I'm shorting TSLA in the same manner that I would short other longer-term companies, like NFLX, CRM, CMG, starting with a fairly small entry point with and add here around220-235 range depending on whats up. I am just not confident enough that TSLA can get back to the 240+ before the Model X. If it does, I will still be happily shorting them with a larger position size.

Maybe I incorrectly assumed that this played a part in its 70 jump in the last 30 days.

I thank you for your advice and will take it into consideration, but I will keep holding my TSLA for now. My own estimation is that they are undervalued at their current valuation, and I investing according to this belief. They were able to get to a very interesting position while being small, having growing pains and risking some long term strategies such as resource management, OTA updates, vertical integration, AP/PA and no dealerships. Now they have a larger team, more resources, high margins and a strong brand name. We will see what the future holds!

That's part of (I suspected as much and suggested buying at $150 for an expected 30% run before getting spooked by earnings), but the biggest part of it is the market run up/recovery over the last couple of weeks + a huge percent of float short creating typical squeeze conditions. This can run quite a bit further, the view of the stock, the short percent in particular is ripe for a massive squeeze under the right conditions.

Anyway just wanted to warn since your post came just after mine. I know you know what you're doing. I think there are clear short spots sometimes in this stock (I've called them before) and I don't think this is one. You need market help to get this down substantially in the near term.

"For the past 30 days, shares have been rebounding strongly, up a whopping 44% to $206 in trading on Thursday.
What could have possibly changed investors' moods?
Two things. First the obvious, then the confusing.

1. Tesla started to look cheap, so some of the buying is likely a momentum thing.

2. Tesla set a date for the reveal of its new Model 3 mass-market vehicle: March 31 in Los Angeles. The car is expected to deliver 200 miles of range per battery charge and cost $35,000" (http://www.businessinsider.com/tesla...nd-2016-3?IR=T)

Is this a "GM is coming for Tesla, they're hosed" sign or a "Self-driving car software is worth a crazy amount of money, even if only 2 years old" sign

http://fortune.com/2016/03/11/gm-buy...han-1-billion/

There are billions of dollars flowing into SDC research and Tesla represent a tiny fraction of that, starting many years behind. They won't be first or even 10th at getting a viable SDC out. It's just Elon's marketing BS.

GM aren't buying the company for the software. They're buying the talent.

Tesla never had and never will have a chance of competing against the major auto makers and companies like Bosch.

You lack any sort of expertise on the subject to make this judgement (the comments about the need for higher resolution cameras was amazingly absurd) and discard the general consensus. (Tesla has the best public automation in existence.)

This is a religion for you. Not an objective view.

GM have been putting their fingers in many self driving pies since 2007, including joint ventures with DARPA, and just recently putting serious money in LYFT. They're not buying the software of this company. You're a complete idiot if you think that. They're buying the talent and shutting down paths for rivals.

Cruise's software is nothing. All they offer is limited highway driving with a roof mounted camera. If you think they're paying a billion dollars for the software to run that, you're not very bright. Roof mounted highway driving is a solved problem. They're buying the talent, very, very obviously.

By the way, you STILL have a hardon about the cameras? Even after you claimed that no one shared the view and that it was absurd. And I then quoted people - including Nissan's head researcher - who said the cameras aren't ready yet for SDC and they need higher resolution/speed/quality, proving you were either clueless or a liar?

If you think Tesla are going to beat Google + Ford, you aren't very bright (although we already know that). Or Nissan for that matter, who are far ahead of Tesla and have a huge war chest vs Tesla, who are unable to even build out their own gigafactory to the lowest spec due to lack of funds.

Isn't it a little weird to say that software created over 2.5 years is nothing, but the team who built that nothing software is worth $1B?

Acquisitions are usually about one of four things:

- Killing future competitors on key technologies
- Getting users (Whatsapp type deals)
- Buying talent
- Expanding revenue by buying a viable standalone business

This acquisition is clearly (1) and (3). The software right now is nothing but the team was growing rapidly, attracting funding, and perhaps becoming another Bosch/Mobileye down the road. It makes a ton of sense to pay for this.

They just raised money at a < $100M valuation in October and didn't have an easy time doing it. Their talent didn't increase 10x in 6 months, but even if it did acquihires are more on the order of $1.5-$2M per engineer. That would put their pure acquihire value at maybe $70M.

On (1) if the software is not good you aren't killing future competitors on key technology because they aren't keeping any key technology out of the hands of other people. "This software sucks. GM has stopped competitors in their tracks by acquiring a team that creates sucky software" as just as illogical a position as the first one.

The only way this purchase makes sense is that Cruise was judged to have very valuable software compared to what else is out there AND a good team to continue improving it. That their software may be underwhelming says more about the other folks out there trying to do the same thing.

This was pretty much verbatim my internal dialogue when reading TS's post.

I think it's worth considering GM was desperate to do something in the SDC space. And that desperation led them to massively overpay for Cruise.

Congrats to Vogt (again) and YC; and I hope for everyone's sake they prove me wrong and set the world on fire, but my money is on GM got robbed.

Next up: the acquisition of Comma.ai???

Again, Tesla has the best automation implemented on the road crushing everything else.

http://www.caranddriver.com/features...results-page-6

This is a complete fabrication. I'd be happy to bet you any sum that there will not be a 150megapixel or greater camera on the first SDC that is publicly approved.

add

- Expanding revenue through economic of "synergy" scale (it's not necessarily a a viable standalone business)

Tesla Motors Inc.'s shares surged by 2% in premarket after having been upgraded by Robert W. Baird and raise in target price to $300. Analysts point out a stable growth in production and huge expectations of Model III. "We believe investor skepticism has significantly increased since we downgraded [Tesla] on Oct. 6, and although we were concerned about the rate of Model X deliveries, recent data points show production is accelerating, which should drive deliveries and margin expansion".

The stock is not significantly lower than it was on Dec 1st, when the hedge fund report came out.

http://www.wired.com/2016/01/gm-elec...lt-mary-barra/

Good read about GM and the Bolt....Didn't see this posted here

The project director for Google's autonomous car project says that a self-driving car from Google that operates in all conditions might not be available for 30 years.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-t...des-for-others

http://www.wsj.com/articles/baidu-to...u-s-1458160570

The real disruption isn't in passenger, it'll be in logistics. Buses/trucking/etc. If you could just automate simple point to point trucking, you could dramatically increase safety and reduce cost.

Driving a car through a neighborhood and getting it to understand a traffic officer waving his hands during school hours is significantly more difficult. The technology for highway driving with transponders signaling construction zones/etc basically exists, but may take years to deploy sufficiently where something becomes passable on a large scale.

Luckily we don't have to wait for a 150mp camera to exist before this can happen!

Meh, 30 years ago was 1986. I am certain that 99.37% of all predictions of what would be the case in 30 years turned out to be wrong.

I am not saying that his claim is wrong or it's too pessimistic but if someone makes a claim about something that will happen in a 30 year timeframe, you can save your time and not think about it.

You back to breakeven yet, heltok?