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Tesla Enters “Whistleblower Hell”

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Re: Tesla Enters “Whistleblower Hell”

#101

Post by unityByFreedom »

Phenomenit wrote: post #96
unityByFreedom wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone motivated to short-sell might be further motivated to state their case publicly. What's wrong with that? Short selling is part of a functioning market. It's not some evil thing. It's one mechanism the financial world uses to gauge company value. I'm shocked every time I read this conspiracy theory on HN. The positions of these traders are public . The only response to short sellers is to focus on your busines…

It just seems odd that a healthy market has actors that profit from the failures of companies. If it's healthy how do I profit from global climate disasters? I'll just keep investing in prison companies for now. /s

> It just seems odd that a healthy market has actors that profit from the failures of companies

Try googling "why do markets allow short selling". First response [1]. tl;dr - short selling helps your retirement account & balances the market when there are bad actors, such as Enron.

> If it's healthy how do I profit from global climate disasters?

You're conflating things. Profit != world health.

Profit is just a human motivational tool, and money is paper trust. I wrote this software that helps your farming equipment run, and I need food. Money smooths these transactions so I don't need to trade goods-for-goods in every scenario.

I don't know how anyone could profit from hurting climate. Ultimately, destroying your environment destroys you. That's like kicking the amniotic sac open. Why do that? To the extent someone is so-motivated, I'd argue they're depressed, not profit-oriented.

> I'll just keep investing in prison companies for now. /s

I don't know whether that's possible for the average person. For a wealthy entity, it's still a risk, because that industry could disappear due to public pressure. Your money may have been better invested elsewhere.

[1] https://www.quora.com/Why-is-short-selling-legal-allowed

Re: Tesla Enters “Whistleblower Hell”

#102

Post by Phenomenit »

ghaff wrote: post #99
Phenomenit wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It just seems odd that a healthy market has actors that profit from the failures of companies. If it's healthy how do I profit from global climate disasters? I'll just keep investing in prison companies for now. /s

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.

Re: Tesla Enters “Whistleblower Hell”

#103

Post by unityByFreedom »

kreetx wrote: post #94
wnorris wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There appears to be an active group working to create these stories in order to create a 'whistleblower hell'. Elon occasionally does not help this, but authorities should look into the allegations that a group is actively manipulating Tesla employees for these types of stories. https://cleantechnica.com/2019/07/21/were-cnbc-sources-tesla...

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.

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.

Re: Tesla Enters “Whistleblower Hell”

#104

Post by unityByFreedom »

wnorris wrote: post #87
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…

There appears to be an active group working to create these stories in order to create a 'whistleblower hell'. Elon occasionally does not help this, but authorities should look into the allegations that a group is actively manipulating Tesla employees for these types of stories. https://cleantechnica.com/2019/07/21/were-cnbc-sources-tesla...

That's not an objective source.

Clean Technica is to Elon Musk as Fox News is to Donald Trump

Re: Tesla Enters “Whistleblower Hell”

#105

Post by fouc »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #86
__blockcipher__ wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tesla is very leveraged right now and apparently it would be an issue if the share price dropped too much In other words, the shorts are totally right to be taking their position? A company that depends on its stock price to stay afloat is not a healthy company. Let’s take AAPL as an example. Their stock could plunge to $1/share and they would be absolutely fine because they have positive free cash flow, and thus d…

> In other words, the shorts are totally right to be taking their position? Many of the shorters just think the company's overvalued. But anyone aiming for that event to trigger is making a bet that enough people will make the same bet, in deliberate disregard of whether the stock's value is appropriate for the actual business. It's kind of like a prisoner's dilemma. Is it 'right' for someone to defect? That motive i…

Yeah, good point, it's less an efficient market move and more of a profit-forcing move.

Re: Tesla Enters “Whistleblower Hell”

#106

Post by datathe1st »

tenpies wrote: post #50
r00fus wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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, especially if it's from a trusted source. These negative articles have actually prevented people from buying the car because they think the company won't be around to service them in a year or two.

Fake news and a barrage of "sponsored" negative headlines can lead to Tesla actually going bankrupt.

Re: Tesla Enters “Whistleblower Hell”

#107

Post by AndrewBissell »

kreetx wrote: post #94
wnorris wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There appears to be an active group working to create these stories in order to create a 'whistleblower hell'. Elon occasionally does not help this, but authorities should look into the allegations that a group is actively manipulating Tesla employees for these types of stories. https://cleantechnica.com/2019/07/21/were-cnbc-sources-tesla...

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/tesla-boa...)

- Trumpian attacks on the press, including by riling up his fans on Twitter (https://twitter.com/lopezlinette/status/1014983757252780033)

- Lying with statistics, e.g. "traffic incidents are xx% less likely with Autopilot engaged" or "Tesla cars are xx% safer than the overall U.S. fleet" without mentioning the huge selection bias at play

- Running factories with tons of environmental, health, labor, and QA-related problems, then attempting to just gaslight his way through the criticism (https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/15/tesla-workers-in-ga4-tent-de...)

- Brazenly lying about his company on Twitter in an attempt to manipulate the stock price (https://www.sec.gov/litigation/complaints/2018/comp-pr2018-2...)

Re: Tesla Enters “Whistleblower Hell”

#108

Post by timavr »

kreetx wrote: post #94
wnorris wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There appears to be an active group working to create these stories in order to create a 'whistleblower hell'. Elon occasionally does not help this, but authorities should look into the allegations that a group is actively manipulating Tesla employees for these types of stories. https://cleantechnica.com/2019/07/21/were-cnbc-sources-tesla...

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.

Did Paul Graham write an algorithm which crawls twitter and counts all this robo haters?

The bigger reason is that Tesla really put themselves out there and now negative stories getting a lot of views.

Re: Tesla Enters “Whistleblower Hell”

#109

Post by sfifs »

syshum wrote: post #98
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…

>>Nothing a short seller can do will destroying a financially secure, sound company. Nothing. That is factually wrong. In today's news cycle, Cancel Culture, and panicky investors there are all kinds of ways a malicious actor can and do manipulate stock prices that have exactly ZERO to do with the companies finances To believe otherwise is utterly naive

> there are all kinds of ways a malicious actor can and do manipulate stock prices that have exactly ZERO to do with the companies finances

Over a time horizon of a year to a few years, short selling cannot artificially depress stock price relative to market. So if you are truly long it should make no difference and you should probably cash in by writing options.

Re: Tesla Enters “Whistleblower Hell”

#110

Post by kreetx »

unityByFreedom wrote: post #103
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.

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...)

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