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Elon’s Out

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Re: Elon’s Out

#611

Post by MichaelMoser123 »

petilon wrote: post #71

This article says Musk agreed to buy Twitter mostly as a joke. I think there's a far better explanation. This wasn't a joke for Musk because after agreeing to buy Twitter he proceeded to sell billions of dollars' worth of TSLA stock, supposedly to finance the purchase. Even for the richest man in the world that's not a joke. I think a better explanation is that Musk offered to buy Twitter as a cover for selling billi…

Are you sure that TSLA is overvalued? Right now they are performing pretty well, for their niche.

I mean it will be overvalued if Toyota gets its act together - if the competition can produce reliable electric cars for the mass market. I suspect that this is not quite happening due to some real technical problems. A mass market electric car would need to handle some real problems with battery depreciation/range loss. I am not sure if that is happening, right now.

I found quite a range of opinions on battery depreciation, not quite sure who is right (never owned one):

https://www.carwow.co.uk/blog/do-electric-cars-depreciate#gr...

https://www.cars.com/articles/your-guide-to-ev-batteries-pre...

https://www.motorbiscuit.com/how-long-will-an-ev-battery-las...

Re: Elon’s Out

#612

Post by erk__ »

Lazare wrote: post #602
vehementi wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it depends on what is in the firehose. What twitter really knows that you can't just see, is how (with what client) users are logging in and whether their ad tracker URLs are being triggered (i.e. the user really did result in an ad impression). If Musk can determine that directly or indirectly from the firehose then he could say "here's how I calculated it and it's 9%" or something, I guess.

Using entirely made up nunbers, I think the situation is something like: * Firehose shows 800m accounts were active yesterday * Using data from the firehose (user agents, IP addresses, behaviour analysis, etc.) you can flag 500m of those accounts as fake, spam, bots, etc., leaving 300m * Twitter then uses their experience, intuition, business judgement, etc., to apply an additional adjustment to those numbers, reduce…

The big issue with this is as far as I am aware the fire hose will only give information about active users, which likely leaves a big number of passive users out of the calculations

Re: Elon’s Out

#613

Post by colechristensen »

jaycroft wrote: post #532
colechristensen wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The one used by most is DTCC, it’s basically owned by the banks who use it, not something that could be bought. The legal entity which maintains the list of teslas owners is ultimately tesla, but that duty will be likely given to dtcc. A stock is ultimately just an entry on a list maintained by the company, most offload the managing of the list to DTCC and usually the pointer isn’t to you but to your broker dealer. T…

A little more nuanced take: the transfer agent maintains a list of shareholders at the company's behest, the DTCC is one step further down the chain, operating as a clearinghouse between brokers and banks. The list of shareholders is managed by the company or it's bookkeeper, the "transfer agent". Insiders and people who own paper certificates are on the list kept by the transfer agent, directly owning their shares o…

Yeah for every explanation there’s another more complicated one, it’s a pretty crazy mess. A long chain of abstractions and not every one uses the same stack.

Re: Elon’s Out

#614

Post by HWR_14 »

serf wrote: post #368
HWR_14 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> still has his [security clearance] because of "reasons". Does he? I don't remember any resolution to that, but I thought they "temporarily" suspended it pending an investigation and then never completed the investigation.

> ...I thought they "temporarily" suspended it pending an investigation and then never completed the investigation. that's the theme of this entire thread : rich person has a slap on the wrist announced publicly but then the punishment is never successfully fulfilled. MS antitrust style.

I'm saying the opposite. I thought they suspended his clearance pending an investigation and then the investigation never ended. Just like if you're in jail pending your trial and the trial date keeps getting pushed back. Sure, you haven't been found guilty, but you're stuck in jail so does that matter?

I might be wrong that they suspended his clearance or that the investigation wasn't done, but that would be a different point tag. What you're making.

Re: Elon’s Out

#615

Post by lovich »

extheat wrote: post #569

So much noise here and ill-informed comments fail to give a broader understanding of what's going on. Elon bought up Twitter shares early in the year for a reason, because he wanted more control over Twitter. He bought up so much Twitter shares that when it was announced via the SEC, Twitter offered a board seat under the clause that he wouldn't acquire too much % control over the company. He obliged, but then left w…

I’m sorry, I need to ask a clarifying question here. Is it ok for us to seek escape hatches when we sign binding agreements with others?

This is very important for me as I need to find out if I can just walk away from all the student loans, car notes, and mortgages I may have entered into, as it’s no longer convenient for me, and I would really appreciate if I could make that my counter party’s problem

Re: Elon’s Out

#616

Post by mathgenius »

I love how Matt Levine is alternately hilarious, and then dry as dust. It's like he wants everyone to suffer what lawyers go through on a daily basis, so he lures you in with some light hearted funny, and then before you know it, you're in the middle of reading some long sentence in a contract that's so convoluted you just want to pull your eyes out. Ha, good one Matt!

Re: Elon’s Out

#617

Post by CSMastermind »

remarkEon wrote: post #605
unforeseen9991 wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Specifically, with a straddle or strangle strategy

Can you explain this?

Without knowing how much background you have a simple summary would be:

A Straddle is a strategy that allows you to bet that a stock's price will change by x% by a certain date. To make money on a straddle you want the stock to go up or down by more than that percentage, the more it changes the better.

So if you believe that the matter will be resolved one way or the other by whatever date then you'd want to buy a Straddle on that date. Regardless of what happens if there is resolution by that date you'll make money.

A Strangle is the same thing but allows you to bet directionally which way the stock will move. So if you're confident the matter will be resolved by a certain date then you can buy a strangle for that date and weight it depending on the outcome you think is most likely (say if you're 60% confident the court will for Elon to pay the agreed upon price you can weight the strangle 60% towards the upside). Like the straddle as long as there is resolution you'll get paid regardless, but here you get a bigger payout if you guess the direction correctly.

Both of these can be inverted with short straddles and short strangles.

This is what you would want to purchase in the case you're talking about. If you're confident that the Twitter matter won't be resolved for a month then you can purchase a short straddle for a month from now at whatever range you feel comfortable better the twitter stock will stay between.

A short strangle would allow you to do the same but with the boundaries weighted one way or another. So instead of just saying "it won't move more than x% either direction". It allows you to say, "a month from now it will be between $x and $y" where x and y can have a different distance from the current price.

Re: Elon’s Out

#618

Post by Lazare »

erk__ wrote: post #612
Lazare wrote: post #602

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using entirely made up nunbers, I think the situation is something like: * Firehose shows 800m accounts were active yesterday * Using data from the firehose (user agents, IP addresses, behaviour analysis, etc.) you can flag 500m of those accounts as fake, spam, bots, etc., leaving 300m * Twitter then uses their experience, intuition, business judgement, etc., to apply an additional adjustment to those numbers, reduce…

The big issue with this is as far as I am aware the fire hose will only give information about active users, which likely leaves a big number of passive users out of the calculations

Ah yes, I should have clarified I was assuming that the firehose even has the needed data; I don't think it's clear that it does.

Re: Elon’s Out

#619

Post by tsimionescu »

MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #611
petilon wrote: post #71

This article says Musk agreed to buy Twitter mostly as a joke. I think there's a far better explanation. This wasn't a joke for Musk because after agreeing to buy Twitter he proceeded to sell billions of dollars' worth of TSLA stock, supposedly to finance the purchase. Even for the richest man in the world that's not a joke. I think a better explanation is that Musk offered to buy Twitter as a cover for selling billi…

Are you sure that TSLA is overvalued? Right now they are performing pretty well, for their niche. I mean it will be overvalued if Toyota gets its act together - if the competition can produce reliable electric cars for the mass market. I suspect that this is not quite happening due to some real technical problems. A mass market electric car would need to handle some real problems with battery depreciation/range loss.…

It would be perhaps plausible for Tesla to be worth more than any other single car company.

But it is patently absurd for them to be higher than all other car companies combined. By any possible measure, they are far far smaller, and have far smaller prospects for growth, than the rest of the card industry put together.

The only place where Tesla has a lead is in sales of BEVs, where indeed they are selling more than the rest of the industry combined, except for some Chinese companies. However, BEVs are still a tiny part of the car market, and are likely to remain so for the next ten years at least.

Re: Elon’s Out

#620

Post by thesumofall »

MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #611
petilon wrote: post #71

This article says Musk agreed to buy Twitter mostly as a joke. I think there's a far better explanation. This wasn't a joke for Musk because after agreeing to buy Twitter he proceeded to sell billions of dollars' worth of TSLA stock, supposedly to finance the purchase. Even for the richest man in the world that's not a joke. I think a better explanation is that Musk offered to buy Twitter as a cover for selling billi…

Are you sure that TSLA is overvalued? Right now they are performing pretty well, for their niche. I mean it will be overvalued if Toyota gets its act together - if the competition can produce reliable electric cars for the mass market. I suspect that this is not quite happening due to some real technical problems. A mass market electric car would need to handle some real problems with battery depreciation/range loss.…

Several of the mentioned brands already have class leading or at least competitive electric cars on the market. The Mercedes EQS might be the best electric car on the market. VW’s MEB platform (ID3, …) clearly has mass market appeal even though it still has some weaknesses. Car companies have copied most of what made Tesla unique (OTA, …) and looking at any dimension, you’ll find a competing car that is better than a Tesla. Tesla still sells a good overall package but the times where they were without competition are clearly over
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