Cars are once again pouring out of Shanghai and the parking lot is starting to fill up again. I'm not sure about Freemont, at this time. Best guess, it is already back in operation. Will confirm as soon as I can find fresh pics and video. A full ship of model 3 left for China a couple of days ago. This is the first ship to sail for Asia from pier 80 for a couple of months. As I understand, the current push is to get cars to Europe. Meanwhile, the stock has gone up $40 today. It appears the spontaneous acceleration suit, brought on by a short seller, no longer has the mind share it did yesterday. I don't know what explains the 60 days of additional lead Tesla is telling customers. Perhaps they are sandbagging or perhaps demand is well up.
Tesla now over $570. I see a wild ride ahead with mostly ups but also a couple of down swings. My plan is to ride it out and see what comes in 5 to 10 years.
I wonder what happened to BYD. BYD sales numbers plummeted in China in December, just as Tesla's China sales started to ramp. BYD CEO Wang Chuanfu is said to be an amazing man, on a similar level to Elon musk. There are countless Tesla bear articles in the last five years claiming BYD will come to America and eat Tesla's lunch. At the moment, it would appear the exact opposite is happening. To be clear, I know very little about BYD, relative to Tesla. Their sales drop at the end of 2019 could easily be unrelated to Tesla entering the market. I find it interesting the lies and smears against Tesla are coming exclusively from Americans. Suffice to say, Il don't judge this group as Patriots. A lot of "Tesla killers" are stacked in a large pile of bodies. Faraday Future, now in the past, can also be added to that list.
Mercedes is said to be experiencing battery cell supply issues. They use LG cells exclusively, as far as I know. This could be real, it could be a production problem they are blaming on batteries, or they could have a demand problem.whatever the case, they trickled out cars in December. I've long thought Mercedes would have a hard time competing in the EV space. Mercedes vehicles, while beautiful and amazing, are disposable. EVs have big upfront costs that are returned over time. That suggests a car needs to last a given amount of time to break even. I suspect MBZ owners would rather run gas but I'm not in the demographic and don't pretend to understand it fully.
Tesla's pull back into the 560s seems to be based on Morgan Stanley's downgrade of the stock based on increased risk. I'm willing to bet, Morgan Stanley followers are dead sure MS is correct this time, since they have been beyond clueless and outright corrupt on every other analysis they have done on Tesla. I speculate MS wants to buy some Tesla and wants to drive the price down to do so.
By the way, MBZ sold only 55 EQC into their home German market in December. They cite battery shortages and problems scaling production based on Tesla's acquisition of grohmann engineering. Both plausible causations but I speculate part of it is a demand problem.
Elon shot an episode of Jay Leno's garage a couple of days ago. The segment included the cybertruck and the semi. Cynics have said this will be release just after the earnings call, to mitigate the damage. Might be the case.
So, I've been looking at pics of the new Tesla tent at Fremont for about a week. The new tent is about half the size of the ga4 tent. I assumed the new tent was not an assembly line due to size. But what if.... What if Tesla has the cast subframe ready for production and the 26 welding steps needed to weld the subframe are no longer required? The new structure might indeed be an entire assembly line. Further, if this is the case, Ga5 could be followed by ga6 to ga9. If this is the case, it would explain several things that don't fit into place. For example, why no new press at Giga Nevada? I've been watching Lathrop and don't see much activity but I don't know that I would. Also, there are quite a few leaks out of giga Shanghai but I haven't seen a casting center. Of course, they are ripping up freshly poured concrete to put in a new building that was obviously not part of the original phase 2 plan. This could be a whole new jar of whoop-ass being opened on the EV industry.
Bank of America is calling for renewed investment in fossil fuels citing problems if investors pull out of the industry. Meanwhile, BaC reduces it's rating on tesla citing new competition coming online. So,they think Tesla isn't going to do well but they fear for the future of fossil fuels? Sounds legit. Lol!
Reducing your rating on tesla DOES NOT MEAN they think they won't do well, it means they think the price will go down (mostly because they reduced the rating). That means cheaper shares for their friends.
I just read an article on teslarati that suggests the price will explode in response to model Y discussion in the earnings call, this afternoon. When an automaker is producing cars at a rate of about 500K units per year and is the second highest valued automaker, I think it's fair to say a lot of optimism is baked into the market cap. I will not be buying calls today. If I was forced to trade this, I would buy puts but I will not be doing that. Personally, I think there are some pretty easy Tesla trades but this particular EC is not an easy trading event. I'd love to read the perspectives of some Tesla traders who disagree. I'm not a trader so I encourage anyone reading this to disregard my perspective, with regards to trading. Upside EC items: - production is probably now at a momentary rate at about 500K units per year - next generation pouch/prismatic batteries are being tested in the field (not sure if it will be mentioned) - Tesla semi manufacturing must surely be starting to come together for summer production start (not sure if it will be mentioned) - frame casting seems to be at or near production ready (I think Elon will mention this) - the new general assembly line at Freemont will be mentioned (I suspect it will be model Y only) Downsides: - I doubt the financials will be particularly strong but I am expecting another positive quarter with more earnings than q3 Would like to know (hope is mentioned) - what is the status of Tesla/highbar cell production? - have they started to build out a second GA line at GF3? - when is Y production scheduled to start at GF3? (It looks like ground has just been broken on the frame casting building but reports are that Y production is imminent... Seems contradictory) - it sounds like the next generation of Tesla cells will still contain cobalt but Elon said last year the plan was to eliminate cobalt... What is the current status?
TSLA is far too volatile for my trading style. I'm more of a "play the support" style where there's a defined upside target. Breakout stocks are not in my wheelhouse. If I flipped a coin though, it would probably land on bearish for the earnings call.
Seems to be the general repeatable cycle here. Optimism peaks, earnings good, but some analyst says not good enough, and down it goes, only to pop higher a week later.
Tesla blew away the earnings estimate. At least the grumping that follows will have a new, equally ridiculous, theme.
Thanks. It's now $621. I'm starting to wonder if selling 1/3 of my shares at $464 was such a good idea. We still hold plenty of Tesla but it goes to show that it's tough to beat long hold, most times.
