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Tesla Enters “Whistleblower Hell”

thedrive.com

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Re: Tesla Enters “Whistleblower Hell”

#111

Post by AndrewBissell »

datathe1st wrote: post #106
tenpies wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> adversaries They are literally paying you , the Tesla long/holder, for the privilege of borrowing your shares or buying options that you are selling. If you own shares and believe in the company, you should be absolutely in love with short sellers because their activities net you money. Nothing a short seller can do will destroying a financially secure, sound company. Nothing . Meanwhile you get to collect interest…

Tesla will likely need to raise around $5-10B to complete all of the capital investments they need to perform over the next few years. If short sellers use negative news to bring the stock price down it raises the dilutive cost to Tesla of raising more capital. Secondly there are people who are incredibly intelligent but just too busy living their life to do in depth research about every article they read online, esp…

What "fake news" are you talking about, exactly? If you go digging through Tesla short Twitter you can find all kinds of apocalyptic musings, but that's not what's being printed at TheDrive or CNBC or Bloomberg. Musk himself told Axios that Tesla was "single digit weeks from dying" in the summer of 2018.

Wall Street has had well founded concerns about Tesla's liquidity and viability (to say nothing of corporate governance and internal controls) at numerous points in its history. Is the financial press supposed to just not report those concerns out of fear it might discourage someone from buying the cars?

To say nothing of the fact that, on balance, Tesla and Elon Musk have actually been the beneficiaries of an enormous amount of complacent and at times even fawning press coverage.

Re: Tesla Enters “Whistleblower Hell”

#112

Post by sfifs »

Phenomenit wrote: post #102
ghaff wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Essentially every stock sale (barring a need for immediate cash for another purpose) is a bet that stock isn’t going to perform as well as alternative investments over time. So, yes, pretty much anyone who trades in stock is betting on companies to, if not fail, underperform the market over time.

that's not the same thing, betting one thing will perform better relative another is not the same as profiting from the failures of a single company. But it doesn't matter what I write if ones only motivation is profit.

People who are short selling are expressing the thesis that the probablity adjusted return from a bet on drop in stock price of one company is worth more than investing in alternatives like an index fund etc. It's exactly equivalent in a market set-up and is balanced by someone else taking the other side of the deal.

Re: Tesla Enters “Whistleblower Hell”

#113

Post by unityByFreedom »

kreetx wrote: post #110
unityByFreedom wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elon gets himself into it. He wants to be the center of attention (Thailand, pedo, 420). Creating a profitable business comes second to his need to be seen as a tech luminary.

I seriously doubt this. Writing a tweet doesn't take much time, and it is probably fun to him to irritate the opposing forces. For profits, I think it's pretty obvious that both Tesla and SpaceX will start making a profit quite soon, and will probably make a lot of it in the long term. (Maybe they are making a profit even now? Sorry, don't know, I'm just a random developer...)

> (Maybe they are making a profit even now? Sorry, don't know, I'm just a random developer...)

SpaceX is private, so its books are closed and there is no publicly reviewable valuation.

Tesla is public and has had < 5 profitable quarters in its existence. None of Elon's existing companies have been able to turn a profit. Paypal does not count as "his" since he joined there on an acquisition and he was only CEO there for a few months before getting the boot.

Re: Tesla Enters “Whistleblower Hell”

#114

Post by unityByFreedom »

pmorais wrote: post #93

Disappointing that the majority of the comments here are conspiracy theories about nefarious short-sellers somehow influencing coverage (including this article) and not a single person is discussing the seriously damning allegations of 1) millions of dollars of embezzlement 2) connections to organized crime and Mexican drug cartels 3) systematic firing of those who report impropriety to upper management and 4) using…

I feel the same way. If I could find another tech forum where I could find topics like this and discuss them without hearing from anti-media conspiracy theorists I would join it in a heartbeat.

Even just a view of HN comments without having to weed out the threads complaining about fake news would be great. I bet it's not so hard to train a classifier to identify comments that amount to "This article is paid for by short sellers". They all make the same point and never address the issues in the article.

Re: Tesla Enters “Whistleblower Hell”

#115

Post by icebraining »

syshum wrote: post #97
finnthehuman wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dude. You gotta let it go. These are pretty unsurprising allegations for a company like Tesla. And short sellers are not the boogieman, they're just an indication that the value of Tesla is highly uncertain.

Short Sellers are a massive plague on the market, short selling should be banned in general

That's not a very libertarian position to take.

Re: Tesla Enters “Whistleblower Hell”

#116

Post by kreetx »

unityByFreedom wrote: post #113
kreetx wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I seriously doubt this. Writing a tweet doesn't take much time, and it is probably fun to him to irritate the opposing forces. For profits, I think it's pretty obvious that both Tesla and SpaceX will start making a profit quite soon, and will probably make a lot of it in the long term. (Maybe they are making a profit even now? Sorry, don't know, I'm just a random developer...)

> (Maybe they are making a profit even now? Sorry, don't know, I'm just a random developer...) SpaceX is private, so its books are closed and there is no publicly reviewable valuation. Tesla is public and has had < 5 profitable quarters in its existence. None of Elon's existing companies have been able to turn a profit. Paypal does not count as "his" since he joined there on an acquisition and he was only CEO there f…

You can't be serious? It's not like Tesla is a bakery where on the 6th month the bread sales pay off the one-time asset purchases (e.g oven and other equipment) and then it's all profit down the line. It takes time, especially on the scale Elon appears to be doing it.

Re: Tesla Enters “Whistleblower Hell”

#117

Post by xiphias2 »

kreetx wrote: post #116
unityByFreedom wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (Maybe they are making a profit even now? Sorry, don't know, I'm just a random developer...) SpaceX is private, so its books are closed and there is no publicly reviewable valuation. Tesla is public and has had < 5 profitable quarters in its existence. None of Elon's existing companies have been able to turn a profit. Paypal does not count as "his" since he joined there on an acquisition and he was only CEO there f…

You can't be serious? It's not like Tesla is a bakery where on the 6th month the bread sales pay off the one-time asset purchases (e.g oven and other equipment) and then it's all profit down the line. It takes time, especially on the scale Elon appears to be doing it.

It doesn’t take time to get profitable, all it would take is to stop putting billions of dollars into building new factories. The problem is that stopping growth would never bring humanity closer to sustainable transport (nor would it make sensible investors happy)

Re: Tesla Enters “Whistleblower Hell”

#118

Post by xiphias2 »

AndrewBissell wrote: post #107
kreetx wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elon gets a lot of hate unfortunately due to his position in the industry, and also I guess the age we're in. See this tweet from Paul Graham for example https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1122987659079618563 People notice the hate, and although there most probably are issues in the factories, then the reporting of them is way bent to the negative.

Actually the criticism that Musk gets is a result of things like: - Calling someone's boss and threatening a lawsuit to make him take down critical writings on Twitter and Seeking Alpha ( https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2018/07/27/1532692760000/Je-suis... ) - Threatening to "nuke" a departing employee who had returned to Tesla HQ to collect some personal belongings ( https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-05/tes…

This is all true. But how does it compare to companies building machines that are emitting toxic gas to billions of people and destroying the Earth’s climate?

There’s a good reason why mainstream media doesn’t talk about it as seriously as it should be doing.

Re: Tesla Enters “Whistleblower Hell”

#119

Post by sjwright »

MegaButts wrote: post #89
sjwright wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AP never override's the driver's steering wheel input and it never stops the driver from pushing the brake pedal. AP never takes control away.

While I am 99.9% certain you are correct, there is a chance it malfunctioned. What you are saying is exactly what people were saying when people first started claiming they couldn't stop their Toyotas from accelerating years ago, and then it turned out there was some merit to their claims.

Sure—and when there's evidence of that, we can discuss it. Meanwhile, Occam's Razor says a guy behind the wheel of one of the fastest accelerating cars on the road was driving dangerously.

Re: Tesla Enters “Whistleblower Hell”

#120

Post by rcMgD2BwE72F »

pmorais wrote: post #93

Disappointing that the majority of the comments here are conspiracy theories about nefarious short-sellers somehow influencing coverage (including this article) and not a single person is discussing the seriously damning allegations of 1) millions of dollars of embezzlement 2) connections to organized crime and Mexican drug cartels 3) systematic firing of those who report impropriety to upper management and 4) using…

>discussing the seriously damning allegations

Oh please, provide some reliable sources.

So far, all the allegations -- including the ones pushed by the NYT about the company hiding unsold Model 3 inventory in the desert to cover lack of demand -- proved to be nothing.

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