Time will tell if these are a good position but if the stock opens near where it is now, you're not going to be happy in the morning. $50 otm puts are going to get crushed unless things start moving in a hurry.

My thought process may have been poor and impulsive but I didn't buy based on the potential binary outcome of earnings or I would have bought the 2/1 or 2/8s.

I wanted a little more time for poor January deliveries and other potential bad news to hit.

I think the way the CFO news was dropped at the end of the call spooks a lot of instutional owners and we trade down tomorrow with relatively high implied volatility but we will see.

Also like I said it was a nibble back in after going from 0% cash to 40% cash over the last 10 days.

If your play isn't earning based, then play accordingly. If earnings tanked you'd be a hero but if that wasn't your assumption, you could have bought the puts at a significant discount if your decision was based on delivery numbers

Elon had started three other companies before joining Tesla. Zach has almost no experience outside Tesla, wasn't even a "Director" until 2014, a "Senior Director" until 2017 and a "VP" since last month.

Of course everyone else under Deepak left soooo.......

I guess I should have said solely based.

Always planned on getting back in with the rest of the $ after earnings for the same reasoning you lay out.

He's older than Mark Zuckerberg.

I think it's a big deal because people want it to be a big deal. It certainly shouldn't be a surprise. This is the 2nd time Deepak Ahuja has retired from TSLA.

I wonder how many people that left TSLA are kicking themselves right now thinking they could have had the CFO job if they hadn't left.

0. The entire accounting staff doesn't turn over in a year at multiples of industry pay + bonuses and take worse, lower paying jobs if the whole thing isn't rotten.

It's not like they're line engineers or autonomous driving VPs or heads of production taking the blame/having to work with the incredibly incompetent angry loser CEO, who wants you to put in all robots against your advice and experience because he has the emotional sophistication of a 10 year old and the IQ/knowhow of a low end engineer. And then blames you when his idiotic idea doesn't work and nearly destroys the company. You're in finance, which is a nice job somewhat isolated from the megalomaniac and is going into a period of supposed permanent profitability just as your stock options will vest.

There's no reason for the entire finance staff to quit in a year and very strong reasons for them not to, if the thing isn't a fraud/doomed. So I doubt anyone at all among the finance staff regrets leaving for much lower pay.

For being led by such an incompetent loser, its amazing how well TSLA is doing. Elon expects deliveries to be up 50% in 2019 even if there is a global recession. He says the number could turn out being much better than that. He's optimistic that TSLA will be profitable again in Q1 (albeit, not by a lot) and will be profitable in all quarters going forward. TSLA stock is now trading where it was on Monday.

A better question would be why Tesla couldn't or didn't want to look at external candidates.

Context matters and it isn't about a CFO retiring but about the timing and method of announcing his departure.

I think this is a starting point for most of the poor tsla analysis

I assume this is sarcastic but Elon threw out a lot of numbers- some of which contradicted other numbers.

He also said demand is high but nobody can afford their cars.

He also confirmed they don't have financing yet for Shanghai gigafactory.

It is? They'd be crushing the market right now if anyone but an incompetent loser was in charge of manufacturing the Model 3.

Don't get me wrong, Musk is a highly talented fraudster, a great money hustler, a world class stock pumper, and a good figurehead to bring in nerd money. And he has rich playboy's aesthetic, which is useful for designing sports cars to sell to nerds, who incidentally are well moneyed in this tech boom and also join the religion and buy the stock. Those are incredibly valuable things and without them (and the capital and PR they brought in), Tesla wouldn't be where it is today.

But Musk is also an incompetent engineer and unfit to manage anything on a large scale.

"What people should have absolutely zero concern about is that Tesla will produce 10,000 Model 3s per week by the end of 2018"

He always says stuff like that, and is never right. These little lies/pufferies are standard fare for accomplished conmen/hustlers. They're hacks to download crap right into gullible brains.

Is there any reason you're quoting the predictions of the least accurate predictor in the history of business, who knowingly and deliberately tells large lies? I know it's easy to fall prey to ruthless conmen - I think his picked on kid stuttering routine helps disarm nerds as well and makes him a more trusthworty figure in the minds of the gullible - but come on man. Quoting Elon's worthless projections as indication of how well Tesla is doing just proves my point...

Don’t take this the wrong way, but you are an idiot

Yeah, he's saying if they get the price down even further they'll sell even more cars!

He said he can get it no problem from Chinese banks. Do you not agree? Seems like he could get it...especially if TSLA really only needs half a billion $s.

The bull case is highly dependent on his word. If what he was saying on the call is true then things don't seem so bad for TSLA

He did come through on Model 3 production last year. People said TSLA couldn't do it and they pulled a rabbit out of their ass on that one.

It's refreshing to know that I'm not the only person that was hoping Elon would hire Galileo Russell to be CFO.

This

It is weird that this stuff isn’t obvious

I do not understand this reply.

At the risk of eating crow, I think he changed it quickly because I refreshed and he stated founded, no idea if that shows up in edits if it is instantly changed, if not then I read it wrong and it’s just s stupid posts since he entered as an investor which makes no sense to post

That makes sense.

As for the call, I liked that Elon put some emphasis on service, saying they just rolled out a new service App 2 or 3 weeks ago. I think the service issues are lkely far deeper than a service app can repair though. Also Elon mentioned that Tesla is working on service automation. He said a tow truck would be on its way to help a car with a flat tire before the car even comes to a stop. As someone that has waited for a tow truck driver before, I'll say that is a bit far fetched but still nice to know they are working on it.

Will the tow truck have autopilot? I heard they are working on that, too.

Are you a real person?

This is classic "somewhat skeptical guy gets smooth talked by huckster" shtick.

I've always read you as someone who "wants to believe" in Elon and now this call has allayed some of your concerns, so I'm reading that you're actually genuine in taking these morsels of pure bull**** uncritically into your brain here. If it's sarcasm I give you full credit for a good job.

LoL. Stay tuned to the Q2 conference call to find out!

I was just providing a bit of the bull perspective to this. I do want to believe in Elon but he needs to do more to earn my trust.

Do you really think TSLA can't get funding for China? Seems unlikely. Do you think Elon is massively lying about the # of deliveries in 2019 (ie making up #s that aren't realistically attainable at all)? If Elon is lying about funding and deliveries then this thing is going to come down like a ton of bricks.

However, if he isn't making huge outrageous lies about those things then even if this is all just a long con it seems likely that this stock will continue to trade in this $250 to $360 range with neither the bulls nor the bears making much money on it.

I did an insta edit and felt like doubling down and being a dick about it. Syndrome is right that I'm an idiot.

The reality is, not looking externally is a pretty big tell if this is somehow your best option. I'd agree with TS that everything is rotten and no one wants to touch it, but this kid is probably malleable. Still don't think it affects much as far as the bull case is concerned and it probably won't drop below that 250 barrier

"Demand for Model 3 is insanely high. The inhibitor is money. People just don't have enough money in their bank account."

Amazingly, bears have been even more wrong about how to trade this stock than bulls.

This is a more reasonable stance, the kid is puppet for sure, I take back calling you an idiot.