they're not bleeding money they don't have for every car sold.

Even if they get over this hurdle and limp into breakeven on $45K cars, they have to borrow an absolute fortune to get to 10K cars and then the Model Y, which will have stiff competition. Since the base production cost of the M3 was determined to be $36K/car, thanks to their horrible production incompetence, the $35K car and its demand is not going to eventuate. Which means they need to borrow 10s of billions for Model Y in the 2020s. Who from? Rates are rising, Tesla are deep in the hole already and owe 14 billion through 2021, they can't make a profit with the M3, and demand isn't high for non-cheap M3.

As for history, it plays out like this:

Your only out was that Musk is some kind of genius who can out-manufacture the majors. He has conclusively disproved that with his own words and actions on the Model 3.

Some analysis i saw thinks the trigger is around 150ish, the first if there are multiple

TS,

the website you've posted a screenshot from and deliberately took the February 2018 (for whatever reason) and also chose to use Europe and not the place where the Tesla M3 is the best selling electric vehicle and outselling ICE cars in comparable price ranges, has the following 2017 numbers:
https://cleantechnica.com/2018/01/27...ric-car-sales/

Those are the numbers for Europe for 2018 (until end of March):
https://cleantechnica.com/2018/04/30...-sales-report/

This are now the numbers in the US (for 2018):
https://cleantechnica.com/2018/06/09...-plug-in-cars/

Just so everyone gets a better understanding of what you are trying to claim, what the reality is and where Tesla really stands compared to the majors.

Considering the Leaf as serious competition has to be a joke. Have you looked at that car? No one buys this ****. This is not a longterm competitor for Tesla, are you out of your mind? I am happy that you no longer consider the GM Bolt as the Tesla killer:
I've recently read an article about an analysis by a German car disassembler and he claimed that the Model 3 can be build for $28'000 (including labor, but having a 10k/week rate).
http://www.manager-magazin.de/untern...a-1210541.html

Also, why would there be a margin call on a $1bn loan if the guy has a stake in another company worth a lot more than that? Some people ITT seem not to know how an E&E desk at a bank works. FYI, Musk is not on Interactivebrokers.

Your claim was that the majors couldn't and wouldn't build EV cars. I showed that they're selling a million year/already, far more than Tesla, growing at 30%/year exponentially, and that even individual models have sold more in total that all Teslas combined. Your claim is dead.

100,000 people a year "buy this ****", many of whom would probably have bought a Model 3 if a leaf wasn't around. The idea that this isn't a competitor with Tesla is silly. What's more, the 2019 Leaf coming in four months is going to have very similar specs as the $35K M3, at $10,000 cheaper -a whole other price category - AND with a nice top half in terms of quality and reliability.

I never considered Bolt as the Tesla killer. Merely an example of what would happen over time on the low end, dozens of competitors who aren't that distinguishable from low end Teslas. The base gets commoditized. And then it's just like ICE competition. Tesla are crushed on everything but the base of the car.

Also, the way you think about car sales is flawed. These aren't iPhones. People buy for many reasons, which is why car companies put out hundreds of models at dozens of price points and price/feature tradeoffs, to meet all these needs. Your "great man", "best product" kind of thinking doesn't' really apply to cars.The same as the "great man/genius" theory of Musk's manufacturing might apply to prototyping and rockets, but doesn't apply to mass manufacturing cars. I tried to tell you that, I really did.
Thank you for this. That backs up the numbers perfectly. The $35K car cannot sustainably exist then, and demand is not high enough in the higher price points for Tesla to survive.
Funnily enough, I've made that exact same argument to someone more bearish than me. Great minds? Anyway, margin calls for people worth billions are very common.

Margin Calls Ignite Billionaire Fire Sale
This is actually not uncommon: billionaires the world over from Europe to the US to China with plenty of other holdings have faced margin calls from investment banks. It's harder than you think to come up with hundreds of millions of dollars in cash.

It could happen next month. Tesla have some hickup in the factory, or their bond credit rating gets downgraded as they miss another production target, suppliers who are already many months behind in getting paid by Tesla demand cash on delivery or they cease supply. Word gets out among suppliers.

Musk is forced to disclose active SEC investigations and their content in order to raise. Forced to disclose COD demands. The stock craters. Margin calls get triggered, and banks refuse to accept more Tesla stock as collateral, since they already hold billions of this rapidly declining stock with no way to offload it all without triggering further price collapse.

It's how a lot of these bankruptcies go down - a small thing triggers a crisis of confidence. Hell, even a major investor having to sell when Tesla reaches junk bond status (they're one off it now) would trigger a collapse in the stock price.

Contrary to your opinion, margin calls happen as often for billionaires with heaps of other collateral and a high net worth as they do for others. The rules get followed, particularly when there's a crisis.

Tesla is like six or seven grades below investment grade, their bonds have always been junk bonds

TS,

Re: margin call
The quote is about a billionaire being hit by sanctions. This is completely different than even the unrealistic scenario you described that could happen to Musk. Musk, a Westerner, is the partial owner of a company that has longstanding contracts with the US government. Musk must go the way of Elizabeth Holmes, which I believe to be an utterly ridiculous thought, to even be close to this scenario and even then the SpaceX stake would still come into play.

Re: $28'000 base costs
A 10k run rate is absolutely possible. TSLA has the demand already. The base costs are the same for every model 3. I am not sure what your claim is.

Re: majors building millions of EVs
Maybe combined, but certainly not a single major as many as Tesla builds (at least in the Western world) and not in the lucrative categories.

Dude there are tons of examples of billionaires getting margin calls despite high wealth and other holdings. When I say something, it's correct and not for my health. You'd save everyone a lot of time if you just realized you were a fool who knows nothing and need to listen more.

And no, the Russian billionaires weren't about sanctions. Their company's value dropped 30% because of the GFC - about how much Tesla would drop if suppliers demanded COD on a ratings downgrade, a big institution decided to sell, or if he discloses being under SEC investigation. This happened:
The two billionaires above as well as Merckle had plenty of other holdings.

Shockingly, investment banks don't enjoy holding the bag, especially on a turd like Tesla with nearly a billion dollars loaned out by Musk and spent, and make a margin call with a huge cushion. They'd know Tesla's dire financial straits very well.

Confidence dries up really quickly when something goes wrong, and then cascades. Tesla is on a knife edge, out of cash, down billions in negative working capital, months late on paying suppliers. It only takes one supplier calling for COD for the effect to cascade, and then Musk has to disclose this (and whatever else has stopped him from raising) and raise billions just to get back to breakeven and pay off the $4.5 billion in accounts payable that are well overdue.

One of the following is likely to be true at this stage:

- No bank will underwrite a secondary in the billions for Tesla because of the risk
- Musk is under SEC investigation or has other very bad things he needs to disclose

There's no good reason why he'd be desperately begging investment houses for a big stake rather than issuing debt or doing a secondary.
It's not lucrative if you lose a fortune on every car.

Tesla have <$3 billion in net tangible assets to their name (everything they own is mortgaged and spent) and have burned through $9.5 billion dollars in incoming funds from secondaries/paid in capital. All for 300K cars produced in total. That's $20,000 flushed down the toilet for every car they sell. That's pretty much the opposite of lucrative, no? Let me lay it out for you:

On every sale:

- Lose vast sums of money
Tesla
- Lose lots of money
- Lose a little money
- Breakeven
- Make a little money
- Make a decent profit
Lucrative
- Make obscene amounts of money

360 resistance level in play today

Who the hell is buying this stock with this volume at this price? Blows my mind lol.

Musk fanboys are on another level, shorting Tesla seems risky as hell.

It's risky in the sense it may move against you for a while. It's not risky at all in the sense "will I lose money if I hold"? Tesla have no path to the next level. This isn't 2015 when the stock price is 30x the working capital needed to fund expansion, or where debt is 0%. Small secondaries and loans can save your ass when you're valued at 30x your next two years capital needs. Not possible at 3x.

Curious to know how does one best make money on the the eventual crash of this stock? Short it now? Short it at a later date? Buy put option?, when?, what timeline? Anybody want to offer a plan?
I own a Tesla, but if there is lots of money to be made here with low risk, I'll give it a go.

Probably duplicating the Soros trade. Buy the March 2019 convertible bonds and short equal amounts of stock. If Tesla goes bankrupt, you pocket the difference between the recovery on the bonds and the equity short.

If not, you either collect interest on the bonds which convert at $360 a share in March to cover your short, or if the stock price is <$360, then the bonds convert to cash.

that sounds like a bad idea to me

Most of the time you just bleed premium, you are probably paying a ton of fees trading those retail, and in the rare spots where you're a big winner you have to hope you don't get screwed by your broker

Probably better off just buying puts (not that this is a great idea either)

This is required reading on the SCTY acquisition. From a court filing. This could very well be what the SEC is investigating/has them under sanctions for. In 2016 Tesla took on billions in SCTY debt now coming due, and Musk lied about the state of the company, lied about its liquidity.

https://twitter.com/TeslaCharts/stat...92334933274624

C'mon man

But then we have this advice:

So just take up a short position and hang on. EZ game.

It's not that easy. I had to coach a long term bear not to give up at $380 last year, starting at $340 (that turned out well for them when Tesla plunged to $260).

Besides, if bankruptcy is going to happen, you can short at $200 and do just as well as at $360 - 100% return. The only differential is if there is turnaround risk, which plunges to near zero as elements of the looming bankruptcy get confirmed.

But yeah, a short anywhere here is fine provided you have a sack and a brain. Shorts often lack both. It's not easy watching it go against you.

How can I estimate the odds of getting my short force closed by Interactive Brokers? I am concerned that the odds will be the highest when I am likely to be winning the most money.