$TSLA: The Last Horseman of the Apocalypse

This writer is the very best $TSLA trader I’ve run across on Twitter. He goes long and short and always announces his trades. Using options, this guy has won about 80% of this posted trades, and they are very large wins.

https://elmerspud.substack.com/p/the-last-horseman-of-the-ap…

On the bullish hand:

Deliveries in Q4-21 and FY2021 were fantastic, which could certainly beget solid financial results. Much of the volume is in China, which is generally more profitable but also more opaque and more politically complicated (from expatriating funds to what happens if relations deteriorate or if Elon makes them mad and they can kind of do whatever they want to the company).

There are still pumps out there - FSD is forever just over the (camera-only system blinded by the sun) horizon, and with a price hike already teased by Elon, perhaps this is The Year It Finally Happens and the robotaxi network goes online and Tesla makes 10% of world GDP in net income from taxi hails (source: Cathie’s model). There are two new factories coming online in 3 weeks maybe, a while definitely (Texas and Berlin). There is the Cybertruck but I will discuss that in the bearish bullets as I think it may better belong there.

On the bearish paw:

Similar companies have recently walked back estimates. See NFLX and DOCU above, absolutely destroyed by their management being humble (or realistic) enough to walk back the pie-in-the-sky a little bit. Tesla’s current forecast (internal and the street) is ~50% unit growth in perpetuity - and with the two factories coming online, it may not be impossible - but the question becomes, can every car that Tesla makes, the world take? Or, like beautiful Trenton NJ who coined such phrase, will there be disappointment as the world’s appetite for Model 3s and Model Ys is mostly already met by current facilities and there will be no yuge volume boost from new capacity?

Cybertruck - as mentioned, this is a grey area but I’m going to put it in the bearish category due to a bit of tea-leaf reading (though again I admit I’m rusty). They pulled the configuration tool from the website. The years-ago specs promised seem unrealistic in terms of price vs. features and configurations. Elon has promised an update on this conference call. If I had to guess, the promise of the world’s first techno-punk pickup will be walked back - a more boring vehicle (considering the prototype isn’t street legal or practical), a more expensive price tag, etc. Considering Cybertruck (along with FSD) is “the next big thing”, a delay, price increase, spec decrease, normie styling, etc. may be very bearish to the dreamer-”investor”.

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