Mega Thread for Tesla Investors

bwilson4web said:
So your short broker is only pealing off 1/3d of the interest cost. And who is charging the 1%?

Meanwhile the principle stock sale of the 'borrowed' stock is followed by the 'purchase' is untouched except for any broker fees? Who gets these brokerage fees?

Yet the article sited reports:

. . .
Short-sellers borrow stock and sell it into the market in hopes of buying it back at a lower price later and pocketing the difference, creating a market for securities lending by fund firms who split revenue from the activity with their own investors.

BlackRock, Tesla's eight-largest shareholder, reported total securities lending revenue of $597 million (455.5 million pounds) in 2017, compared with $579 million in 2016, according to a securities filing. Musk cited the latest figure in a tweet on Friday afternoon.

BlackRock is the world’s largest asset manager, running a total of $6.3 trillion as of June 30, followed by Vanguard with more than $5 trillion under management.
. . .​

I went back to re-read the article and saw no reference to splitting the interest 1/3 and 2/3.

Bob Wilson
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The revenue for the brokerage is the fee (interest). Yes, I will pay 1% in this case to my brokerage. I don't know whose shares I have borrowed, so I can only pay to my brokerage.
The brokerage will then keep 0.35% in its own pocket and pay the actual shareholder 0.65% for a year.
There can be other intermediaries also. But in simple terms, this is what it is.

the cost to short is very low. Sometimes for Tesla, it is 0.25%, sometimes 0.5%. There are few weeks it may jump to 2-3%, then it goes back down to 1%. There is really not much fee in shorting. But there is of course, risk that the share price goes up a lot.
 
bwilson4web said:
I'm not finding a way for individuals to 'short' a stock since borrowing is an important aspect. That presumes access to stocks to borrow hence a fund. Have I missed something?
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All you need is a margin account. You may need to declare that you are an experienced investor to convert your brokerage account into a margin account.
Shortng is not allowed in IRA or 401k accounts.

Your brokerage may indeed borrow from these funds (Blackrock/Vanguard etc.) or their own account holders who have given permissiion to lend their shares.
 
I was curious about how these mechanisms worked as somethings had me curious:
  • Margins are leveraged - it appears that there can be a 2-to-1 ratio between the shorted stock and the margin balance. One source claimed $10,000 of shorted stock required only $5,000 in the margin account. This is a backdoor to the leveraged stocks that helped trigger the 1929 crash.
  • Margin accounts are taxed by interest that for small investors, less than $10,000, can approach 9% per year.
  • The brokerage house profits by trade fees and some part of the interest although this is an area that still seems a little fuzzy.
  • There is no time limit on this 'loan of stock' yet I suspect the loaner can force a 'margin call.' That criteria is not clear.
My reason for buying Tesla is driven my judgement of the facts and data versus trying to become an active stock trader. That is why I am all but immune to the usual buzz about stocks and companies. Now if someone were to suggest a systemic defect in Teslas that had their rear bumper covers coming off in hurricane flooded areas . . . well I'm sure Yahoo financial would post articles about the weak Tesla bumpers and rear-ends falling off. <grins>

Bob Wilson
 
bwilson4web said:
I was curious about how these mechanisms worked as somethings had me curious:
  • Margins are leveraged - it appears that there can be a 2-to-1 ratio between the shorted stock and the margin balance. One source claimed $10,000 of shorted stock required only $5,000 in the margin account. This is a backdoor to the leveraged stocks that helped trigger the 1929 crash.
  • Margin accounts are taxed by interest that for small investors, less than $10,000, can approach 9% per year.
  • The brokerage house profits by trade fees and some part of the interest although this is an area that still seems a little fuzzy.
  • There is no time limit on this 'loan of stock' yet I suspect the loaner can force a 'margin call.' That criteria is not clear.
My reason for buying Tesla is driven my judgement of the facts and data versus trying to become an active stock trader. That is why I am all but immune to the usual buzz about stocks and companies. Now if someone were to suggest a systemic defect in Teslas that had their rear bumper covers coming off in hurricane flooded areas . . . well I'm sure Yahoo financial would post articles about the weak Tesla bumpers and rear-ends falling off. <grins>

Bob Wilson
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As wise people have said, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing! The 1929 crash couldn't have been due to people shorting on margin. It must be due to people buyong more stock on margin. When stock market went down, so did their balance. So to keep margin ratio, they were forced to sell more, getting into a vicious cycle of downward spiral. That is unrelated to shorting.

Shorting is not active trading either. One can short and sit on it for months, just like when you buy stocks long.

As for options (put options) brought up by @interestedinEV : The biggest issue is the time decay. The second issue is the gains are very attenuated. I bought puts when TSLA was at $379 ( go private pop). I sold when SP was $280 within a month for a gain of $35 per share. Had i been able to short, I would have pocketed $99 per share with 0 value decay due to passing time. Buying options is a loser's game, unless you are absoulety certain of the direction and a big swing. But in those cases, option is priced very high. For the go private pop, I guessed right, still pocketed much less than what I could have with a short position.
 
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NHTSA to Tesla: 'Shove your blog post about the safest car ever where sun doesn't shine.." ( para phrasing of course). If Vern worked for NHTSA, then it could have been the statement. Another false promotion by Elon caught by NHTSA quickly.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/u-safety-agency-rebuffs-safest-202657264.html
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...ency-rebuffs-safest-label-after-tesla-s-claim

U.S. Agency Warns Carmakers on ‘Safest’ Label After Tesla Boast

"But in a statement Tuesday, NHTSA said that its crash tests combine into an overall safety rating and that it does not rank vehicles that score the same ratings.

“A 5-star rating is the highest safety rating a vehicle can achieve,” the agency said in the statement, which did not name Tesla. “NHTSA does not distinguish safety performance beyond that rating, thus there is no ‘safest’ vehicle among those vehicles achieving 5-star ratings.”
..
Companies that make wild claims about NHTSA crash test ratings can land in hot water with other authorities, such as the Federal Trade Commission. NHTSA’s guidelines warn that the agency may refer “knowing misstatements or mis-characterizations” of NHTSA crash test ratings to other state or federal agencies.

NHTSA issued a similar statement in 2013, when Tesla said that its Model S achieved a vehicle safety score equated to 5.4 stars.
 
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I got no spare car carrier on Sep 30, the only day I deliver :( So I am building my own to keep them in my garage for the entire quarter till the next quarter end. :confused:
sssss.webp
 
Facts and data:
NHTSA_010.jpg


The most recent year, 2017, only 7 fatal Tesla accidents. Similar numbers for 2016. It is really going to be hard to find Tesla's having a bad safety year.

Bob Wilson
 
Real news: Model 3 achieves a perfect crash safety rating, a 5-star safety rating in every category and sub-category. This ranks it among the very safest of all cars. (Perhaps that's one of the reasons why Tesla's stock price was up yesterday?)

Fake news: Tesla is making "wild claims" about the Model 3's safety rating.

Guess which of these is the subject of comments by our resident serial Tesla basher, "TeslaInvestors"?

More real news from Mashable: "Sorry Tesla haters, the Model 3 just got a perfect safety rating"

Hey, "TeslaInvestors"! How about if, just once, you try not to be quite so predictable, hmmm?
:rolleyes:
 
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Source: How Tesla Made the Model 3 So Safe, David Tracy, Oct 9, 2018

Tesla told me that it dug into NHTSA’s data, and looked at overall probability of injury figures. The company sent me a link to some of NHTSA’s data; here’s a look at the injury probabilities to various parts of the body during a frontal crash test:
yx46oqwsrn4htgxuldsg.png


And here are the star ratings for the frontal crash test:
tsqpishhc4rro6bggnhg.png

...
So basically, when Tesla says its Model 3 has the “lowest probability of injury” ever tested by NHTSA, it means that the overall VSS score (which represents the “relative risk of injury with respect to a baseline of 15 percent”) of 0.38 is lower than that of any car ever tested.
q0shgegx8fujsqx1kwej.png

...
That’s impressive, any way you slice it.​

The rest may be too technical for short-seller advocates to understand.

Bob Wilson
 
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bwilson4web said:
Source: How Tesla Made the Model 3 So Safe, David Tracy, Oct 9, 2018

Tesla told me that it dug into NHTSA’s data, and looked at overall probability of injury figures. The company sent me a link to some of NHTSA’s data; here’s a look at the injury probabilities to various parts of the body during a frontal crash test:
yx46oqwsrn4htgxuldsg.png


And here are the star ratings for the frontal crash test:
tsqpishhc4rro6bggnhg.png

...
So basically, when Tesla says its Model 3 has the “lowest probability of injury” ever tested by NHTSA, it means that the overall VSS score (which represents the “relative risk of injury with respect to a baseline of 15 percent”) of 0.38 is lower than that of any car ever tested.
q0shgegx8fujsqx1kwej.png

...
That’s impressive, any way you slice it.​

The rest may be too technical for short-seller advocates to understand.

Bob Wilson
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Aw, so it's all kosher and that's why NHTSA slapped a threat on Tesla?
Translations to be used when reading Tesla statements:
"Tesla told " -> Tesla made up
"it dug into" -> It cherry picked, distorted, misinterpreted and misrepresented
"The company sent me a link" -> The company made up a link with made up data

So, the data they sent is not even a direct link to NHTSA database/website ? That explains it all. Thanks for enlightening me.

Tesla also told many things about solar powered super chargers, miracle beautiful solar roof tiles that are cheaper than regular roof tiles, horsepower claims, FSD by 2017 claim, AP 2.0 claim, $420 go private done deal, etc. etc. At this point, every statement made by Tesla has to be taken through a cleansing filter.
But I understand it is too much of a task for some posters to apply these simple filters when reading/hearing anything from Elon/Tesla.
 
TeslaInvestors said:
Aw, so it's all kosher and that's why NHTSA slapped a threat on Tesla?
Click to expand...

Threat? I challenge you to back that up. So far as I can see, the NHTSA merely stated that its methodology in assigning ratings does not support Tesla's claim, and that it does not stand behind what Tesla is claiming.

Note that the NHTSA has not said that Tesla's claims are actually wrong!

But of course, it's no surprise that serial Tesla bashers like "TeslaInvestors" have rushed to twist facts and churn out fake news to claim that Tesla has made an untrue assertion here.

However, since my primary interest here is the pursuit of Truth, I'll point out that the NHTSA's test scores do not actually prove that the Model 3 is the very safest car of all. It only proves that it is safest according to the NHTSA's test methods. Note that the NHTSA was criticized in the past for doing only full-contact testing for head-on crash tests. Now they have added "small overlap" and some sort of half-contact (only half the front of the vehicle in contact with the solid object during the crash) testing, which insurance carriers say more accurately represents many or perhaps most real-world head-on crashes.

We will hope the NHTSA's crash testing does correctly identify which cars are safest, and which the least safe, in a real-world crash. But at best those tests will only be an imperfect simulation of what happens during a real-world crash.

Serial Tesla bashers claim the IIHS's (Insurance Institute for Highway Safety) crash tests are "more reliable" or "more accurate". That is, of course, an unproven claim, and they say that only to create FUD; to cast doubt on Tesla's superior crash test ratings. The IIHS's crash tests are different than the NHTSA, but different does not mean "better".

Ho hum. Another day, another bit of FUD churned out by our resident Serial Tesla basher. (But hey, we're down to only one of them infesting this forum. That's certainly an improvement!)
​
 
The InsideEVS news site has an article on the very subject we're discussing here:

"Is Tesla Fabricating Data To Make Its Model 3 Appear Safest?"

But if you actually read the article, it's clear the answer is "No!" Of course, we can't expect TeslaInvestors to ever admit he's wrong here, because that doesn't fit his Tesla-bashing agenda.

There is some good discussion in comments following the article. I think this comment best sums up the situation:

CDAVIS
________________

Seems that both NHTSA and Tesla are correct:​

NHTSA is correct in that it does publish the NHTSA raw score data used by NHTSA to determine which cars meet the minimum threshold scores to receive NHTSA’s highest safety “5-Star” classification and that NHTSA does not have an *official* safety classification beyond the “5-Star” designation.

Tesla is also correct that the raw NHTSA published data shows that Tesla Model S scored the highest in the raw data metrics.

I can imagine the traditional car makers are giving NHTSA flack over Tesla’s self promotion about Tesla’s ranking #1 (“safest”) in safety… thus the NHTSA clarification news release which basically says “safest” is not an *official* NHTSA designation.
​
 
Pushmi-Pullyu said:
Threat? I challenge you to back that up. So far as I can see, the NHTSA merely stated that its methodology in assigning ratings does not support Tesla's claim, and that it does not stand behind what Tesla is claiming.
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Challenge accepted! Just read my post #306. Repeated here for everyone's ease of perusal.
Companies that make wild claims about NHTSA crash test ratings can land in hot water with other authorities, such as the Federal Trade Commission. NHTSA’s guidelines warn that the agency may refer “knowing misstatements or mis-characterizations” of NHTSA crash test ratings to other state or federal agencies.
Click to expand...

Bonus: Did it occur to you, that NHTSA doesn't distinguish between those subtle probabilities, because their method may not be able to distinguish among them? And these could just be measurement errors or methodical errors?

QED.
 
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https://finance.yahoo.com/news/oregon-claws-back-13-million-200200962.html
Oregon claws back $13 million from Tesla over inflated solar credits, report says

Saw the IEV article about missing $655k to Nevada. Wondering if there will be one on this bigger claw back too.
Tesla Energy, formerly known as SolarCity, overstated the costs of 14 large-scale solar power projects in the state by 100 percent to secure the higher credits, the report said. An investigation by the Oregon Department of Justice determined that Tesla was only entitled to $6.7 million of the $16.7 million in tax credits it collected for the projects.

The settlement included $12.5 million in restitution and $500,000 in legal fees.
Neither Tesla Energy nor its accounting firm, Novogradac & Company, admitted wrongdoing in the settlement, it added.
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Not faulting the poster but the mess NHTSA created:
Pushmi-Pullyu said:
thus the NHTSA clarification news release which basically says “safest” is not an *official* NHTSA designation.
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So the 0-5 Stars is what?
  • Is a "4 Star" car as good as a "5 Star"
  • Is a "3 Star" car as good as a "4 Star"
  • Is a "2 Star" car as good as a "3 Star"
  • Is a "1 Star" car as good as a "2 Star"
  • Is a "0 Star" car as good as a "1 Star"
What NHTSA did is use the "Star" scale to substitute for the actual risk of injury from the engineering metrics. The risk is a real number with a much larger data range than 0-5. The truth looks like a "00.0%" format number.

Bob Wilson
 
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Just came back home from work, and saw another speeding Tesla driver, overtaking other cars in residential area in the center lane at high speed, almost hitting another car that wanted to turn left.
With Elon's fake news on low probability of injury, these speedsters will be even more emboldened to act as killing torpedoes.
Not that we lacked such people on the road in ICE cars. At least those were little noisier, not the silent killers.
And to think that our govt. money subsidizes the road racing of these rich speedsters just makes me even more angry.

I wish Elon, the savior of our planet, wasn't so focused on endangering us mere earthlings while trying to save the planet.
 
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TeslaInvestors said:
Challenge accepted! Just read my post #306. Repeated here for everyone's ease of perusal.
Click to expand...

So then, you've got nuthin'. Just repeating what some reporter at Bloomberg or Yahoo Finance wrote, not what the NHTSA actually said. Thanks for confirming that this is just more of your Tesla bashing FUD.

If we're gonna repeat things, there's this actual news rather than your fake news:

From Mashable: "Sorry Tesla haters, the Model 3 just got a perfect safety rating"
​
 
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bwilson4web said:
What NHTSA did is use the "Star" scale to substitute for the actual risk of injury from the engineering metrics. The risk is a real number with a much larger data range than 0-5. The truth looks like a "00.0%" format number.
Click to expand...

To be fair, perhaps it's good that the NHTSA doesn't insist on precision in its ratings. After all, any test done under controlled conditions isn't going to perfectly replicate all the things that can happen in real-world traffic accidents. The best the NHTSA (or IIHS or anybody else) is perform crash tests that are as close to real-world conditions as can reasonably be done given a limited number of vehicles to destroy.

Tesla is correct to say that the actual data from the NHTSA's crash ratings show the Model 3 is the safest car in NHTSA's tests. But nobody's tests under controlled conditions, including the NHTSA's crash tests, perfectly replicate real world situations where multiple variables -- multiple conditions and multiple forces -- are involved. Therefore, it's an overstatement to say the Model 3 is the safest car.
​
 
Pushmi-Pullyu said:
any test done under controlled conditions isn't going to perfectly replicate all the things that can happen in real-world traffic accidents.
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In engineering we call this 'letting perfect be the enemy of good enough.' I'm OK with having the 'Stars' if the calculated, actual risk is available, say a subscripted smaller text.

In contrast, here is the NHTSA spokesman:
giphy.gif


Bob Wilson
 
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