I don't understand, you think that the stories of ghost cities are all fake? I did a quick check and found several named ghost cities explaining how and what was supposed to happen... and didn't.
I agree that most video's out there have outrageous tag lines to get clicks and are total lies. ie. Tesla Recalls 2million cars. As the tag line from media and when you read it.. it says the software on the 2M cars will be updated over the air and improve the vehicle.

Your own statement

"i know a bunch of chinese people who owned dozens of homes and would just let them sit empty because if they were previously lived in by renters the value drops dramatically"

seems to confirm my prior statement that individuals were purchasing property as a perceived store of wealth but kept them empty and nobody is living in them.
You can say it is for cultural reasons, but the reality is that there are not enough people to live in them. (This is my argument)
Even Xi tried to slow down the construction saying that "Homes are for living in, not for speculation." When this did not stop the demand side, he put his foot down
hard on the supply side by instituting the three red lines. I could continue with stories of Evergrand or Country Garden or others but
I will not post on China here anymore outside of Tesla as this is a Tesla Thread. It is not my goal to convince you (Rickroll) of anything.

I only study this topic carefully because I am looking to see how it will affect North America and try to be prepared.

As this is a Tesla Thread...
One of China's bright spots is EVs , Rare earth Metals and battery manufacturing. BYD and Tesla Shanghai are two of the "Bright Spots"

tbf mf, you still have not named a ghost city...

in other news, neuralink received fda approval for human trials a while back and i am anxiously counting down the days until we hear about the first neuralink-related human death (not to be confused with monkey deaths, of which there are many) only for elon to spin it as some failure of the fda itself or a mere glitch in the system that pales in comparison to the remarkable strides neuralink will make in curing paralysis, alzheimers, etc. endless empty promises go far.

completely unrelated: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/12/19/sec-...were-fake.html

interesting. i wasn't aware of the explicit mainstream anti-china propaganda war going on until i saw a 60 minutes segment (forgetting to change the channel after the bills game and before SNF obv) running what felt like a 30-minute segment about how evil and threatening china is, interviewing countless intelligence officials who all attested to how evil china is.

again, not even saying this is wrong, i have absolutely no clue about china, but the notable part was how in such a long, drawn out segment they provided no evidence that china constitutes an existential threat other than trodding out 20+ usg officials who attested to the fact that they do, without explaining why. reporting ftw.

another fun fact: in his recent dealbook interview elon attested that he doesn't care what people think of him.

just 1, that's all i ask

since it's so endemic this shouldn't be a difficult task

One reason why I'm afraid to short the stock is that it's become such a big component of the SPX and QQQ. And that's important because we now live in a world of indexing. Most people, and institutions, aren't buying individual stocks—they buy ETFs that hold TSLA. And since sell-side analysts mostly just move their target prices along with whatever the current price is, and the current price has been disconnected from valuation for so long (TTM P/E of 82), I'm not sure what it would take to bring the stock down in the face of so much automatic buying pressure from indexers. And as you know, there's always another big, unquantifiable thing on the horizon—semitruck, India factory, robot. Fundamentals have some effect, but not much.

https://www.quora.com/Do-you-have-or...et_type=answer

agree shorting TSLA is unwise ("markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent")

i think the play is far OTM puts, but the market does too and they're priced very high relative to other large cap auto or tech companies, for good reason. still, jan25 100 puts are tempting

mindflayer, can you please name a single ghost city

I can, but I won't. It will just degrade into a discussion of the definition of a g**** city, or how the term is offensive to you or some other side argument. You do not need to convince me. I do not have a dog in this fight. I am not sure why you are even trying. Whether they exist or not, has no effect on my investing decisions.

One of my new years resolutions is to expend energy only in places where I can affect the outcome. Don't complain about my neighbor leaving his house empty because he went to Mexico for winter and left me to suffer the bad weather. You can't do anything about your neighbor. You can however check the weather and dress accordingly. I tried to make an appropriate analogy between empty units->economy-> my investing decisions.

Back to topic that does affect my investing decisions AND the reason for this thread: Tesla last week paid 31M for a 48 Acre Mega Pack site at Lingang near Giga Shanghai. Construction to start Q1 2024. The speed at which China can put this up is second to none. I would bet it gets done before Giga Mexico; announced in March 2023 and only received permits Dec 13, 2023. To be fair, there is a lot of infrastructure (utilities-roads etc.) to be built to-from Giga Mexico and the environmental impact studies part that took 9 months in Mexico would likely be an extremely low bar, and take a few weeks to complete in China.
I have been studying how much $ per share this new factory will add to the Valuation of Tesla stock and how soon it will come online.

I forget how long ago this was asked, but part of my argument for being a Tesla Bull was that Tesla should not be compared to other car companies... Mega Packs was among the list of "other" things that Tesla is/does.

Nice, would be interesting to hear more on your calculus for $/share on the new factory, as well as how you value their megapack business overall.

Also, is US Foreign policy blundering part of the calculus in these valuations? China could also decide, "our factories now".

I sure wish I got in a year ago, nearly 100% increase. Can I get in at $200 a share again?

translation = i'm too much of a facking coward to admit i was wrong

I am not in the weeds enough to do this calculation on my own. I listen to others opinions on it and note whether to commentator is a bull or bear.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiYklMUetWE&t=2s
I think the comments on valuation happen around 8:00 into the video. The commentator in this review I just found is a bull and estimates $80/share.
I think his valuation is high and too early. The effect of this one factory will not be felt and in full production for 2 years. Discounted, I estimate +$60/share at the end of 2026 from this one factory.

thanks for sharing. fair point on the discounting. tsla's p/e ratio is doing a lot of the work on the $80/share estimate... any time you can multiply (optimistic) projected annual earnings by *70* basically any project/investment is going to look appealing and it's a wonder they don't open five or ten more factories at that rate. the projected market cap add of $80/share equates to about $250B present value. i won't pretend to be an expert in the field but a few quick industry reports suggest the current global battery energy storage market is ~$14B and projected to be only $35-55B by 2030, which includes competition from the likes of GE, LG, Samsung, Siemens, etc. How do we get $250B pv from that? multiply by 70?

the big question is how we arrive at 70x earnings for any and all tsla projects. imo it's the result of the elon-genius premium and assuming (hoping) he will win a monopoly in one (all) of the many pies he sticks his finger into. i have yet to see a compelling argument for that happening in any of the pies. i see tons of counter-evidence in the form of failing to deliver on countless products (solar, boring, cybertruck, tsla semi, dancing humanoid teslabots, little progress and falling behind on fsd) and continuously falling margins in EVs as windfall credits dry up and competitors eat into market share. not to mention U.S. senators calling for further EV recalls.

what is their moat? castles made of sand imo, buttressed by the shell game that is "okay, this line of business could never justify a 12-figure market cap, but what about THIS ONE?"

I do not think there is a moat... I think there is a time delay of 5 years from first production at a loss to actually making money on EV's for ANY car company. Tesla suffered ridicule for those 5 years and was on the verge of bankruptcy multiple times in those early years. The OEM's do not want to do the 5 years, and are sitting around thinking about how to get right to profitability with EV's.
If there was a moat, it was the EV charging infrastructure. Elon gave all other OEM's a pass and said they could use the T Charging Network.

On a side note, Tesla had Total annual deliveries 2023: 1,808,581
My guess for 2024 is 2.34M. (30% growth over 2023 )

funny, i don't see any names of ghost cities anywhere in that post

If you feel the need to discuss ghost cities.. or the Chinese economy, open a new thread and name it appropriately. This is not the place for it.
Thanks

weird, i don't see the name of a ghost city in your response

Elon blackmailing Tesla is just amazing.

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/2...china-1742984/

rickroll was there too just generally stanning for China

grizy if you would like to name a ghost city on mindflayer's behalf you can do so as well

or just be an angry dipshit and whenever someone who is actually knowledgeable about the facts calls you out on your bullshit which you're unable to verify yet too much of a coward to admit you were wrong just say "i'm stanning" like a clown

This is hilarious since you're the one who started the derail in the first place

Jonas now calling for 2024 (non-gaap!) eps below $2. But AI and robotics optionality will surely save them.

Free-speech, free-trade advocate Musk calling for trade barriers, lol

https://www.reuters.com/business/aut...rs-2024-01-25/