I'm a bit shocked you are shocked, given your style you'd realize what a joke the SEC is. That press conference now seems embarrassing in retrospect especially given the speed in which they publicly settled. It was all a negotiating tactic to get Musk to pony up like $5-$10m more? The chairman role means nothing, the board has proven they have no real power. Sure they hypothetically have the capacity now to remove him but no one in this thread believes that's possible right? (unless DOJ does come down with a criminal case but even then I'd be skeptical until a judge actually ruled something against Musk).

Going from pursuing a lifetime ban from all executive positions at public companies to settling for a few dollars the next day is a bigger joke than I would have thought.

Agreed on the press conference being embarrassing.

The SEC didn't want to press charges. They just wanted Musk and TSLA to put a lid on the tweets. I am sure they were really surprised Musk wouldn't settle so they were just like "okay. we're doing this then."

If they didn't want to press charges, then why did they refer it to the DOJ very quickly? They only do that when there is very likely criminal conduct that they believe is serious enough to warrant criminal investigation and prosecution.

Your claim seems at odds with the evidence.

Because DOJ is even less interested in this. For cases that they don't actually want to go to trial, the SEC has a lot more tools at its disposal.

They referred it to DOJ because they want to increase the threat. All the securities lawyers I talked to agree the DOJ and SEC have no interest in actually pushing this case. The "fraud on market" presumption is under attack and they really don't want a test case that involves a bunch of novel issues (tweets, random pronouncements, seriousness, apparent lack of reliance except for a very short time) to muck up the waters.

I am not saying the situation is good or not. I am just telling you that's where the law and courts are. The standards for proving "loss causation" have been creeping up for years even before Dura but Dura accelerated it. Basically what was, and still is, happening is there were so many class action suits where investors basically said they lost money for some error that firm made... and since every major firm makes mistakes somewhere, the courts got really sick of those cases brought by disgruntled investors and began to get increase the standards for proving "loss causation."

The Dura case actually surprised a lot of people for two reasons: 1. it was unanimous. 2. it had this language: "...plaintiff had not suffered a loss because the inflated purchase price was offset by ownership of a share that possessed equivalent value at that instant."

This is the law of the land and one of the reasons SEC/DOJ hate to take these cases to trial (and they don't really have to usually).

When I learned this in law school, most of the class and I had the same reaction you did: "wtf...?" Basically the current situation is the best legal minds in the world haven't figured out a workable standard within the statutory framework yet so we're in this ****ty situation where we probably are both under and over prosecuting.

To put differently TLDR: Musk's tweet smells and looks like fraud. And it probably should be fraud. But under current law, it is not how clear the SEC/DOJ could prove it. The challenge for legal academics is figuring out a workable standard that would include Musk's tweet as fraud but not overinclude what amounts to puffery or "forward looking statements" by executives.

That is wrong. DoJ is certainly going to nail Musk to the wall, with a stack of charges so long that he will be forced to plead guilty to some of them. The tweet is just one of many shenanigans that the DoJ will pursue. As Buffett said, there is never only a little bit of fraud.

Unlike the SEC which has to be careful not to nuke investors or interfere with the market process, the DoJ has an opposite incentive. Fame and prestige await the DoJ prosecutors that take a target as big as Musk down.

Unfortunately, Musk has committed so many securities violations that the DoJ will have to take their time to sort through them all. I expect them to only go for the kill when they are good and ready, probably years from now if the Theranos situation is any guide.

In any case, my short thesis did not rely on a DoJ/SEC takedown.

You don't seem to understand DOJ prosecutors don't want to test the case because they are dogs with Dura hanging over them and a pile of legal uncertainty surrounding the unique circumstances.

There are far more clear cases of fraud (outright accounting fraud) that investors have relied on (rather than the production projections that nobody has taken seriously) for DOJ prosecutors to go after.

Going after TSLA based on current facts has a high probability of becoming career suicide.

That was so astonishingly naive, I'm guessing you're joking.

If not , here's an interesting study for you...

University of Auckland criminologist James Oleson has found that people with super-high IQs were more likely to commit most types of crime, and also more likely to not get caught


http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2017/03/gen...criminologist/

The design of that study is terrible.

1. high IQ but no control for wealth
2. sample picked from high IQ societies

This has got to be a level.

I don't see Musk next to Stephen Hawking and Chris Langan, developing complex theories about the universe and human cognition and its relationship...

I see him next to President Trump as his Space Force Liason. #TweetTwins #PewPewPew #StableGeniusTwinning

Pretty sure anyone who thinks Musk has an IQ north of 200 is either a moron or doesn't understand what the mental capacity of someone like that entails. Musk isn't even good at coding from what I hear.

Great interview with Jim Chanos from few weeks back. Lots of Tesla/Musk talk well worth a read.

https://www.institutionalinvestor.co...-and-Elon-Musk

NYT wrote about cars piling up https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/01/b...questions.html

Trump definitely has a higher IQ then Musk. I started following Musk and watching his interviews a few months ago, I think Tooths analysis is pretty spot on when it comes to Musk.

As a recreational investor that doesn't follow day to day markets a whole lot. What's the best way to make a bet on Tesla going under?

I would bet a lot that you're wrong. I am by no means a Musk supporter, nor am I an expert on IQ, but I would guess Trump's peak IQ was around 120; now he's at like 110. I'd guess Musk peaked at 140 and is at 135 now. Again, these are total guesses, for fun, but I'm confident Musk would easily best Trump on an IQ test.

A lot of people in this thread recommend buying long-term puts. Something like a 200 Jan 2020 put if you believe TSLA is going to crash and burn in the next fifteen months. Jan 2021 puts are obviously going to be more expensive, but you get another year for it to crumble.

There's literally no chance this is true. Trump can barely form a complete sentence (on a good day), doesn't know how anything works, at all, and is likely in the early stages of dementia. He's got a 75 IQ at best. Musk may not be the genius that everyone thinks he is but he's Norman Einstein compared to our Dear Leader.

Musk, in accounts of people who have worked with him, would score really well on IQ tests at least in the intuition department. He was also admitted to Stanford for graduate engineer program so he's at least above average overall in terms of raw math/logic skills.

Judging by the "hells" he's going through though, one can reasonably conclude he is not very good at handling detail oriented tasks. Although he may intuitively understand the big picture solution and push the company in the right direction, he is very reliant on professionals to get the job done.

My problem with TSLA at this point is people like Musk attract other people like Musk and those people are not what TSLA needs right now.

Musk reminds me of Ralph Lauren, another legendary all vision no execution "leader." RL almost disappeared until the shareholders and the board brought in a professional to channel RL's visions in a financially sustainable way.

I think Musk will get the same treatment sooner or later.

Lol no. A sub 75 IQ would be considered borderline ******ed, and somewhere around the bottom 2% of the population.

There are lots of accounts stating musk is generally clueless about areas he claims to be an expert


I def dont buy the genius story at all

Deliveries 83.5k

52k M3
26.9k Ms and X

I agree that this seems sus

https://twitter.com/TeslaCharts/stat...337639937?s=19

That's 4k per week—for the arithmetically challenged—which is less than 5k per week.

Not a conspiracy theorist, just wondering how to explain thise numbers

There's a difference between sales and deliveries.

How many of those are in rework? How many of those are people assigned a VIN but not received or in transit somewhere. The desperation to pump this Q3 is amazing.

You would need an IQ of 75 or less to believe that Trump's IQ is 75.