It would be interesting to know if this employee was also shorting Tesla stock at the same time he was leaking these allegations.
I'm skeptical that some individual blue-collar worker would risk his financial well-being and possibly freedom to make a few thousand dollars from possibly causing financial harm to Tesla and causing the stock to drop some. Seems like a stretch to me. If the suit is as alleged (passing false information to journalists) he's an attention seeking low-life.
What is with the obsession with "shorts"? I've never seen so much over-reaction to short selling in my life.
Yet, their stock is valued like one of those startups.
Can you expand on that? In theory, TSLA could become the next Toyota or GM. I guess that technically fits under 'somewhat'.
GM currently makes more cars in a week, then TSLA does in a year. And it does so on positive margins.
It's certainly possible for TSLA to get to that point, but it is anything but a sure thing. Why anyone would be surprised that it is one of the most shorted stocks in the world is beyond me. If they fail to grow to GM's size, the shorts will be justified.
To put it in tech terms, it's valuing Mozilla > Apple, because Mozilla sold a million Firefox OS phones. Except that in this imaginary world, Mozilla doesn't even ship a web browser, and keeps having to ask its landlord for an extension on the rent payment due date. Obviously, Firefox OS will sweep the world by storm! Who doesn't like freedom? Surely, the users will switch en masse, and leave the old dinosaurs like Apple and Google broke.
There's so many factors in play with the stock. Personally though, I think a lot the short sentiment is conservative ideological blindness of the anti-Obama, anti-environmentalism variety. Tesla has always been highly shorted, even when its market cap was smaller.
But, to be fair, the enterprise value of GM (debt + stock) is over twice the enterprise value of Tesla.
Market Cap Revenue Price/Sales
Toyota $201B $266B 0.76
VLKAY 91B 269B 0.34
Tesla 61B 12B 4.93
GM 60B 144B 0.41
Honda 56B 139B 0.40
Ford 47B 160B 0.30
Which do I want more:
The sleek, sexy, self-driving electric sports car
An ugly, unappealing shaped car that people make fun of.
Hmmmmm...
2018 Audi R8 Base Price: $138,700
2018 Tesla Model 3LR Base Price: $49,000
The Audi and Lambo aren't in as high of demand as say, a Ferrari 488 (or whatever the latest mid-engined model is, I've lost track), but you can't actually buy a 488 if you don't already have a history of Ferrari ownership. So, while I doubt Audi and Lambo have the same restrictions on who they 'allow' to buy their car, good luck buying one off the lot or in any reasonable timeframe.
(Markets don't work like this.)
It has a fancy cruise control.
Teslas aren't that bad.
Are you seroius? Someone says the market cap of Tesla is "somewhat" bounded, and you ask how? Is it totally unbounded? Is what they are doing unprecedented beyond comparison?
Do you think the market cap of Tesla is infinity? It's already multiples of companies that produce a magnitude more cars and infinite more profit. Not good enough for you? What is it that you think Tesla does so well that justifies an unlimited market cap?
This is insane. Wish HackerNews existed during the DotCom bubble. It was bad enough being accused of sexism during the Theranos bubble.
Their solar business is a rock around their necks, that is hemorrhaging money, and laying off employees.
Their charger network's nice, but in a post oil world, every gas station will have chargers. And for some reason, Ford doesn't feel the need to own Exxon-Mobil - probably because energy is an interchangeable commodity... And they are not in the commodity business. They are in the business of building cars.
Why hasn't GM bought an oil company, and a couple thousand gas stations? Apparently, this vertical integration would have made them 10 times more valuable.
Maybe it's because I can get the exact same gas from the Shell across the street.
Also, half of this vertical integration only 'works' (If you squint a lot) due to subsidies/loopholes in how people are billed/credited for home solar installations. When those installations become widespread, these subsidies will go away, and we'll be back to buying power wholesale, from utilities. There is no universe in which putting solar panels on your roof will be cheaper, or more efficient, then buying power from a solar utility.
The reason for the Gigafactory is to compress supply chains, but more importantly because there isn't enough global demand/supply for batteries to support the volumes Tesla wants. Without building their own factory, the global supply would be a constraining factor for Tesla's plans. The Gigafactory is a long-term bet that they will need that much supply in the future. This is not a problem that other carmakers have where they would want to "vertically integrate" oil refineries and gas stations, because availability of gasoline is not a problem.
It is mitigation for a early-adopter business risk that their competitors don't have.
In any sane pricing of their stock, that risk would have lowered its value, and mitigating it would have brought it up to that of an auto manufacturer with similar volumes and margins and growth potential.
For some reason, though, people think that mitigating a risk that their competitors don't have warrants a premium.
In 2008, any 'we will change the world because everything social' startup.
in 2016, any 'we will change the world because everything crypto' startup.
All you need is a slide deck about how the <Whatever> market has been growing X% YoY and is worth $XYZ billion dollars, and how your <Website/App/Coin> will change everything. Hell, these days, you don't even need a slide deck, just a whitepaper.
As long as you don't actually have any revenue, you can keep people hopeful. Maybe you will grow into Amazon. Most of the time, you will grow into pets.com.
Why? Because it's an off the charts volatile basket case.
You can't talk about shorts without talking about hedging, both stocks and (convertible) bonds. This is a complicated financial play. Unfortunately, as happens, retail chumps will get roasted either way.
Few thousand? With insider information, you can use the power of leverage to turn a few thousand into millions within seconds.
A leveraged account + options fun and you could go from thousandaire to a millionaire with a few key strokes.
> What is with the obsession with "shorts"? I've never seen so much over-reaction to short selling in my life.
Gambling addicts love the excitement.
I have a question for you.
But first there is so much attention lately on Tesla shorters because they bet 10 billion on Tesla stock going down, and instead it went up, and they are about to all get wiped out.
And because inspite of the fact that Tesla is overcoming its production problems, and SpaceX is going great, the media has been flooded with stories lately about how Musk is a fraud, he is losing his mind, and Tesla is about to go bankrupt, and so many people reasonably believe the shorters are trying to save themselves from disaster by attacking Musk.
Now here is the question. Do you believe the Tesla shorters were smart when they made a prediction Tesla stock was going to go down?
It is possible though that he was wired a certain amount of money from a off shore account tied to a fund, practically untraceable, or paid in crypto.
Part of that payment though probably includes something like, if caught, you have to give a made up reason for doing it, or otherwise your family won't get the money... or worse things may happen to your family.
This kind of stuff is real and does happen. With the kind of money at play here, people will do anything. It's the old mafia style in the modern era.