Mega Thread for Tesla Investors

If we ever need an automated Tesla skeptic: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/TSLA/

Bob Wilson

 

I'm expecting the Saudi to dump Tesla stock early next week:
https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/12/middleeast/khashoggi-saudi-turkey-recordings-intl/index.html

Missing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi may have recorded his own death, a Turkish newspaper reported Saturday morning.

Khashoggi turned on the recording function of his Apple Watch before walking into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, according to Sabah newspaper.
The moments of his "interrogation, torture and killing were audio recorded and sent to both his phone and to iCloud," the pro-government, privately owned newspaper paper reported. The Turkish newspaper said conversations of the men involved in the reported assassination were recorded.​

There are reports that a Saudi investment meeting is seeing a lot of folks bailing out:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/10/12/western-walkout-saudi-davos-desert-conference-over-jamal-khashoggi-undermines-kingdoms-modernization-plans/?utm_term=.c0bdaac6af62

The growing number of Western companies distancing themselves from Saudi Arabia over the alleged killing of dissident Jamal Khashoggi is undermining the kingdom’s push to diversify its economy beyond oil and provide more opportunities for its young and often restive population.

By Friday afternoon, nearly a dozen tech, media and entertainment companies had backed out of a Saudi investment conference to be held this month, as dismay over Saudi agents’ alleged murder of Khashoggi spread to companies that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has tried to woo.
...​

Reports are the Saudi hold ~2% of the Tesla stock. If they hold a retaliation sale, TSLA stock will drop until the 'shorts' have run out of money. Of course this will wipe out the short holding of TSLA. Musk should send a fully loaded Roadster in thanks to the Saudi for ending the 'short' holdings.

Bob Wilson

 

I have tried to stay clear of criticizing anyone, but this getting to be ridiculous. The Tesla is a safer car than most other cars, and at no time has anyone in Tesla encouraged anyone to drive unsafely. For example, the seat belt is a safety feature, and if you want to bypass it you can (just buckle it and put the belt behind your back). That is not the manufacturers fault that you used it an unsafe way. The onus is always on the driver to follow reasonable and prudent practices. The premise of your argument appears to be "Tesla has made a claim that their car is very safe (as compared to other cars), and as result some drivers have a "false sense of security" and are hence being idiotic, and hence Elon is to blame for the actions of these people". If we follow your argument, than we should actually make cars less safe, so that no one gets this feeling of being invincible.

Again, I am not sure why it makes a difference if you are "noisy" killer as opposed to a "silent" killer. If you behave stupidly, the decibel level of the vehicle should not be a factor.

 

Well I would really feel safer in a tank, but it is not practical.



EV technology allows you accelerate faster. That is the power of an electric motor over a ICE. Could Tesla slow that down? Yes they could. Could they restrict speeds in certain neighborhoods? Yes they could? Could people by pass these controls? Yes they could.

Would most citizens (myself included) want my automobile manufacturer dictating how I can drive? NO. At a certain point it is individual responsibility, not the manufacturers. The idiots who want to prove that they better than Dale Earnhardt need to be dealt with appropriately.

 

Indeed, the increasingly desperate, increasingly clownish FUD posted by "TeslaInvestors" is beginning to remind me of Baghdad Bob, the Iraqi Minister of Information during Gulf War II, who continued to proclaim in televised announcements that Iraqi forces were winning "the mother of all battles" against the American invaders, even as American tanks were rolling into Baghdad!

"TeslaInvestors" ought to make this his avatar:

 

This dangerous nonsense led to S.841, "Pedestrian Safety Act", to 'Bell the Hybrid', the Prius:
http://hiwaay.net/~bzwilson/prius/Prius_Fatal_Accidents/index.html

It turns out there is a hazard in the NHTSA data, the "A" pillar. But distracted by the nonsense noise screeds, this hazard remains unaddressed. We don't prosecute the innocent for a crime because it means the true criminal remains free to kill again and again.

The only idiots who are loudest about 'noise' are motorcycle hog riders. After all, they have nothing better to do than announce their foolishness.

Of course there may be other reasons:


Bob Wilson

 

Or those with blaring music and open windows and the noise gets to be distracting.

 

I just learned how to prevent my TSLA stock from being shorted:

• Order the broker to sell at 3-5x the current price.

If you have a sell order, those stocks are kept in a separate account that can not be loaned. Stock under a 'sell' order have to be real shares.

Bob Wilson

 

Just trying to understand. If I have shares in my brokerage account, can my broker loan them out without my express permission? This seems illegal. Is there any other way of preventing it.

 

I called my broker earlier today to correct some old information. Then I asked about blocking the 'loaning' of my stock. He did not give an answer. So I kept looking (i.e., Google.)

In practice, selling my stock requires the shares to exist. So it makes sense that putting in a sell order would require having the shares ready. However, there is an open question about how big of a difference between the last trade and sell order may lead to gamesmanship:

• last trade, $100, and sell at $110 - very likely to complete
• last trade, $100, and sell at $130 - less likely to complete
• last trade, $100, and sell at $200 - oh come on, probably days to resolve

I suspect we could map the percentage change of stock trades and find a bell curve of probability. Going out one standard deviation would be likely. But two standard deviations or more, well that would be remarkable although more likely on the negatives from bad news versus 'we just found a Hope diamond.'

Bob Wilson

 

I did some research on this and found this. A custodial account, where the broker is mere custodian, there are more restrictions. However, if it is a margin account, the broker has to have ability to sell your shares to meet shortfalls (e.g. you are over extended and the broker wants to call the loan). So they have a contract with you and in that contract they may have sneaked in a clause that allows them to loan your shares. That is why you cannot prevent them from doing it. Sneaky, they make the money on your shares and you get nothing out of it. You can call the shares any time by putting a sell order, so your shares are not really at risk but the broker will just take it from someone else to keep the loan intact. The point is if you are expecting the shares to go up, you do not want to lend to someone who is going to make the shares go down. So @bwilson4web strategy will work as long as you are watching the shares and keep increasing the limit as share price goes up.

 

@TeslaInvestors has either taken a break or decided to withdraw, but here is an article from a more technical magazine trying to put Elon in perspective.

https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/rockets/a23508636/defense-of-elon-musk/

In Defense of Elon Musk


He is under attack. For tweeting the wrong thing, for not making enough cars, for appearing unstable. Some of the criticisms have merit. Much of it is myopic and small-brained, from sideline observers gleefully salivating at the opportunity to take him down a peg. But what have these stock analysts and pontificators done for humanity?


Elon Musk is an engineer at heart, a tinkerer, a problem-solver—the kind of person Popular Mechanics has always championed—and the problems he’s trying to solve are hard. Really hard. He could find better ways to spend his money, that’s for sure. And yet there he is, trying to build gasless cars and build reusable rockets and build tunnels that make traffic go away. For all his faults and unpredictability, we need him out there doing that. We need people who have ideas. We need people who take risks.

We need people who try.

 

Tesla filed this with the SEC:
http://ir.tesla.com/node/19186/html

...
Number of Shares Beneficially Owned by Each Reporting Person With

5. Sole Voting Power* 7,000,711
6. Shared Voting Power* 0
7. Sole Dispositive Power* 17,419,812
8. Shared Dispositive Power 0

9. Aggregate Amount Beneficially Owned by Each Reporting Person
17,419,812
10. Check Box if the Aggregate Amount in Row (9) Excludes Certain Shares
NOT APPLICABLE
11. Percent of Class Represented by Amount in Row 9
10.2%

Item 2(a) Name of Person(s) Filing:
(1) T. ROWE PRICE ASSOCIATES, INC. ("Price Associates")
​

So I'm wondering if T. ROWE PRICE is supporting ~10,000,000 'short' shares?

Bob Wilson

 

Oh man! CNBC's "LORA KOLODNY" really hates Musk: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/19/cnbcs-lora-kolodny-elon-musks-extreme-micro-management-has-wasted-time-and-money-at-tesla-insiders-say.html?__source=yahoo|finance|headline|story|&par=yahoo&yptr=yahoo

CNBC'S LORA KOLODNY: ELON MUSK'S EXTREME MICRO-MANAGEMENT HAS WASTED TIME AND MONEY AT TESLA, INSIDERS SAY
. . .​

Imagine an article culled from ex-employees, many bitter at being fired or pissed after leaving. Yet the things I admire about Musk still come through. Bitter because Musk doesn't do 'business as usual' seems to be the common theme. But it may not be her fault:

It looks like she may have collected interviews but someone at CNBC decided to change the article header by SHOUTING their bile.

Bob Wilson

 

​

Hmmm, I was ready to denounce this as just more of CNBC's "pravduh". But reading thru the article, it's surprisingly free of the anti-Tesla bias seen all too frequently in articles and videos at CNBS.

Yes, Elon's micro-management has indeed wasted time and money at Tesla. But I think most reasonable industry analysts would agree that Elon's positive influence on Tesla has vastly outweighed his negative influence. That's not to say that going forward, Elon's micro-management style is going to suit an ever-growing company like Tesla. But certainly he seems to have been the right man at the right time in years past.

Just ask yourself this: Where would Tesla be today if it had as its CEO and Chairman of the Board, from 2008-2018, someone hired from a legacy gasmobile auto maker? Would it have three models of cars in production, with publicly presented working prototypes of a 4th car and a heavy truck? Would it be selling one of the 5 top-selling cars in the U.S.? Of course we can only guess, but I think it's most likely that the answer is not only "No", but "Hell no!" In fact, without a billionaire CEO who was willing to bet his entire personal fortune at one point to keep Tesla afloat, Tesla today would be gone, just a sad footnote in history.

With any CEO, no matter who it is, we have to take the bad with the good. As the old saying goes: "Love me, love my dog."

 

Cramer has another point of view:


Bob Wilson

 

You're parroting pravduh very well, you deserve a reward:


Don't you have anything original to say, at all? It's your own thread here. Doesn't it deserve more than parroting pravduh?