I don't own or trade TSLA. I just follow this thread and believe every once in a while people need some context with regards to the "expertise" you claim to have in the trading realm. Hopefully people by now have realized your "expertise" in Tesla's actual business is worthless.

With regard to my "premature" call. You are sticking by your call of "certain to hit $150" by July 5th, 2018? I'd love to wager against "certain" odds.

Yeah I'm right about the puts. The best you can get on > 1 year puts (there's 14 months left until two years are up) is a 2.5 bagger. That's horrible odds. Tesla reliably pays far more than that with shorter term puts.
Actually, I've presented plenty of evidence and facts about why the bull narrative is nonsense. For example, it's now inarguable that Tesla is NOT the autonomous leader as the breathless crazy Musk fanboys like you constantly claimed. They are far, far behind. They can't even get a simple feature like autonomous braking working, 9 months after separating from MobileEye (whose work they bought and relied on for AP1).

You were wrong on a major part of Tesla's business. I was right. I'm right about their odds at successful/profitable large scale lower end car manufacturing as well vs the majors.

That the price has jumped on a high beta heavily shorted tech stock in the longest bull in history is no surprise. It has nothing to do with my comments on Tesla's long term business viability. I mean, your comment and criticism is completely illogical. Stock prices in the shorter term have nothing to do with the viability of Tesla's business in the longer term. Enron went to the moon long after people said their business was flawed. So did Valeant. We're in the middle of huge tech bull that pulls up everything, crap or not. It's meaningless in terms of Tesla's business.

Had you wanted to criticize my price picking ability, that is valid. But you're hilariously overreaching.

you could maybe even add amzn and goog to that chart.
difference is, exempt tlsa and nflx, the others have an amazing market position (tsla's about 0,1% of car sales in 2016), tons of cash and a strong balance sheet.
tsla's just a good stock to stay away if you're looking for the long term...


market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent

Horrible odds on something certain to happen? Interesting.

I'll take the implication that your trading returns for the next year will rival the possibility of more than doubling your net worth on a "certainty" with a hilariously large grain of salt.

It's actually a 1.5 bagger, and yes, I'll very very likely more than double my substantial trading bankroll this year. Expectation is 2-4x, although it depends on what the market does.

I''ll post some real time TSLA option trades (entries and exits) I make when they come up. Nothing like a demonstration.

The fact that you still think your theta/vega/gamma trades mean anything is troublesome.

Tesla is indeed the market leader in (semi-)autonomous driving, as of today, they are the only carmaker in the world willing to offer it to their end customers. That's a pretty bold step and if others were even half as far they would do the same.

If GM had a market leading product, they'd be more than willing to deploy it. They are more than accustomed to killing people.

If everyone was as good as Tesla, they would compete. But they choose not to. They are not smarter, they don't have smarter employees, they are simply behind but don't care.

I still don't understand how you can think that Tesla delivering three months late on a promise hurts their chances of getting there or has anything to do with the stock price in the long term. The impact of a late Model 3 launch on the probabilty of Tesla growing to a $500bn company is marginal at best.

There is a reason why you are a good Kappa trader - but that's exactly the reason why you have so little understanding of the actual business and the economy.

Tesla is the absolute dominant player in the electric car business. They are the first to be mentioned and have a product out there that sells better than its competition in most mature markets. It is also a product that legislatures around the globe want to subsidize and further promote. Tesla's competition is notoriously knowing for (quasi) bankruptcies and government bailouts. How someone can seriously claim that they are not competing with Tesla because the market is so small is hilarious.

Tesla will beat competition easily just by their agility. The problem with existing carmakers is their sheer workforce in the wrong field. They couldn't just switch because they would not be able to pay the salaries while retraining 50-70% of their staff.


I don't think Tesla will stay at those levels for long. I think the market will correct in general but after that Tesla will come out ahead of competition.

Autonomous driving is reliably well beyond AP1. It's not offered because it's pointless and a legal nightmare. Tesla has a small number of wealthy/intelligent hardcore enthusiasts willing to be crash test dummies for the fun of owning a cool high end electric car.

Ignitions switches are a very different PR and legal issue to cars that can run over pedestrians and crash into other traffic. Even then it cost them billions.

To what end? It's expensive to put hardware on cars; there's no market for it; it's as yet not ready in the range of conditions it needs to be to be widely deployed.
Again, even what's been posted in this thread makes an utter fool of you. I posted the GM video. We have the stats on public testing miles and interactions per mile. They can't even put together automatic emergency braking that works with 9 months lead time. There is zero question that Tesla is far behind. The debate is over on that, and I won. I'm surprised you don't see that.

5 months late and counting. And it shows their total incompetence and inability to estimate timelines.

They don't even have automatic emergency braking on their cars 9 months after breaking up with MobileEye. I don't know what the **** is wrong with you, but surely you can understand that not even being able to do automatic braking in 9 months destroys the narrative that Tesla are ahead on autonomous driving research.

There are three forces working in the market:

- Batteries are rapidly getting cheaper, and factories are popping up like mushrooms to make them on a industrial scale
- Once 300 mile range with good performance batteries are available at costs similar to ICE engines + supporting components, manufacturing goes electric en masse
- With their current and 5 year scale, Tesla cannot compete with the majors in cost effective car building.

These three points, and others, mean that if Tesla don't get big enough, fast enough, they are done for, because they're going to be competing in a cutthroat global industry for which they're hugely under capitalized, and lack the supplier relationships. Their only real shot at success is growing large enough while they're a monopoly (of money loss) to get up to scale. If the Model 3 is substantially late, the goose is cooked.

What precise understanding do you have about business and the economy that I don't? Spell it out.

No, they actually aren't. They're the dominant player in the heavily-loss-making ultra expensive electric sports car/sedan category. They own no other category.

There is no competition. Tesla have a current monopoly in the heavily-loss-making ultra expensive electric sedan category. They will always have a monopoly in this. But it's not a business; it's charity, taking from shareholders and subsidizing people who want expensive electric cars at less than cost price. How do you not understand this?

What sane business would be interested in multi-billion dollar loss making? There's no point to it.

What agility? Tesla have made 3 cars in 10 years, all far behind schedule and far over budget. They are a total failure as a business and a total failure at bringing products to market profitably and on time. They don't have agility.

What on Earth are you talking about? The car workforce is in exactly the right field for making cars. Batteries will be made by battery makers like Panasonic and LG Chem, who are building factories rapidly in low-cost China and elsewhere to meet the demand for automotive batteries.

Again, what on Earth are you talking about? Most car makers have outsourced components. There is no shortage of labor to build battery packs and electric motors, and apart from battery packs and electric motor, the rest is the existing car shell and trimmings minus the ICE, which existing employees and systems are experts at building (far better than Musk's team).

I love how you think that car makers, with plants in cheap places in Asia, are going to have a HUGE PROBLEM paying the salaries for making electric cars, while TSLA - which currently makes 1-2% of the car volume of a single one of the majors, is going to pull people out of their ass who work for free (in California, no less) and don't require training.

I also love that you think that car makers with capital expenditures in the hundreds of billions each and making $7 billion/year in profit, are going to have trouble paying workers or raising the cash for training and retooling, while TSLA, which is broke and has to go to the market every few to rape their shareholders for a billion dollars, are not going to have these exact same troubles. It's...weird? I don't get it.

yeah, let's just call electric cars a new industry, forget about other cars, which make up 95% of sales, call tsla the dominant player (hint: they aren't, ever lookes at china ev sales?) and 500bn here we go.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Tesla is the dominant player in EVs, even including China. They have over double the EV revenue of the nearest competitor, likely 3x+ the EV revenue of nearest competitor this year, possible they could have 5x nearest competitor next year. Most of the EV "competition" that is trickling in over the next few years is lower compliance car type volume. The chevy bolt is a good example of this, token launch in 2016 (few hundred), maybe they will make 20k this year, but with most everyone that is interested in EVs in that price range waiting for the model 3, GM is forced to be really cautious and hasn't committed to ramping the bolt until "demand" is more obvious, but the model 3 took 375k paid deposits, doesn't that essentially prove demand is there just that the bolt isn't nearly as compelling? Also model S is the best selling EV in the world over the last two years, which is nuts considering there are alternatives available at 1/3 of the price.

It's always something different for you that they get wrong and why they are doomed. Then this thing turns out to be a non-issue and you move on to the next thing. My first post ITT was about the Apple effort. You claimed that Tesla was doomed due to this. It turns out to be complete nonsense and Apple is hardly a player in the market these days. But what is even more hilarious in this context is that your claim was not only false but the complete opposite happened and Tesla got one of Apple's best engineers to join.

One of the next episodes was the death of a Tesla driver. You claimed it would be shown in a legal investigation that Tesla only makes mistakes and gets nothing right. As we've all seen, NHTSA found only positive things with Tesla's autopilot and your narrative was wrong again. Now, you cling on to the emergency breaking stuff. Do you actually believe that this is an issue? The reason why it's probably not solved by Tesla is because they are trying something different that is interfering. This will be solved and again, it will have no impact.

There were other things mentioned by you as well. Almost all of them turned out to be wrong or no big deals. Your biggest wrongful believe is that you think that capital matters and is the deciding factor. It is clearly not and will not be the deciding factor in the EV market.

One thing I have to ask you: Are you aware that most of the cars in the world are not actually assembled in China?

This paragraph has to be a joke, right?


In general, I find it surreal that armchair quarterbacks constantly pretend how little it means what Musk has accomplished and how easy it is because the markets are easy to disrupt. While their own contribution is a correct omicron bet once in a while.

Anyone feel like there is going to be some sort of surprise capital raise announcement this earnings call? Probably coupled with a lie about demand picking up more than expected to make it sound like a good thing?


I'm going to miss Cuban and spurious posts when this whole thing finally dips back to the
$5o range

I'm going to miss uninformed posts like these.

Surprise capital raise? Lolz.

They've been talking about that for a while.

Sent from my SM-N910V using Tapatalk

https://electrek.co/2017/05/01/tesla...-quarter-2017/



I'll throw out a random guess at +0.05 just for fun!

I know that Tesla as a company is losing money. But I always assumed that they actually make money selling cars, but spend more money building superchargers and factories and developing self driving. Do they actually lose money on each car? I thought they had like 20+% margins on model S?

If you take margins as

sale cost - cost of parts - cost of labor, then yes, they have 20+% margins.

Bear in mind that this on a $100K car, with trimmings far below the quality of a mid-level BMW.

If you take margins as including

Lost capital required to build those items + stock expense to retain employees + interest expense + other (non-future-capital) expenses

as it properly should, they're losing money. As you can see in their cash flow, their loss are large BEFORE capital expenditure. Raping their shareholders and getting lines of credit are how they stay afloat - not their margins.



It's a classic non-viable business, complete with consistently, outrageously missed deadlines and profit targets, lies, dodgy non-GAAP accounting, a personality cult manager, frequent stock offerings, and a crew of pumpers/PR agents.

Why do you think none of the big car makers want to touch this turd/product category? It's a gigantic cash sink for no benefit whatsoever.

If I'm not mistaken they should clearly have a profitable quarter Q1 due to the Solar City acquisition?

I do enjoy the routine insistence that a Model S is not clearly a very high end, and well built car with ubiquitous praise from professional reviewers (and individuals). Prob some global conspiracy involving mind control agents that overpower you when you sit in one.

So good

Is this a joke? If so it's hilarious.

I mean, this is a flat out lie. People in this thread who have a lot to do with high end cars have called the Model S fit and finish total crap/low end. The forums are full of people used to high end cars upset with the quality of the interior. Here's a professional reviewer saying the same thing:

Your claim of "ubiquitous" praise for the finish is pure horse****. Nearly all of the praise for the Model S comes from side effects/features of its performance electric drive and its electronic displays. The rest of the car is widely thought of as utter crap; cheap, poorly aligned fittings and trimmings with various issues.
No, just a case of you and Mikhel having no ****ing clue what you're talking about. Or maybe you both don't know what "trimmings" mean. Either way, it's weird.

Seems like a credible source

Well, Tesla interior is definitely not the best in the market. A lot of the bad memories come from the old seats but that has improved quite tremendously. Also, they've implemented new interior design options. They are definitely getting there.

The blog still mentions that the driving experience was world class. Not sure why you bothered posting that as a source.

God you people are thick. Of course the driving experience is first class - performance electric is an amazing driving experience unlike any other. Teslas are incredible to drive because they're performance electric, and for no other reason.

This is what the morons don't understand. Performance long range electric batteries and motors are going to become standard/commoditized in the coming years as electric volumes grow and prices drop a ton. Once you have a few hundred miles of range and acceleration to 6 in 3-4 seconds, there is no further differentiation in each price bracket except range being maybe 550 instead of 500 miles. You have a commodity.

Take away the amazing experience of performance electric - TSLA have a pure monopoly on that right now - and what does TSLA have left? Very, very little. Nearly all the hype and wonder about Tesla cars has nothing to do with TSLA - it has to do with performance electric. Tesla are behind on efficient low cost production, behind on interiors, behind on supplier networks, behind on range, behind on the vast synergies that come from deploying $150 billion in capital to produce a range of cars.

This is why Tesla is not worth $50 billion or even $10 billion as a company. They are screwed in the long term, and that thesis have never changed. They've managed to build a business subsidizing rich guy performance electric sports cars, in which they've had a monopoly because no one things it worth losing money to subsidize the cars. They've managed to lose money in this business and fall far behind schedule.

I don't think you guys realize how much no one will give a crap about Tesla once long range performance BEVs are in town. I've driven cheap ($20K) pure electric cars and loved it - found it modern and smooth and instantly accelerating and hard to go back to gasoline - and none of them were Teslas.

I would buy a $50K performance electric BMW over a $50K performance electric Telsa in a heartbeat. So would most others. And that's the core of why Tesla really have nothing going for them. At the lower end ($20K-$30K), the deciding factor is going to be what is always is in cars - the value proposition, the fit and finish. The carmakers have Tesla crushed in this arena; Tesla have no experience at making hair thin margins from large volume carmaking, nor do they have the large supplier networks needed to produce a profit and create reliability.

lolz

Do you have anything "credible" that can debunk the lead it appears Tesla has in the battery department? That seems to be valuable in the electric car business to me.

I still have no idea why typing out a bunch of unsubstantiated and usually completely false information is considered "content". But "lolz" would not.

Remember when you thought that Tesla was gonna trade around $150 this year? Good thing you don't actually trade or you'd have gotten eaten alive on that one.

I wouldn't buy any sort of electric car at the moment because of the inherent limitations with utility. I think I represent the vast majority of users who don't have access to useful charging options, or the ability to own multiple vehicles to support long distance trips. The TAM for electrics remains small but will continue to grow. If they can keep up their ridiculous margins/share (see Apple for another company that everyone has been waiting years for their margins to drop, but manages to keep up the cool/hype cycle to keep up astronomical margins) they'll probably be fine considering he can raise a basically limitless amount of money, with no fear of getting popped for fraud by simply stating "I am Elon Musk" without really ever accomplishing much without Peter Thiel handholding him.

Another genius who can't read, or count higher than one. I mean, it's literally quoted above. And I do actually trade and have traded greater than your net worth in TSLA options; here is one such trade.

My trades are so large that when I was posting real time entries and exits frequently, they can and were verified by people looking at option market data.

There's nowhere near as much trading lately since Trump killed volatility (there are 2-5 big ones a year, usually), but I'll post the next TSLA trade I make with entry and exit in real time.

I guess you're some kind of freak masochist who gets off on being wrong all the time? Have a little more self respect, maybe? It's getting sad at this stage.

Agreed. However, serious competitors are going to enter the market in the next few years. Including hybrids with a large battery and a small generator. That just kills the BEV in utility - you can enjoy long highway drives with 1000+km range, while driving a zero gasoline performance electric around the city and for < 300 km trips. I would buy that in an instant. As would a lot of people. The small generators don't add a lot of cost since you don't need the drive trains or a large engine or something to provide power for acceleration. And the small amount of use/wear they get means you can have maintenance free sealed unit, like many generators.
All the hype companies work perfectly well and can keep raising capital as long as we're in a bull market and a growing economy. The fragile/secondary and debt reliant/absurd unprofitable businesses didn't crash and die in 1999 or 2006 either - in fact they soared to new heights while the bulls got increasingly hysterical. Enron was worth double Tesla's current valuation a year before its bankruptcy, which was triggered by the market crashing. This is no different. If a recession happens in the next 2-3 years, and we're overdue going on historical time frames, TSLA dies an ugly death, particularly since the cheapest car they have is going to sell for a minimum $40K+. Imagine how that would fly off the shelves in a recession.

In fact a lot of this tech crap has relied on one of the biggest bull markets in history, and will see some insane margin compression when anything goes wrong in the world.