351–360 of 387 posts
How is Musk still allowed to be CEO? Serious question. Why don’t large shareholders demand some fresh blood?
Because actual shareholders read the financial statements, and therefore know how impressive Musk's performance has been so far, unlike people that literally haven't read further than the P/E. Of course maybe Q4 and future quarters may change that, but there's no reason yet for shareholders to want another CEO.
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I always used to laugh when people would bring up battery tech and solar when talking about TSLA's absurd valuation, but I think it's starting to become more relevant as it approaches a more realistic market cap. It's still too high though.
I listened into the Twitter Space with Elon and some of his more bullish investors. There were three main pints that had them making Tesla more than a common car company. 1. Solar and Battery Tech 2. Entry into commercial trucking. 3. Bringing on their own Lithium refineries (IIRC the main thing constricting Lithium production isn’t extracting it’s Refining) that being said Elon said they were planning on bringing on…
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There's really not much to drive sales for 2023 either. Was watching a summary of new EVs for the year and I'll give him credit on the "jet powered" roadster as very cool, but all the new exciting EVs for the average consumer are coming from GM, Ford, BMW, Toyota (with a very interesting Hydrogen powered offering which is technology I had no idea was even this developed) and a few other smaller startups. I think Ford…
Toyota is taking on a lot of risk with their bet on Hydrogen, especially because so far the Mirai has taken off about as well as a lead balloon.
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How does Musk posting that sort of stuff, which is difficult to get across in text at the best of times, benefit anyone, including Musk? It's a pattern of pointless provocative nonsense by Musk, befitting a teenager, not the CEO of multiple multi-billion dollar companies. I guess he's free to do what he wants, but people are free to read whatever they want into it as well. Dismissing it as humour is not a given.
Provocative nonsense has worked for Musk up till now. He got billions of dollars worth of free media coverage from his antics. And after all of it, here we are still talking about Elon, Tesla, and Twitter.
If he got paid for us talking about him, that'd be great. But he doesn't, not even on Twitter where advertising revenues were better before all the fuss. (There are people who get paid mostly from being famous, it's just they tend to operate well below "world's richest man" level, sell content or consumer goods considerably more mass market than the Model 3 and tend not see their net worth crash at the time their celebrity status goes mainstream)
Cause and effect is actually the reverse: the media started thinking his antics were interesting enough to cover because he'd already been very effective at promising spaceships and cars and organising people to deliver enough of his promises to earn him the status of maverick genius (and a lot of money). Nobody cares about your 420 jokes if you don't own a rocket company. He did the hype-man who delivers stuff well enough to more-or-less get away with dumb stuff that didn't exactly win the sort of headlines that sold Teslas (there is such thing as good free publicity; but they involve hyping his achievements and multiplanetary plans, not defending himself from libel actions). Then at some point he probably started reading his fans' takes on how his real genius was getting attention and so losing a board seat over a joke was actually 5D chess rather than a mistake to learn from, and now he's busy spending his fortune on being talked about...
(I guess you could still chalk that up as a win if you figure he always cared more about being noticed every day than stuff like going to Mars, but I don't think that's the case)
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Yeah, if it was 2x or 3x Ford, I'd consider it a stronger buy. I think the real test will not be its P/E, but how the other big car companies debut their EV and driver-assist (or driverless) tech. It just feels like Tesla is still the market leader in that tech. If someone else beats them at that game, it would not be good for their stock price. But, conversely, if they stay on top, maybe that high valuation will sti…
The self driving stuff is (in my view) all a red herring. There is no mass market call for it, it's not going to drive further growth. The only thing it may do is help maintain their position in the higher end of the market. They should have brought out another lower cost, smaller car by now. Why haven't they built a commercial van? Why is there no family MPV? The investment in FSD is ultimately a distraction that wa…
Without any working product available on the market, I don't think potential customers know what they're missing. Having a truly working self-driving feature would be like having a 24 hour private chauffeur. It would dramatically change where people live, where they work, and how they take vacation. I'd probably by weekend home 10 hours away if I could fall asleep in the car on Friday and wake up there Saturday morning.
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If you're currently making $200 a share, why would you risk your $200 profits to chase another $30 to $40 bucks/share? I say, just take your win and go home. Close out your short and buy yourself a nice dinner. You deserve it. EDIT: Maybe hold onto a few shorts for fun. But if you're already winning this hard, you really should just take profits. Its not like you can get much more profits out of this.
P/E is still 33 as we head into a recession, and Musk continues to anger the traditional customer base that cares about environmental issues. He might make up with Maga republicans, but many of them want a Ford Pickup. We'll see what the 4th Quarter holds but it's still possible that EPS will grow and the price will still tank as it becomes clear that the market becomes saturated with Elon's big ego. Even $68 is woul…
But still, there's a big issue of risk vs reward at play here. A short-seller would have made a significant amount of money if they've been short since $300 (or higher).
There's always a time to "Collect your chips off the table". It always feels too early when you do so. But you gotta run the calculation: is staying in and possibly losing everything worth the risk? If so, how much reward do you think you're gonna make?
By staying short, the full $190 / share gains from this trade remains at risk. And for what? The chance that it maybe turns into $230 / share gains? There's definitely a risk/reward calculation at play here. If you're really certain about that $70 price point coming up, then yeah, hold onto the shorts a bit longer. But anyone who has watched a 70% collapse of a stock that they sold short really should be considering just taking profits. How much further do you think it really can fall?
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If you're certain to hold onto those shorts... maybe buy a couple of call options to lock in your wins, at the cost of theta-decay. There's other ways to hedge and "lock in" some of the winnings.
But no trader should be the idiot who "bets it all on black" over-and-over-and-over again. You gotta take your chips off the table at some point, and today is a good day as any other day.
How is Musk still allowed to be CEO? Serious question. Why don’t large shareholders demand some fresh blood?
Because actual shareholders read the financial statements, and therefore know how impressive Musk's performance has been so far, unlike people that literally haven't read further than the P/E. Of course maybe Q4 and future quarters may change that, but there's no reason yet for shareholders to want another CEO.
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> but his pro-Putin / anti-American policy towards Ukraine What an absurd characterization. Don’t you have something better to do than wake up and post lies on the internet? He said they should negotiate an end to the war, that’s not “pro-putin”. It really bothers me when people like yourself post these blatantly false statements, and I can’t say I’m surprised this post is still up/not flagged.
> He said they should negotiate an end to the war, that’s not “pro-putin”. People are trying to end this war and the next one. Anyone who believes Putin will back down after success in Ukraine isn't paying attention. Furthermore, the people who should be particularly quiet about what to do in Ukraine are those who swore that Russia would not invade in the first place, because they don't have a clue what makes Putin t…
You don't understand, this time Russia and Putin will actually do what they agree to in a negotiation. Its not like Russia already agreed to never threaten Ukraines sovereignty already and decided they didn't like that agreement so they threw it out the window /s.
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Not for long at the present rate. Lucky for Elon that he sold a whole bunch last week.
Can he sell all of his stock while being a CEO of Tesla?
90% or so of the voting stock would need to agree on a motion to remove him. That's a very high bar to reach and some activist shareholders have petitioned the board to remove those rules. Musk hasn't had a majority in Tesla for a long time now.
Maybe with his latest antics such a majority could be found and then his goose is cooked, at least, as far as Tesla is concerned. Shareholders are probably afraid that the stock would really crater if that were to happen (which, compared to where it is today would open the company up to - ironically - a hostile takeover).
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Funny enough I think it's actually undervalued now. Tesla has bought up all the mining rights for the minerals required to ramp up battery production and will likely be the only EV manufacturer that's not supply constrained for the next decade. I'm still not bought in yet, probably a lot more room for it to crater.
> EV manufacturer that's not supply constrained for the next decade Ok, since it didn't make the news, I'm completely on the dark here... but are you talking about the supply of lithium ? If so, I have some news to you about one of the most common metals on Earth's surface.
I'm not worried about the abundance of lithium, it is the speed at which we can get it that is the issue. One can still have a shortage even if there is an abundance of potential materials. And starting new mines is a long process. The quickest I have ever seen a decent mine come online from initial approval is 8 years.
Materials we should worry about long term in terms of total volume would be stuff like Cobalt, Nickle and Graphite. But not in the next decade.
A big part of the whole issue of mining is something I always have to bring up to some folks. There are four ways to categorize in which a material is available.
The is the resource, how much we theorize is available. Lithium is a great example, there is loads of the stuff.
There are the reserves, how much we actually know exists. Where it is, what grades etc. This is always lower than the resource.
There is if it is technically extract able. Do we have the technology to get it out? What good is a reserve if it is 200KM under ground? The total of this is always less than the reserves.
And finally, what is economically viable. Say we can still get the materials, are people willing to pay for it? This is my big argument against mining asteroids. This is always less than what is technically extract able.
Once you past through those 4 gates then we can start talking. Don't just talk strategy, talk logistics. It is boring an dirty but it is were the rubber meets the road.
The abundance argument is the same used for silicon and solar panels. Yes it is everywhere but there is a reason we mine quartz rather than just boiling up random patches of dirt to get the stuff.