http://www.detroitnews.com/story/bus...rash/86752210/

cool, thanks for doing that. i see it is pending now.

Whats keeping the company afloat isn't cars...
Date Shares Outstanding
Dec. 31, 2011 104.53M
Dec. 31, 2012 114.21M
Dec. 31, 2013 123.09M
Dec. 31, 2014 125.69M
Dec. 31, 2015 131.42M
Juli 06, 2016 147.28M

I'd bet cars have something to do with Elon's past ability to raise billions in capital at favorable valuations.

One of my main games is short selling stock promotions, pump and dumps, and parabolic microcaps. One of the first I ask is how much do they dilute? TSLA starting to fit the bill

So in reality it's not that far off market cap highs

Interesting semi-well-done comparison of semi-autonomous driving systems.
http://www.motortrend.com/news/testi...ndai-mercedes/

Tesla pretty clearly has best in class self driving. I don't think this topic is really debatable. There is literally nothing that points to this not being the case. Obviously this might change with Baidu/Google rolling out their tech at some point. But its very difficult to make the assumption that their technology works any better (or at all. IIRC both still have major issues with real time environment processing)

Something far more interesting is the deceptive nature of Tesla's disclosure of a material event (as stated by Musk) in advance of a fundraise. This is obviously bush league amateur scam ****, but does it constitute meaningful fraud?

http://fortune.com/2016/07/06/tesla-...ceo-elon-musk/

I think the people that openly claim Musk run businesses are operated as transparently and ethically as "normal" businesses are just totally off their rockers. He has a long history of dubious behavior which is now descending into clown behavior. Tho considering his cult following and his ability to raise money for unprofitable businesses. It is hard to say that his path isn't optimal. Similar to Madoff.

I don't have any skin in this game, but some of the logic from the tesla bulls in this thread is baffling.

Model 3 looking great:

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/...982843392?s=09

http://www.wsj.com/articles/sec-inve...ach-1468268385

SEC Investigating Tesla for Possible Securities-Law Breach

SEC investigates Tesla for possible securities-law breach for not telling investors of Autopilot crash

This isn't the first, nor will it be the last time that Elon is under federal investigation. He likes to play loose with the rules and has built some reasonably large businesses doing so.

Regardless, when you clearly violate "boilerplate" disclosure language in your own quarterly filings you dun goofed. Wish he would just clean up his act instead of getting lumped in with Theranos as Tesla has some reasonably promising technology. Obviously the world's leading deployed self-driving technology.

anyone have an idea what this may be?

A good start is to look at the Masterplan 1.0:
https://www.teslamotors.com/blog/sec...me?redirect=no
Elon commented some theory:
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/752272158517112835
The linked article:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/bulli...ger-jigar-shah

Apple diluted the entire time Jobs was there. However, this was mainly to pay off employee stock options.

Autonomous driving seems so dangerous to me. Seems they would be better off trying to eliminate the side mirrors. Sensors and cameras could tell you if anything are in the lanes around you.

Did you read this part of the article:

Investors who feel it should have been disclosed have had a whole week now to sell their shares at a profit.

And they lived happily ever after...
lol what a joke

Not really. Your timeline is way way way off. Furthermore the issue is that the hid it in front of a fundraise.

This is aside from other legal experts who think writing down, in simple English, that what they didn't disclose would be material is a pretty simple case of fraud.

Tesla is tough to short right now, even with all this negativity. There's some pretty major manipulation going on, thanks to the high short % following the SCTY announcement. This opinion is pretty spot on:



This is basically playing out like penny stocks are played - big holders call in the borrows at the right time and initiate a short squeeze. Add to that a ripping market the last couple of weeks following Brexit, and you basically see what you see today - Tesla's stock price immune to terrible news.



This phenomenon is a lot of what drove Tesla's stock up in the first place. The similarities with a penny stock scam are strong: Excessive constant hyperbole, careful management of the PR cycle, paid-for analysts pumping the stock, dishonesty, poor disclosure, poor corporate governance (buying out related companies owned by the same people, for example), and regular stock offerings/compensation which dilute investors and keep the company afloat.

I wouldn't be comfortable getting short Tesla for size until major news happens (Elon hits the asylum, for example), or the short% comes down and/or the borrow recall pressure subsides.

A penny stock does not have a market disrupting product.

The article is interesting though. Didn't know that a lot of the pensions have such strong bylaw wording. Isn't there an arbitrage possibility for a lot of the stocks or is it usually the case that the market prices this in quite quickly.

Plenty of penny stocks have claimed market disrupting products. New drugs with potential (KBIO). A disruptive, niche market leading surgical robot (TRXC). Automotive parts. The list goes on.

Good scam stocks are attached to a legitimate business that appears very plausible/disruptive but are actually only surviving because it's selling below or at cost and surviving on secondaries.

These stocks are then are talked up/promoted, managing the PR cycle, and the companies kept afloat by issuing stock.

This is Tesla in a nutshell, in a large cap world. The promoters, rather than penny stock scammers, are the analysts from big companies who write absurdly bullish analyses, and who get their money from various fees, such as underwriting secondaries, and the breathless tech writers, who get access.

It's just as crooked, and the people who buy into the scam with their own money, just as stupid.

This doesn't explain why institutional investors aren't willing to sell. Even a smallish % of institutional holders selling into this bad news would drop the stock price. Instead they are recalling shares to vote on the deal that the market suggests is likely to be approved. Institutional investors also hold 63% of tesla equity and have been steadily increasing their holdings. So institutionals hold 63%(80% of float if you count institutionals and mutual funds) , company insiders like Elon hold another 23ish%, 20% of shares are currently sold short (32% short as % of float). Not surprising to see tesla SP climbing a wall of bad news. It looks to me like Elon has enough strong institutional backing to get him up to and through the model 3 release.

Autopilot accidents are all coming out now:

It's the one from Montana - the news is Tesla confirming that autopilot was indeed engaged.

How do the regulators not start shutting this down? Safety design has to include and strongly protect for human errors in its planning, and Musk's naming/promotion/lack of safety controls of when it goes on and off clearly fail this test.

News also today that the NHTSA has sent a 9 page letter with many specific questions about autopilot (for which Tesla will have no good answers/evasions - they're not his low-rent fanboys on Twitter)

People long Tesla are lucky we're in a big bull market and being short squeezed/borrow called.

In this case it was clearly the driver who was responsible. He was using autopilot in a road type not supported and was alerted to take control but didn't.

Of course it's the driver's fault. Again, car makers need to take human usage patterns into account when designing for safety. Tesla is so very clearly failing this test. Now that the lid is blown off with the NHTSA investigation, it's not going to be good for them. As a recent opinion piece says:

Separately, we have another video of Tesla slamming into a parked van(posted earlier):



The "technology" is comically bad and incompetent, even at its stated functions, and they've only got away with it so far because much of their small user base consists of rich, loyal Tesla fans and stock owners.