Turns out that this video is a “produced” (mostly fake) video to create content for his sponsors/advertisers! There are so many things that have been discovered:
He does NOT use the FSD feature. It is clear in the video that he is using Tesla’s version of cruise control and lane keeping, not the FSD feature, they are two entirely different things, and use entirely different software.
He’s using their version of cruise control, BUT even so, it is turned off shortly before hitting the fake wall!
The guy with him in the car is wearing a Luminar T-shirt. That’s one of his sponsors, and one possible beneficiary if he can “prove” that vision-only doesn’t work.
The video has been edited. The Youtube video is clearly different than the raw video he posted on twitter while defending his actions.
He even faked the camera used to video it! He used an iPhone Pro model, but photoshopped in a Google Pixel logo [incorrectly] onto the back of the phone. That’s probably because Google Pixel is also a sponsor of his content.
At this point, most investors expect March deliveries to fall below expectations.
I love these kinds of statements, since they are so amusingly internally false. Obviously, if most investors expect March deliveries to be X, then X can’t be below expectations - because that’s what most investors expect.
I know, I know…it’s not that they expect deliveries will fall below “expectations,” but that they will be lower than the formal targets that many WS firms have yet to adjust. But I still find it amusing when people write things like this.
But it probably is relevant to your thread title question that there are certainly two non-trivial news announcements before May 16 - deliveries at the very beginning of April, and earnings a few weeks later. It’s also entirely possible that Tesla makes some sort of announcement about their nascent Austin taxi business before May 16th. And Tesla also claimed at the beginning of the year that they would move cheaper “models” into production in H1 2025, so you might get an announcement on that before May 16th as well.
What he is talking about is, analysts have delivery expectations published and investors are expecting those numbers to be below. If you read the full tweet, it would be plainly obvious. I know generally most individual investors are very skeptical of analysts, and hedge fund guys. What I have learned over time is they generally they get these kind of things correctly or close enough. Where hedge fund guys go wrong is in the bets they make, i.e., there expectation of earnings generally falls within the margin of 1%~3% but they expect that to be bullish or bearish, and make outsized bets.
I’m trying to figure out how it is riskier. If you do a covered call, let’s say on Tesla, you have to buy 100 shares of stock at $240 each, so you have to put $24,000 into Tesla stock. If you sell a put on Tesla, let’s say a 250 strike April put, then you need to keep $5500 in margin available. But even if you keep the full potential price of $25,000 available, how is the risk different by keeping $25k in the stock or keeping $25k in cash (where it can be in T-bills or a money market account earning interest meanwhile). If the stock drops to $200, either way you are out about 50 bucks a share (the loss from 250 to 200, minus the premium received for the put or call).
Basically, why do you think “cash secured” is more risky than “stock secured” when both amounts are roughly equal in $ terms?
Oh, I know - I just find it amusing when they don’t clarify that current expectations are now below previously published expectations, and instead just say that people expect something different than expectations generally.
I’m well aware that these analysts have pretty decent models that draw on fairly good sales data and can get pretty close to targeting their sales once we get towards the end of the quarter.
I get it, Mark. You’ve got to defend your investment in Tesla. But it’s likely that ride is over. There are a couple dozen alternatives to Tesla now, some at lower prices, some with different features or market segments, many with better build quality, all with a dealer network to support the cars. Most importantly, all with top corporate leadership that isn’t dabbling in politics and thereby angering half of their potential customers.
That’s what the Tesla cult does not understand, ptheland. Tesla is not the only game in town any longer. Very nice alternatives exist that are very worthy of purchase. Tesla has an advantage in charging infrastructure , that’s about it. My Acura ZDX has a much better ride quality, better seats, more interior room and a better build quality than any Tesla I have been in.
First mover advantage is over. Tesla needs to build better cars. And no, FSD is not going to save them.
To the original post, 10% chance TSLA goes over $300 by summer.
Margin isn’t available in a retirement account (which is where I personally do most of my options trades because option premiums are taxed as income and not gains).
If I sell a covered call, I still want the stock to appreciate in value (assuming out of the money). If I sell a call where the strike is 20% out of the money, then I don’t mind if it is exercised (usually). If I instead buy a put, as you stated, I have to sit on cash making maybe only 1% for the same duration (~ 3 months).
I agree that it is not necessarily riskier but it does require me to have cash sitting essentially idol for the duration.
But one is not actually out the $50 since one is not required to sell the stock at the end of the call option expiration. One can make money with a decent covered call strategy in a sideways market where as selling uncovered puts requires both cash on the sidelines (earning whatever) and downward markets for it to generate profits.
Selling puts can of course also be more profitable - but then you get what you pay for - literally.
Disagree. It isn’t half their customers. It’s more than half, perhaps a lot more.
But there’s a sharp partisan divide. Fifty-five percent of Republicans say there’s no chance at all they’d consider buying an EV in the next decade, compared to only 14 percent of Democrats and 28 percent of independents who say the same.
Now I’m willing to admit that views change, and that the Right will come around eventually . Then again I am reminded that some are still against integration and gay marriage, so it surely won’t be in time to help Tesla up from the mat of this terrible quarter, even with continuous ads from the White House lawn by the Car-Dealer-In-Chief. Yes, Daddy has now given them permission, but it’s going to take a long time.
Heck, you can barely get them to sit in a Prius, and they’re suddenly going to drop 50-large on an EV? Color me skeptical. And if skeptical is a color, make it a bright, bright skeptical.
If you put away securely the cash that covers the puts then you are right, no difference. But the temptation to use that cash is what creates the risk.
Do you think that brokers know about risk? Why do they rate cash secured puts riskier than covered calls? Yogi Berra to the rescue! “In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not.” Or was that Einstein?
When options expire worthless you get to keep the premium, no differebce.
When calls are assigned they pay you money
When puts are assigned they ask for money. If you don’t have it you gave probems
Be very careful with covered calls. After the last upgrade, my FSD is super good now.
As soon as the first dipping to in the water Cybercab revenue is registered (June), the stock will rocket up. Shorts will have nowhere to hide. I predict licensing agreement with another major automaker will be announced this year. Numbers are scary good. Most people are clueless.
Huh? Tesla is not really the kind of thing I invest in. But I do like their vehicles quite a bit, best ones I’ve ever owned over my 45+ years of driving!
Now back to my comment that you replied to. Are you claiming that everything he put in the video is real? (Keep in mind, it isn’t me who investigated it, it was others who are far more knowledgeable than I am about it.)
When I say “margin”, I don’t mean “margin loan”. It’s a term used by brokerages to indicate how much of your money they “lock up” due to certain leveraged trades. In retirement accounts, they generally lock up the full exercise price of the option, but that cash is still invested and earning interest for you. For example, in one of my retirement accounts, I have some short puts (secured by cash). They are 130 strike price, so for each one of them, $13,000 is locked up (each option contract is 100 shares x $130 exercise price). Fidelity, for example, calls it “Cash reserved for options strategies”. I tend to do most of my option trades in taxable accounts (mostly because 95% of my assets are in taxable accounts). And, yes, gains on all short options that aren’t exercised, are treated as ordinary income. Long options that are held for a year and a day can be treated as long-term capital gains/losses.
I’m guessing this is a typo. When you SELL puts, you want rising stock prices to generate profit (from the puts).
The thing is, I don’t use options solely for profit from the options. I ALWAYS sell options on stocks that I want to buy/sell. That means that I don’t speculate using options. When I sell a put, for example, most recently I sell puts on OXY every month or so, it is for the purpose of increasing my position in the stock at slightly lower prices (effectively strike minus premium received for the put). Sometimes the put expires worthless, and whatever premium was received I consider a kind of “reduction of basis”, and even account for it that way in my tracking spreadsheet (though obviously not for tax reporting). And when I sell calls, I fully intend to sell the stock at that price (strike plus premium received). In fact, some of the shares I sold in December were sold using that method.
Huh, I thought the answer would be obvious! With cash secured puts, they only lock up $5,500 for selling a naked 250 strike put. But for a covered call, they have stock worth $24,000 sitting right there in the account! Obviously having “security” of $24,000 is way less risky than having security of $5,500.
That’s probably good. I’m ambivalent on their cars today, but the stock is not the car. And the stock is far too risky - priced for perfection going forward. That perfection is pretty unlikely to happen.
Absolutely real? Probably not. But the gist of it real? Probably yes. Without LIDAR (or RADAR), there are situations where the Tesla can be fooled. Rain/fog are difficult to handle visually. Their rain simulation was entirely unrealistic. A human driver would probably choose to stop or creep forward in that situation. Fog - I’m not shocked that the visual computing was enough to pick out something in that cloud of smoke. But again, a human driver would likely slow way down before entering that cloud.
So that leaves the painted wall. Would a Tesla really drive though it? I don’t know for sure. Unless they really lied (which I see no evidence for) the automatic emergency braking certainly didn’t intervene. I’m not sure if it was on autopilot or not. But if the emergency braking didn’t kick in, I see no reason that autopilot would pick it up.
But the one thing I do know for sure is that LIDAR isn’t going to be fooled at all by the painting. It’s just going to see an object in the road since it’s completely color blind. And that means it’s going to stop.
In my book, that alone make LIDAR superior to a visual-only system.
Go to Autotrader or carvana and look at the price of used Teslas. A low mileage Model 3 is about 40% of a new one. Roughly similar for a cyber truck. So I am skeptical Tesla can maintain deliveries and/or margins at the same level as last year.
The Austin cybercab launch was previously announced so it should be baked into the stock price already.