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Tesla Enters “Whistleblower Hell”

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Re: Tesla Enters “Whistleblower Hell”

#31

Post by kemiller »

kec wrote: post #12
kemiller wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla’s stock is shorted FAR more than any other company with comparable market cap. 30% of outstanding shares are shorted. It’s bonkers.

But which is the more likely causes of this: That TSLA is the victim of an evil coordinated effort to cause the company to take, or just that 30% of the market genuinely believes they're overvalued. Given they have a higher market cap than either Ford or Honda, I'd be betting on the latter....

When you consider how rich and well-connected the players who stand to lose if Tesla wins, I don’t think it’s at all crazy to suggest that they are using some of that wealth to slow them down. If you happen to have 10 billion hanging around and there are billions more on the line, it’d almost be stupid not to. There’s no law against malicious short selling assuming you’re not outright lying about them in print. Oil companies have a the means, motive, and opportunity. Exxon Mobil alone made $20b in profit last year. 30% of TSLA is 12b or so. If they can delay the electric transition by a couple of years by kicking in a few billions along with the other big ones, that’s a great return on investment even if they take a huge bath on the shorts.

Can I prove that’s what’s going on? No, I’m just some dude on the internet. But it really is not implausible at all.

Re: Tesla Enters “Whistleblower Hell”

#32

Post by [deleted] »

inlined wrote: post #28
hndamien wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AP is driver assist, so if the pedestrian isn't at fault, then the driver is at fault. Edit: Looks horrible. I hope the cameras caught the action and can apportion blame appropriately.

Also, current AP doesn’t support stopping at lights. The best it does is blare alarms if it thinks you are going to blow one. So unless the driver has some beta software, I can’t imagine AP being blamed.

[deleted]

Re: Tesla Enters “Whistleblower Hell”

#33

Post by r00fus »

vikramkr wrote: post #4

Tesla (or at least Elon) has a terrible habit of engaging with critics in deeply unproductive ways, such as all the anti short seller stuff they pulled. It makes them look very defensive and seem like they feel vulnerable/cant face the criticism, and maybe it's because they actually are vulnerable and doing things that merit short selling and whistleblowing. At least from a PR perspective you dont want to engage like…

Disagree that short-sellers somehow get to be grouped with whistleblowers. That’s whitewashing them.

They are foreign actors with literally a negative stake and deserve to be treated as adversaries.

Re: Tesla Enters “Whistleblower Hell”

#34

Post by r00fus »

kec wrote: post #12
kemiller wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla’s stock is shorted FAR more than any other company with comparable market cap. 30% of outstanding shares are shorted. It’s bonkers.

But which is the more likely causes of this: That TSLA is the victim of an evil coordinated effort to cause the company to take, or just that 30% of the market genuinely believes they're overvalued. Given they have a higher market cap than either Ford or Honda, I'd be betting on the latter....

That’s not a dichotomy. Literally they could be both.

Big money has a lot of legal levers to keep their investments in dirty economy profitable that also make sense for them financially.

Re: Tesla Enters “Whistleblower Hell”

#35

Post by ikiris »

kec wrote: post #12
kemiller wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla’s stock is shorted FAR more than any other company with comparable market cap. 30% of outstanding shares are shorted. It’s bonkers.

But which is the more likely causes of this: That TSLA is the victim of an evil coordinated effort to cause the company to take, or just that 30% of the market genuinely believes they're overvalued. Given they have a higher market cap than either Ford or Honda, I'd be betting on the latter....

This isn't about a coordinated conspiracy although there have been multiple examples of such in the past in other situations. Multiple independent malicious actors through their own self interest if sufficiently capitalized can easily destroy a company through actions like this purely in the persuit of self profit. Especially if they are competing in the same space.

The 80s was rife with things like this, to the point many became famous for it.

Re: Tesla Enters “Whistleblower Hell”

#36

Post by marmada »

breck wrote: post #23
meritt wrote: post #13

https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/2-Pedestrians-Suffer-M... Pedestrian death from a Tesla just happened this afternoon. If this is found to be AP fault instead of driver fault, guessing we'll see AP banned by Wednesday.

Also about 10 pedestrian deaths happened this afternoon from non Teslas, driven by humans. And 20 yesterday. So I wouldn't jump to conclusions about whether "AP" will be banned anytime soon. Source: https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/pedestrian_safety/ind...

What is this statistic supposed to prove? I would expect there to be more deaths from non-Teslas because non-Teslas make up a majority of the market and furthermore not every person with a Tesla uses autopilot and even those who do use autopilot do not use it all the time, so the chance the autopilot makes a mistake is minimized.

We do not know if autopilot reduces the number of deaths, so let's not overhype this technology. I would wager it increases the number of deaths because

1. Autopilot technology is not good enough to be used with 0% human intervention (i.e -- there are many edge cases where human intervention is required that autopilot cannot handle).

2. Even though statement 1 is true, drivers naturally treat autopilot as if it is capable of driving with 0% intervention, for example they might check their phone while the car is moving.

Re: Tesla Enters “Whistleblower Hell”

#37

Post by sjwright »

drcross wrote: post #5
vikramkr wrote: post #4

Tesla (or at least Elon) has a terrible habit of engaging with critics in deeply unproductive ways, such as all the anti short seller stuff they pulled. It makes them look very defensive and seem like they feel vulnerable/cant face the criticism, and maybe it's because they actually are vulnerable and doing things that merit short selling and whistleblowing. At least from a PR perspective you dont want to engage like…

Short sellers have been causing the company a lot of trouble, Musk is correct in pointing them out so that their activities become known.

Interesting that this post is getting voted down. What did it say that offended so many people?

> Short sellers have been causing the company a lot of trouble

That seems objectively correct. The Tesla stock has been weighed down by an unprecedented amount of shorting—regardless whether or not you agree with the associated predictions.

> Musk is correct in pointing them out so that their activities become known.

This is an opinion. I suppose you could dispute the opinion that Musk should be doing that. But that's a reasonable opinion, isn't it? I'm confused.

Re: Tesla Enters “Whistleblower Hell”

#38

Post by maest »

AndrewBissell wrote: post #25
Retric wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

~“Markets can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.” Shorting a stock is not just a statement that you think the stock is overvalued. It’s a statement you think the stock will soon drop, because each short costs money and expires. Eventually being correct is useless. If for example it performs poorly over the next 20 years and never actually drops you will lose everything.

Shorting Tesla actually pays a rebate right now, because the stock is cheaper to borrow than the interest paid on the cash proceeds from selling it up front.

Tesla is one of the most shorted stocks around.

There is no way you can get a rebate just by shorting the name.

You're probably thinking of the rebate rate, which is the money received by people long Tesla who are lending it out.

Re: Tesla Enters “Whistleblower Hell”

#39

Post by JackFr »

fouc wrote: post #26
twblalock wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing wrong with shorting Tesla. Short selling is a necessary corrective to overhyped stocks. If the short sellers are wrong about Tesla being overpriced, they will pay for it. They are taking all of the risk, and they are not hurting anything except Musk's feelings.

Apparently there's a bit more to that. Tesla is very leveraged right now and apparently it would be an issue if the share price dropped too much, forcing Tesla to do some sort of liquidity event? So the big short sellers are trying to force the share prices down enough that Tesla is forced to deal with this, which would push the share prices down even more and let them profit hugely.

> Apparently there's a bit more to that. Tesla is very leveraged right now and apparently it would be an issue if the share price dropped too much, forcing Tesla to do some sort of liquidity event?

Umm, yeah. There is nothing special about that.

In fact that is the point.

Re: Tesla Enters “Whistleblower Hell”

#40

Post by [deleted] »

lazyjones wrote: post #16
vikramkr wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they really haven't. The best way to deal with shorts is to have a good quarter and crush them all. Or wait for a short squeeze. Lots of companies have misinformation spread by shorts all the time, but very few companies engage and attack shorts.

I wish a single day would pass with me not having to read advice from random people how to better run Tesla (and probably SpaceX too) than Elon does. It gets old quickly...

[deleted]
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