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Comment by sokoloff | Hacker News Reader

TSLA shares fell back to levels not seen since August 17th, 3 entire weeks ago. In the meantime, the company confirmed that it sold $5Billion of additional shares into the market last week. It's not just the S&P news, IMO.

Disclaimer: I am short $TSLA since about 2 weeks ago, because I can't wrap my head around the valuation and near parabolic move short-term. I do think that they are more valuable than some other large automakers, but probably not more than all of them put together. :)

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I almost pulled a short a few weeks ago but couldn't bite the bullet because the market is so damn irrational I wouldn't be surprised if TSLA was meme'd up to a trillion

Tend to stay away from anything that is "my cousins friend at work asked how to buy stocks because he wants to buy x"

>Tend to stay away from anything that is "my cousins friend at work asked how to buy stocks because he wants to buy x"

Oh, so basically the entire stock market during the pandemic?

Had tons of upside on mid-cap techs which tend to go under the radar and the usual apple, amzon, google which for some reason aren't sexy

But, ye - things are crazy at the moment with retail investors

> I do think that they are more valuable than some other large automakers, but probably not more than all of them put together. :)

The Enterprise Value of Tesla ($398B) is only slightly more than the Enterprise Value of Toyota ($337B). VW's is $224B. They have a valuation larger than any other automaker, but not even close to that of all put together.

EV = market cap + debt - free cash

Not including debt in a company's valuation is like saying that the valuation of my house is only $100K if I still have a $400K mortgage on my $500K house.

And Softbank.

That's what I was thinking too. With all the short interest, they're an attractive target to push upwards.

> Disclaimer: I am short $TSLA since about 2 weeks ago

How/where did you get shares to short? At what margin interest rate are you having to pay?

Etrade. It isn't even listed as a "hard to borrow" security (just confirmed that by entering a proto-order and confirming another security that is hard-to-borrow does give a warning at that point in the flow).

Per that, I'd imagine any brokerage would allow you to short them.

he's probably using puts

No. I'm outright shorting the shares. Implied volatility is so high now as to make buying options fairly unattractive for medium and long-term bets.

Say you want to short $10,000 worth of TSLA shares, what kind of margin interest rate are you paying? Is it 8%/yr?

I've held the shares short for short enough time that I haven't gotten tagged with any charges yet to give you actuals. The interest is super-low in any case, so when you're shorting shares that have moved parabolically, you're probably not worried about whether the borrow is 1% or 4% per year (or at least I'm not).

You could be using spreads to hedge out the vega risk, not a huge deal.

I think they're a scientifically-based "story"/"brand" stock based on climate science and reticence to change from other car makers...but, tangentially, if we have a recent influx of wealthy liberal people who believe climate is a huge threat, doesn't it make sense that the objectively best BEV maker is going to get a ton of interest from these investors who haven't lost income and wealth due to COVID and are looking for future-proof assets?

Maybe $TSLA and the market at large wouldn't be doing so well if rich investors could still spend money on vacations, luxury events, concerts, travel, etc?

I feel so conflicted when I read posts that consider Tesla "the best". I did benchmarking on all automotive interiors, exteriors, and infotainment systems, and Tesla was Kia level.

The interiors and exteriors were actually bad. The infotainment system was buggy and cheap, but it was feature rich and fast. If it wasn't Tesla, people would hate it for not having buttons.

The reliability is notoriously bad too.

I don't see any genuine argument for "Best", they might have the hardest, lowest paid workers, or the only car you can natively play a 30 year old video game, but when comparing Tesla to Nissan or GM EVs, I don't see why you'd get a Tesla.

It's more expensive and you get less.

I daily drive (well, pre-COVID anyway) a Nissan LEAF. The interior on the LEAF (a $22K car to me) seemed at least as nice as the 3-5x as expensive Model S that colleagues own.

However, if they were the same price, I'd much, much rather have the Tesla. Nissan's battery tech [and capacity] is way worse than Tesla's.

Signaling effect of owning a Tesla is much higher than a Nissan or GM EV.

>Tesla was Kia level

Kia offer a seven-year warranty, even on the battery. And are joint first in the 2020 JD Powers survey.

Tesla are nowhere near that level. Your benchmarking is flawed.

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