IdleRich

IdleRich
It seemed the requisite response at that point.
And also, no-one is saying the price is "wrong" (whatever that means), just that it's based on hype. You can still buy it and it go up and you sell it and make a profit. And lots of people have.
 

luka

Well-known member
What does capex mean? What does vests mean? Who cares! Brozoid works for the CIA and so does Musk! Burn them alive! Incinerate!
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
ok i'll try to defend tesla, you're welcome @Linebaugh
not many teslas where you are because they're mostly being sold into markets with high subsidies for electric cars, like california. plenty of them around here.
Actually there are quite a few here (Lisbon) strangely enough - I don't really recognise cars but I've started noticing them since Dad bought one - I know they sell them in El Corte Ingles which is a big (posh I think) shopping centre.
 

Leo

Well-known member
What does capex mean? What does vests mean? Who cares! Brozoid works for the CIA and so does Musk! Burn them alive! Incinerate!

capital expenditure.

yeah, dissensus is less fun when people have factual, reality-based responses. we're here to debate with rumor, speculation, hyperbole, gut feeling, wild guesses, fake news.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
there's a theory of "BMW or Volkswagen or whoever could make an electric car just as good as soon as they really try," and this sounds plausible except for that these companies are already selling electric cars, and they're… usually a lot more expensive than the comparable tesla, or just not as good. This is evidenced by them not selling many of them, even when the manufacturers are producing them at a loss, usually to meet average emissions targets. It turns that there's actually a fairly steep industrial learning curve to making electric cars—on paper they're "simpler," but that in reality just means more specialization can be deployed to improve the final product.
Sure, like I said, I assume they are already building their own. And perhaps they are rubbish. But there's an adage about how it's harder to stay ahead than it is to get ahead... I guess cos you can copy (and reverse engineer) and these companies can throw a lot of money at the issue.
 

luka

Well-known member
Idle rich literally made over a million trading before the age of 30 how much money has Broziod got? Nothing like that I know for a fact.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
I agree that $500Bn reflects some optimistic assumptions—continued flawless execution by Tesla and no competitors really taking them on earnestly.
you - or investors - are also assuming that Tesla won't unionize eventually. as you probably know Tesla has been cited multiple times for illegally suppressing attempts to unionize. maybe "young engineers are tripping over themselves to work there' but clearly there's a drive from some significant portion of the workforce to unionize.

the rest of it I don't really disagree with. continued Tesla flawlessness and universal competitor ineptness seems quite unlikely given, yunno, the entire history of capitalism, but no one disagrees that the electric car market is almost certainly to greatly increase. as @IdleRich + I both said, the issue isn't Tesla optimism, it's a ridiculous market cap far beyond what that optimism warrants.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
to me, it's again, just a supercharged example of that idea that the market has essentially nothing to do with reality outside the market, combined with that particular brand of messianic Musk/Tesla hype, but I admit there's not really a way to definitively prove that one way or the other

all you can do is look at something and think "that doesn't make sense and no one else thinks it makes sense, and otoh there's a long history of crazy market things combined with structural factors disconnecting real world performance from stock values, so maybe it's largely hype"
 

sus

Well-known member
Tesla is literally the most shorted company of all time

people have been losing insane amounts of money shorting it

Yee that was what I was gesturing at.

I don't disagree that the price is driven by "investors' perception of the company's potential"—that's more or less a tautology. What matters is whether you put the emphasis on potential or perception. It's part of certain outlook around here that the speculation has centered on investor irrationality, Musk fanbois, salesmanship-as-con-art, etc. Maybe it's partly the preference for scenius > genius frames that accounts for the skepticism. If you buy Great Man Theory—repurposed as Great Founder Theory, I guess—or least believe that tail human capital is the most valuable resource on the planet—then very different explanations get buoyed.

But you've posted basically where I was headed with this comment, in the time I wrote it—the only way to know whether it's hype/uncoupling or just a terrifically promising industrial talent is to wait, and watch the stock, and watch the company. That's all I meant by the "If you have a hunch, short the market and see" remark.
 
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padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
I also think you and beiser, are, as with algocracy or any number of similar things, ideologically invested in what Musk and Tesla represent

which isn't surprising, it just is what it is
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
all I'm saying is if I was a VC I'd fund the hell out of Napoleon
I wouldn't

without the Revolution he would've been an anonymous French (Corsican) officer with few prospects of serious advancement

and the early years of his career are filled with luck and narrow victories, for example Marengo

and he had comparably talented, less lucky contemporaries like Kleber and Desaix (the guy who was killed saving him at Marengo), among others
 

sus

Well-known member
and he had comparably talented, less lucky contemporaries like Kleber and Desaix (the guy who was killed saving him at Marengo), among others

This is like stocks though—how you can possibly say they're more talented at the relevant skills bundle? We can't even be sure what that relevant skills bundle includes. The proof's in the pudding that the recipe works. Luck complicates all of it, but the fact remains.
 

beiser

Well-known member
Musk is basically a more charismatic Peter Thiel-lite

less prone to actually say out loud things like democracy is incompatible with freedom
I think musk is much less ideologically sophisticated than this implies. That said, ideological sophistication is not a prerequisite for running a car company.
 
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