Comment by brianwawok | Hacker News Reader

Comment by brianwawok | Hacker News Reader

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Here’s the difference I think between the Netflix and Tesla story.

Netflix was in a new market. No one had serious streaming. They had content, but didn’t use the internet to sell it. They borrowed content and did the stream thing. The “moat” was “could NBC etc figure out how to put pictures on the internet”. The answer is apparently yes, and then they yanked their content back. Now Netflix has to reproduce Disney / marvel / all the bug content makers to compete.

Tesla is much more an established market. Yes battery car is new. But ford etc have huge huge legacy commitments. A culture of outsourcing. Software as a frill not a core feature. A legacy method of distribution (dealers). Ford can’t just drop their dealers network.ford can’t just fire their pension obligations. They are very much “stuck” in their direction.

If Tesla is topped, I very much expect it to come form a rival startup and not legacy auto. 12 years in and I see no signs the legacy automakers are doing the right things. Still no OTA updates with regular frequency. You still have to argue with dealer over price and deal with scummery.

Tesla would crush it if they had an offering outside the luxury market segment. They have 2.5% of US sales and operate completely in the luxury segment which is 5% of US sales altogether. Model 3 starts at $46k, a BMW 3 series is cheaper.

If they built a lower range, no frills, compact commuter car with lower margins (their margins are insane - like 20%+) and higher quantity produced they would end up so far ahead of anyone else because they could be in that market segment now-ish. The traditional car companies are probably 1-3 years away from mass producing EVs, maybe longer. How many households have a primary "family car" and a secondary commuter/small trip car? That 2nd car could easily be an EV with a smaller range (200mi). Its a much larger market segment than luxury.

If Tesla just sticks to luxury segment, their story could be similar to Netflix or maybe close to the betamax vs VHS story (betamax was better technically but lost).

Right. And they want to but need more batteries. If they can ramp that up, they can totally sell a stripped down model3 for a good price and get a huge % of the market.

I think Tesla is extremely overvalued, very curious to see how it plays out

If you think it's overvalued then you should be short the stock. We've seen how that played out for other shorts.

And the market will stay irrational longer that somebody can stay solvent...

Another way to say that you don't want to put your money where your mouth is.

But I do. I put my money somewhere else when I see a Tulip run.

Another way of saying that they have identified better investment opportunities.

It is quite childish to insist that someone who questions the value of Tesla must put their money on it. It’s akin to lame-ass playground bullying: “You don’t like that, so I dare you to eat it!”

No, not really. I'm just explaining how a real trading desk works. If you express an opinion without putting a trade on, that opinion is worthless.

I am putting a trade on. The stock is overvalued but I am not shorting because Tesla is a cult. I put a trade instead on another stock.

This isn't a trading desk, this is an internet forum where opinions are worth points, and the points don't matter.

Setting up an account with a broker to do options trading requires a lot more capital or margin and requires a lot of research to understand puts/calls, hedges, etc. Buying stocks of other companies you believe will grow is a perfectly fine approach.

One can have an opinion about a company and not do anything with the stock. One can also have opinions about laws, political candidates and ice cream flavors and not do anything about them as well (at least in the US, other countries may silence political opinions).

No it doesn't, you just need a decent credit score and enough bravery/foolishness to click the "I know what I'm doing" box. Usually they'll have a higher level for margin trading and certain strategies that requires something extra but just writing secured contracts and buying options requires almost nothing.

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