Elon Musk now bullying short sellers and all and every critic

Discussion in 'General' started by TeslaInvestors, Jul 23, 2018.

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  1. TeslaInvestors

    TeslaInvestors Active Member

    Elon Musk, a grand failure of public subsidies, is now attacking anyone and everyone that dares to speak up against his many scams :( Now he has called up Montana Skeptic's boss to silence his dissenting voice.
    https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-07-23/elon-musk-reportedly-called-boss-well-known-tesla-critic-complain

    This is an utter disgrace to freedom of speech, particularly when it is being done in a totally one sided manner. What about silencing his own pimps, like Electrek and the character Zach?

    I can see Tesla's days are numbered.
    Time to vote with your wallet. #BoycottTesla
     
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  3. David Green

    David Green Well-Known Member

    I saw that today... I am quite surprised Elon would trouble himself with such petty things personally. Evidently Elon is feeling very nervous, and wants to silence any critical voice (Hitler's way). I think the "Shorty Air Force" thing really pissed Elon off. Haha! I am not ready to #BoycottTesla, but very amused by the action nearing desperation. Getting my truffle popcorn ready for the earnings call, would not be surprised at all to see Tesla cancel, change format, or delay the conference call.
     
  4. 101101

    101101 Well-Known Member

    Coming from someone called TeslaInvestor, misrepresenting right there in your name. Montana Skeptic has never said anything truthful about Tesla just spreads lies. Montana Skeptic was all pissed that Dan Neil didn't review the red herring Ipace- not remotely in the same league, but it is a telltale pattern- why are anti green people so pro iPace- its because anything from a petrol captured company is something they prefer. Because of harassment by Montana Skeptic Dan Neil deleted his twitter account. My guess is it was Tesla legal counsel that went after the Montana Skeptic and he complied with their demands that deleting his twitter account- does deleting his twitter account sound like the behavior of someone who claims to have a JD from Yale from long ago run a billion dollar hedge fund- not unless he got spanked and got scared.

    But lets talk about who the real bully is. The real bully is petrol. Who is pushing the US toward another useless war with Iran? A couple of mid east states that don't have the US's interests in mind? Exxon, Monsanto(?) would capture of the USG by any of these entities be better than capture by Russia- I doubt. Regardless its capture by useless petrol. Bush said we have to elevate the value of capital (wrong and evil) Alan Greenspan said he didn't want the common man getting too comfortable (wrong and evil) and Christopher Hitchens said people act like oil doesn't matter (totally true at this point.) They want a fight to prove their pusher drug is still relevant. It isn't green provides much cheaper and more more reliable and predictable access to electrons and power for a much much lower cost will decentralizing allowing us to harden and cut the cord on the rent seeking pusher.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jul 23, 2018
  5. Go ahead and boycott Tesla. I suspect you were basically already doing that, despite deciding to call yourself "TeslaInvestor" here.

    Montana Skeptic AKA Lawerence Fossi has written 137 pieces on Tesla over the past several years explaining why he shorts it, and has been on Twitter over that same period posting his thoughts there as well. His works and postings were generally not especially offensive, especially in comparison with some other short-TSLA personalities. So, why did Musk call his boss today? I suspect it has everything to do with bullying Dan Neil off Twitter because he dared give a favorable review. Now, I suspect Dan deleted his account because he doesn't need the hassle of dozens of notifications over the period of a couple days to see that people, mainly Fossi and Spiegel, were being jerks, impugning his credibility with wild accusations. Musk, who came to respect Dan because he bet him in August of 2011 that the Model S wouldn't ship before the end of 2012. It did, and Dan paid him $1,000 (to a charity). They aren't close friends. They don't hang out. I guess Musk learned about what happened and it ticked him off enough to make a phone call.

    Anyway. Whatever. Rahr, Fossi's presumed boss (I'm not certain of the exact nature of the relationship. Rahr could just be a very important client of Fossi), could easily have told Musk to take a hike, and maybe he did. It wasn't a "disgrace to freedom of speech" because there is no right to freedom of speech outside of a citizen's relationship with the government. The government is not allowed to deprive people of their speech rights, but private platforms certainly can, and employees can be held responsible by employers for certain speech.

    What I suspect actually happened was, Rahr was made aware of the whole Fossi/Tesla thing. The amount of time Fossi poured into this effort was astounding, considering he manages the $1 billion Rahr Foundation portfolio. Maybe Rahr thought he was neglecting his actual job with his short-Tesla role and told him to cut it out. Maybe, though less likely because he still appears to have the job/account, he used the Foundations money to short the stock as well. As we can see by Fossi's Seeking Alpha rating, his investment decisions were as successful as a coin flip at 50% and he actually lost -6.5% or so on his trades. One would think someone so knowledgeable about the company could do a little better than that. (By contrast, Galileo Russel, who is somewhat overly enthusiastic about the stock is up 20% on his trades -- I only know this because I was tasked with a post about the two, so I had to hold my nose and actually go to Seeking Alpha).

    Now, Musk does not like Tesla shorts. Maybe no kind of short. Seems like he thinks it's not legit because it's not actually investing in a companies success, but betting against a company. I get it, but whatever. Short positions are a thing that isn't going away and there's not anything Musk can do about them in general or the short Tesla ones in particular (outside of successfully executing which should drive up TSLA). So he called up some jerk's boss. Big deal. It's one situation where he had some room to act, that may or may not have been successful. It's not like he can do this to other shorts, most of whom hide in anonymity.

    I'm not sure why he should stop tweeting out links to positive news about his efforts. It's kind of what anyone in his position would do. Personally, I can't stand that he tweets out Electrek's links, but that's neither here nor there.

    Finally, Zero Hedge is garbage.
     
  6. First, please don't accuse other members of lying or being liars. Thank you.

    Now, pretty sure petrol didn't cause Dan to delete his Twitter account. Also, the I-Pace is fine, and Jaguar is awesome for building it and hopefully its success will convince them to make more of its line up electric.

    I'm not exactly sure if you believe your writing is going to have any sort of positive effect or not. I see Exxon, Monsanto and Greenspan and my eyes have glazed over. and I stop reading.
     
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  8. David Green

    David Green Well-Known Member

    Domenick, I have been noticing you in twitter in some of these conversations, and feel you have a pretty strong internal allegiance to Tesla. Your twitter comments I have read are neither objective, nor unbiased. That being said, I like how you moderate this forum, and you must bite your tongue when you read some of my comments, as I am certainly more on the skeptical side of the Tesla conversation.

    On the Montana Skeptic/Dan Neil twitter, I read through the entire thing, and Dan Neil defended himself in such a way that exposes obvious bias and then even mentioned the Jaguar Portugal event as a luxury junket, which is total tesla fan buzz speak. Dan Neil wanted to present himself at unbiased, which he obviously wasn't. The piece Dan wrote was a total puff piece, which is fine for a first drive review. He spent a little time in a hand picked car, was not allowed to shoot pictures or video. By comparison Jaguar in Portugal told the reviewers that the cars had some beta software but let the drivers take the cars for hours, and video/photograph the cars. Many writers including Steven from here came aways quite impressed. I really wish somehow Bjorn Nyland would have gotten in on the Portugal reviews, because even though Bjorn is slightly biased, and indirectly on Tesla's payroll, he is pretty honest about the things he likes/dislikes.
     
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  9. TeslaInvestors

    TeslaInvestors Active Member

    101101, "investor" doesn't necessarily mean a long or optimistic. It's your presumption that is blinding you, besides a few other things if I may add. :)

    Regarding the Wall St journalist: As Gene Munster said, if someone is "thin skinned and short tempered", he or she should not be on twitter. How does winning a pulitzer prize make one a better auto reviewer? imo, not a bit.

    Dan isn't an analyst. I think he said that himself. Yet he went on to write very optimistically about how many performance Model 3 Tesla will sell. Is that true? I haven't read the article, but I believe that's where there were some questions from shorts.
    Yes, I saw some jokes on the $35k $80k mass market Model 3, and I think it is totally fair after the big bait and switch Elon Musk did on his fans.
    Dan's answers were quite ridiculous. He couldn't take the questioning and left. No one asked him to leave, or alled his boss (afaik).
    If someone has a screen capture of these exchanges, it will be interesting to see what you are talking about here.

    Some part of the article I found online. An $80k car that will change the history of autos? Stop kidding Dan. This doesn't evenhave a speedometer. Just check the article published by IEV today. Some doubt if this is even legal outside US.

     
    Last edited: Jul 23, 2018
  10. TeslaInvestors

    TeslaInvestors Active Member

    Interesting. Dan could have been paid by Tesla/Musk to write such a biased piece with a hand picked car.
    Who knows, Tesla is acting pretty desperate nowadays. So Dan got afraid that his dirty secrets will come out, and ran from twitter. This is just my alternate "conspiracy theory". Don't hold me to it.
     
  11. I'm familiar with Dan, and I'm certain he would never accept money for writing about a car. That's the whole reason he didn't go to Portugal for the I-Pace. He doesn't do those types of trips. He only goes when and where WSJ sends him.

    I'm not sure why you think it was biased. He drove the car, found it entertaining, wrote about how it was entertaining.
     
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  13. I bite my tongue on Twitter too, believe it or not. :p
    I don't have a problem with people being skeptical about Tesla. It's understandable. It's the nastiness that I don't like. People being intentionally dishonest also really gets me, but I try to keep my mouth shut about those times unless I have rock solid evidence.

    Dan doesn't accept flights paid by automakers, hence he didn't go to Portugal. It would be the same is McClaren offered to fly him to England to drive the new 670 LT. He only goes where WSJ sends him.
    He does like EVs and is concerned about climate change, but that's never stopped him from enthusiastic reviews of gas-powered cars. He typically doesn't write especially critical reviews. I've read most of his work because I enjoy his prose and try to learn from it. I didn't read where he wasn't allowed to take pictures. Marques Brownlee certainly was, and Roadshow had some pics in their review. Another auto writer I know had one and offered a pic of part of it.

    Generally all media cars, for first drives, at least, are hand-picked to some degree. Usually, they're also optioned up to the highest spec as well. I've no criticism of the Portugal event. It seems to be one of the biggest of its kind and I thought it was masterfully handled.
     
  14. TeslaInvestors

    TeslaInvestors Active Member

    OK, I haven't read the article, so I will assume you are correct there.
    Was just looking at the WSJ tweet about this. I don't see anything vile from any shorts. Only one non-adulating tweet that stood out is this, but not from any short. The comment is also true, not like the misinformation spread by Elon two years back when collecting money from gullible people.
    https://twitter.com/WSJ/status/1020024256443420673
    pic1.JPG
     
  15. David Green

    David Green Well-Known Member

    I am not sure how getting your flight paid for, and a nice hotel/food will corrupt a good automotive journalist. Most first drive reviews are positive in general because reviewers do not have the time to really review the car. Sometimes It takes a few days to find the things you really do not like about a car.

    In the case of the I-Pace the cars in Portugal were not hand picked, they represented all of the latest pre production models to that point, those cars have been reconditioned and now moving around the world to dealerships for display duty.

    I thought Dan's review of the I-Pace was fine, he was positive, but again it was a first drive review so he did not dig too deep into the details. It reminded me a lot of the first Motor Trend review before Model 3 was released. Dan was obviously a pro Tesla guy, but in his twitter replies, got too defensive, to be considered unbiased, at one point even questioning the I-Pace build quality (in comparison to Model 3), which was childish and irrelevant. I wrote to WSJ which I am a subscriber to, and asked them to clean up the biased reviews.
     
  16. TeslaInvestors

    TeslaInvestors Active Member

    I would also say, that when the auto reviewer trolls the shorts with "If you were hoping Tesla would fail on account of the Model 3 I’ve got bad news:", you can't blame the shorts entirely. He should have just reviewed the car and refrained from provoking the ire of short sellers. The magnificence of the "not $35k but $78k" Model 3 is meaningless for the Tesla short thesis.
    With that kind of trolling, he made himself look like another of Elon's sock puppets.
    If he is so thin skinned, then more reason for him to refrain from such trolling.
     
    Last edited: Jul 24, 2018
  17. Pushmi-Pullyu

    Pushmi-Pullyu Well-Known Member

    We really ought to start numbering these threads created for the specific purpose of posting Tesla-bashing FUD. It would make it easier to keep track of their campaign.

    Why do people feel compelled to publicize their ignorance?
    :confused: :rolleyes:
     
  18. Pushmi-Pullyu

    Pushmi-Pullyu Well-Known Member

    Another of Hitler's "ways", and he became pretty good at it, was to keep repeating Big Lies until some people actually believed them.

    Now, just which frequent posting Usual Suspects on this forum does that remind us of? If you need a hint, Mr. Green, try looking in a mirror.

     
  19. Pushmi-Pullyu

    Pushmi-Pullyu Well-Known Member

    No joke, you have my sympathy. Been there, done that.

    Do you really think that's it? I know that's specifically what he complains about, but if you look at who he complains about, I think what gets under his skin isn't the mere fact that shorting a stock "is a thing", but rather the blatant attempts to manipulate Tesla's stock price by using FUD, including half-truths and outright lies, by serial Tesla bashers using a constant barrage of FUD in their attempts to manipulate Tesla's stock price.

    Is there any other company that is the target of a constant, ongoing, coordinated attack by FUDsters, as Tesla is? Some say Apple stock is frequently as shorted as Tesla's stock, but do we see anywhere near the level of FUD directed against Apple that we do against Tesla? Maybe so; I don't frequent forums which would be discussing Apple's products. But just from the overall "buzz" I see about Tesla online, I get the impression that the FUDster activity is like an order of magnitude more than it is for any other company. Now that's not to say there aren't other companies which are frequently the target of attacks on social media -- Big Oil would be one -- but the attacks on Big Oil are mostly factual, not mostly based on completely made up bull pucky and "Gish Gallop" blizzards of fake arguments, like most anti-Tesla FUD is.

     
  20. Pushmi-Pullyu

    Pushmi-Pullyu Well-Known Member

    FUD rating: 8

    It's utterly dishonest of you to use a loaded term like "bait-and-switch" as part of your FUD campaign against Tesla. It's a deliberate falsehood on your part, and you're doing that in a calculated fashion: A textbook example of an FUD campaign.

    "Bait-and-switch" is a form of false advertising, and is one of the dishonest selling techniques used by legacy auto dealerships. The dealership will advertise in the locale paper or TV ad that they have a specific car "For the low, low price of... Come on down!"

    If someone actually does "come on down" to the dealership, once they get in the door, a high-pressure salesman will be assigned to them to "steer" them to another car, one that the dealership is trying to sell that week or that month. The one advertised with a "low, low cost", the salesman will say, has already been sold, or they can't find the keys for it, or some other excuse for why the would-be buyer can't test drive the car he came in to see.

    In how many ways is "bait-and-switch" NOT what Tesla is doing?

    1. Tesla doesn't claim you can buy the $35k version of the Model 3... yet! No false advertising here.

    2. Tesla doesn't use high pressure salesmen. Or even "salesmen" at all, in the traditional sense.

    3. Tesla is glad to sell you a car online, without ever setting foot in a Tesla store.

     
  21. Pushmi-Pullyu

    Pushmi-Pullyu Well-Known Member

    No, most reviews by for-profit auto review magazines and websites (not including InsideEVs) are positive, or at worst a very mild criticism that one critic called "milk-and-water reviews", because of the one-hand-washes-the-other corrupt, collaborationist relationship between auto makers and auto review websites and magazines, with the auto makers paying for ads in the magazines and at websites, in exchange for biased and overly positive reviews of their cars from the magazines and websites. That corruption extends to the auto makers wining-and-dining auto reviewers, giving them fancy hotel rooms, lavish expensive dinners, and giving them what they call "swag". They don't make the reviewers fly in coach class, either. All these perks are a not-so-subtle form of bribery. Aside: I'm glad InsideEVs prints bad reviews right along with good ones... even if some of the very biased, unjustly negative reviews of Tesla cars (like Sandy Munro's first "Model 3 teardown" video) make my blood boil!

    Here's part of what a Jalopnik article had to say about the situation:

    Auto journalists are flown around the world for free to test cars. It's an amazing gig. But some of them are disappointed that car companies aren't giving out free swag for them to remember these business trips. Not vacations. Seriously. This is despicable.

    There's a secret, invite only, insufferable group on Facebook called "Automotive Industry." Most auto journalists are members, and the discussions are usually trite, meaningless pablum like the food being bad at the Kia Sorrento event or self-serving announcements on how they're moving from The St. Louis Tribune to The St. Louis Star.

    It's nothing crazy, but it's frequently a good hate read.

    But then there are other times, where auto journalists go from nice, slightly boring people into the worst kind of entitled a**holes who believe their entire career is a vacation funded by the companies that they write about. That's the thread that popped up last night.

    So yeah, Noah Joseph of Autoblog wants the people who flew him to the event, put him up in a gorgeous hotel, fed him, and gave him a car to drive to also provide him with free memorabilia to remember the trip. It's not out of the ordinary for automakers to give a little something out on these trips (Full Disclosure: All of us at Jalopnik have definitely accepted a little gift on a trip at some point), but what is out of the ordinary is to be so entitled that you express disappointment when automakers aren't giving you something to remember a trip by.

    What's better/worse? Fellow autojournalists feel the same way.

    Yes, there is a lot of flip sarcasm on here, but, as Road & Track contributor and friend of Jalopnik Mallory McMorrow notes, there also isn't any outrage of any sort. Nobody seems to find a request like this out of the ordinary.​

    More on the subject, including screen shots of actual FaceBook posts from auto reviewers complaining about their bribes and perks being insufficiently lavish, can be seen here: "This Is Everything Wrong With Auto Journalism In One Facebook Thread"
     
    Last edited: Jul 24, 2018
  22. David Green

    David Green Well-Known Member

    You mean like the Model 3 starting at 35K? Thats one I have heard over and over...
     
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  23. David Green

    David Green Well-Known Member


    Ok, I have now seen and review Sandy's report on the Model 3... Wait until Aug 16 Autoline After Hours for his complete opinion...

    I have forgotten more about auto-making then you will ever know. I have been in several factories, and visited GM Milford Proving Grounds for a private tour.
     
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