Live data from Hacker News

Morgan Stanley Slashes Worst-Case Price for Tesla to $10

bloomberg.com

51–60 of 67 posts

Re: Morgan Stanley Slashes Worst-Case Price for Tesla to $10

#51
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was the unit of analysis? Stock, sector, index, market, world?

Bonds.

Well, bonds are incredibly macro-sensitive, so when the course of the world economy can be upturned by one Trump tweet (or whatever) then yeah, a super complicated model that you throw away and replace with a fudge factor sounds like about the right way to model it.

Re: Morgan Stanley Slashes Worst-Case Price for Tesla to $10

#53
post #17

Even Jim Cramer (famous Tesla bear that he is) took issue with this “analysis”. > Setting a price target of $10 on a $200 stock "really is insane," the "Mad Money" host said. "How about $8? How about $12? Ten basically says, 'I want to get talked about. Let's talk about me.'" > "If he had done $47 would we have talked about him? No, but 10. Ten is right in your face," Cramer said on "Squawk on the Street." "I questio…

Jim Cramer is a TV personality. It's also established that he has in the past used his media presence to pump and dump stocks.[1] Whilst he may be right that what this analyst is doing is picking a number that makes a headline, this tells you nothing about whether the underlying analysis is right. Whatever motivation this analyst has, you can be certain that Cramer also has the same motivations - as do almost any serious set of investors you speak to.

[1]https://www.nytimes.com/1995/02/20/business/smart-money-reth...

Re: Morgan Stanley Slashes Worst-Case Price for Tesla to $10

#54
post #17

Even Jim Cramer (famous Tesla bear that he is) took issue with this “analysis”. > Setting a price target of $10 on a $200 stock "really is insane," the "Mad Money" host said. "How about $8? How about $12? Ten basically says, 'I want to get talked about. Let's talk about me.'" > "If he had done $47 would we have talked about him? No, but 10. Ten is right in your face," Cramer said on "Squawk on the Street." "I questio…

I don't think I understand Cramer's argument. Is he asserting the new worst-case valuation is disingenuous because it's a "nice" number like 10? Does that mean he wouldn't be saying anything about it if it were 11 instead? That seems like just as subjective an assessment as the one he's currently making. A seemingly "random" looking number can be just as arbitrarily chosen as a neat looking one. It wouldn't surprise…

No, I think what he's saying is that the analysts are massively low-balling the valuation in order to gain attention. He compares it to $47, which would be low, but would represent only an 80% drop. $10 means TSLA has had 95% of its value wiped out, it's just absurd.

Re: Morgan Stanley Slashes Worst-Case Price for Tesla to $10

#55

Tesla would never go to $10 as one of the big four would immediately buy them out if they got them wholesale. Their self driving would make it worth it alone(looks at uber ipo).

It's never impossible for Stock to go to a certain price. Let's say for example: December 2019 comes, in a rush to get their self-driving released by the end of the year. They push out the 'update' and the next day 5 drivers are dead. Engineers start to come out and whistleblow. Suddenly the self-driving play is dead, you've got huge legal liabilities coming down on the company, an acquisition is impossible because no company wants to write a blank check on that liability. So Tesla's got some factories, assets, decent cars but the prospect of self-driving is gone and everyone is waiting to see what that looks like. That could easily see the stock sink to single digits. Eventually the law suits would play out and it'd either go bankrupt and be picked apart, or it'd get acquired eventually. I'm absolutely not saying this is likely, but there are always ways a stock can get to $10.

Re: Morgan Stanley Slashes Worst-Case Price for Tesla to $10

#56
post #17

Even Jim Cramer (famous Tesla bear that he is) took issue with this “analysis”. > Setting a price target of $10 on a $200 stock "really is insane," the "Mad Money" host said. "How about $8? How about $12? Ten basically says, 'I want to get talked about. Let's talk about me.'" > "If he had done $47 would we have talked about him? No, but 10. Ten is right in your face," Cramer said on "Squawk on the Street." "I questio…

Just because it’s really low doesn’t mean Ten is wrong. There’s plently of examples of securities that have been mispriced to such a degree (i.e Enron and MBS).

Re: Morgan Stanley Slashes Worst-Case Price for Tesla to $10

#57

Tesla would never go to $10 as one of the big four would immediately buy them out if they got them wholesale. Their self driving would make it worth it alone(looks at uber ipo).

Indeed, who would not buy into +12B$ debt, ongoing liabilities, unreliable cars and collapsing demand ?

/S

Re: Morgan Stanley Slashes Worst-Case Price for Tesla to $10

#58
post #10
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's all bullshit. I once did some consulting for a very well known person in the financial services industry, a recognized leader in the field. As part of that work I got to see his financial "models". They took the form of the most incredibly complicated Excel spreadsheets I have ever encountered. They were real monsters with hundreds of thousands of rows, dozens of workbooks. Being a software engineer, I wrote som…

Survivor-ship bias. Helluva way to make money.

I mean surely you don’t think Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgon, etc are still around because of survivorship bias? That is, everyone is just flipping coins and some people got lucky.

If you think that’s true, the natural correlary is that all companies are just flipping coins.

Re: Morgan Stanley Slashes Worst-Case Price for Tesla to $10

#59
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's all bullshit. I once did some consulting for a very well known person in the financial services industry, a recognized leader in the field. As part of that work I got to see his financial "models". They took the form of the most incredibly complicated Excel spreadsheets I have ever encountered. They were real monsters with hundreds of thousands of rows, dozens of workbooks. Being a software engineer, I wrote som…

100% I've seen the same thing. But they think they're all brilliant masters of the universe. Frightening when you think on how common place that is in the industry. That said, I do believe that the larger firms have begun to evolve away from that.

Firms in finance run the gamut from being breathtakingly stupid to scarily smart. Since the financial crash things have changed a lot (less stupid guys) though.

Re: Morgan Stanley Slashes Worst-Case Price for Tesla to $10

#60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was a "worst case" target; the malfeasance is that it was placed too high. The equity will be wiped out if there's a restructuring. It's hard to imagine a future where TSLA is worth a low, but nonzero amount - there is a ton of debt first in line. Tesla still has a non-zero risk of failing; what kind of "repercussion" do you believe there should be for pointing this out? In my opinion, the right way to value Tesla…

If Tesla had any spare cash, surely the logical thing for them to do is buy up those 9 percent yield bonds. If they are still solvent on bond payout day, they have made a tidy profit. If they are not, it doesn't matter!

If a company can provide return on capital greater than 9%, then spending their money to get a 9% return is not actually a good investment.

It’s more complicated than this because it’s expected rate of return with some variance, and deploying additional side-lined cash doesn’t always achieve the same return as the previous dollars, etc. etc.

But it comes down to this; if the best thing a company has to do with its dollars is pay down debt, they are telling you that they couldn’t think of anything more reliably profitable or useful to do with the dollars than that.

Post reply on HN