Javelin wrote: In reply to fast_eddie_72: Uh, have you even read *any* of the discussion past the first 10 posts?
Yes, but then you said that the only reason to own a stock was for a dividend.
Sorry, not picking a fight. Thread well enough derailed. I'll leave you to your opinion on the subject and hope the OP finds the input he's looking for somewhere else.
OK, I heard blah blah blah, name calling, insinuation, class flaming, blah blah blah more flaming, and:
Tesla has a good product that some peeps on here think may have a legit shot a being the next big thing. Not (in my uninformed impression based mostly on speculation) a trendy but impractical and impossibly expensive luxury car that the mainstream car buyer will never pay for because the car is totaled in 7 years of work commuting because the batteries won't hold a charge. Or the lithium batteries catch fire causing horrific explosions which will be covered in fantastic detail by the media. (Again, I don't know if either of the previous statements are at all true, but I do know my lithium powered laptop's battery is wasted in 2 years, and from experiments I've conducted at work I can make a small pack of Lithium Cobalt batteries light up like a berkerlying grenade)
Whether the stock price is appropriate or not is a secondary discussion, which, all any of us can do is speculate. I decided not to put in my short order yesterday. D'oh, TSLA's down 7.26% today, could've funded a few more garage bricks with that play, but hindsight is 20/20, right? Might be up again tomorrow, who can say?
Useful feedback in there somewhere...
TSLA stays on the watch list. Who knows, I might even put in a buy one day. I was wrong once before.
No matter which way it goes, Tesla is really volatile, so I'd just be careful no matter what. A lot of people think the tech will fail and a lot of other people see this guy as making the first commercial flight to the ISS so a car should be easy potatoes, so...
Now, you want to talk about a stock that's stupidly over-valued and will likely catapult to the levels of penny stocks? I think it's called "Faceboof" or something like that 
Zombie thread alert!
On 7/6/2012 when this thread was made, TSLA was worth $30.99/share. An investment of $1,000 would have netted you ~32.2685 shares. Today (2/3/2020) TSLA closed at $780.00/share, netting your $1,000 from 8 years ago $25,169.41.
Too bad I only had $100 to spare 8 years ago. Glad I bought TSLA though. Still no mother-berking dividends! 
Javelin said:Now, you want to talk about a stock that's stupidly over-valued and will likely catapult to the levels of penny stocks? I think it's called "Faceboof" or something like that
What was FacePlant then and what is it today ?
I will never understand the stock markets !
Interesting idea, but from my point of view it's really bad. I'm going to tell you why. I personally invest in some stocks I pick, I have too much in funds in my 401K and I also buy physical bullion. You want to know my best investment? Wine, yes wine. I can buy that stuff cheap, hold onto it for 5 to 10 years and make a much better and more predictable return on my money. Sadly, I buy cheap to consume for my own reasons. I cannot buy wine at restaraunts most of the time because it is overpriced and too young to be enjoyed.
Shorting Tesla is a horrible idea. The entire market (S&P, NYSE, etc.) is bucking every fundamental investment marker known since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The market goes up, up, up now no matter what. Tesla goes up, up, up even though they have yet to make a profit. You are predicting that an overvalued stock will go down based on fundamentals. Well Tesla doesn't follow investing fundamentals. Most stocks do not and have not since 2007. Gold and Silver no longer follow the fundamentals thanks to some cute little add ons to the "affordable care act." The entire market is broken.
I can, unequivocally, crash the entire world economy on any Friday. I'm not sure how much the advertising to do so would cost, but it can be done, any Friday. All you have to do is take out ads telling everyone the money does not exist, go CASH your paycheck on Friday. That'll end the entire game. You want to bet on a game that is that rigged?
I'd much rather have a large parcel of land and storage to hold wood, steel, aluminum, copper, barrels of oil, gold, silver, wine, etc. That's an investment. Any commodity that doesn't deteriorate is long term a great play. 200 years of data support this. Anything else is a big gamble. I hate gambling. I already gamble enough in my 401K, I try not to get myself too much more exposure to that game.
californiamilleghia said:Javelin said:Now, you want to talk about a stock that's stupidly over-valued and will likely catapult to the levels of penny stocks? I think it's called "Faceboof" or something like that
What was FacePlant then and what is it today ?
I will never understand the stock markets !
Great question!
$31.73 on 7/6/2012, so roughly the same value as TSLA was. $201.91 today so that same $1,000 would net you $6,363.38. Still really good, but nowhere near TSLA.
This thread hasn't aged well. Haha! Also, Jav, dividends are not all they're cracked up to be. They're essentially a forced sale of equity and if you're not in a drawdown phase you shouldn't be too excited about dividend stocks.
@AnthonyGS: Just no to all that.
dculberson said:This thread hasn't aged well. Haha! Also, Jav, dividends are not all they're cracked up to be. They're essentially a forced sale of equity and if you're not in a drawdown phase you shouldn't be too excited about dividend stocks.
@AnthonyGS: Just no to all that.
This economy doesn't follow fundamentals. It's fake. It's currently a $22 trillion dollar hole with nearly $220 trillion in liabilities. Since the gov't actually does their accounting the way Enron did ignoring liabilities, everyone thinks it's all okay. Say no to it if you want. Search for yourself. You could confiscate all the printed currency in circulation and you will not have $22 trillion. You can also confiscate all the silver and gold.... nope not $22 trillion. The entire economy is based on DEBT that will be "paid" by kids that aren't born and can't vote. You can ostrich it if you like, but the numbers are all real. You can start your research at usdebtclock.org.
In reply to dculberson :
Including my attitude! I was a butthead 8 years ago. Well, more of one than I am now.
In reply to AnthonyGS :
Let's just leave it at, on this subject, the gap between us is so large that I won't bother trying to bridge it.
Javelin said:Zombie thread alert!
On 7/6/2012 when this thread was made, TSLA was worth $30.99/share. An investment of $1,000 would have netted you ~32.2685 shares. Today (2/3/2020) TSLA closed at $780.00/share, netting your $1,000 from 8 years ago $25,169.41.
Too bad I only had $100 to spare 8 years ago. Glad I bought TSLA though. Still no mother-berking dividends!
Up again! $930 and climbing!
In reply to Javelin :
Yeah, I dunno about 2012, but two days ago was a bad time to short it.
I checked my notes. I had 200 shares of the IPO @ $19. That's $186k @ $930. I sold the same day and netted $250. :)
There's no way I would have stuck with it though.
In general shorting is a terrible idea and nobody should do it, especially not people with less than millions in their investment accounts. It's an expensive way to make bets and there are not only transaction costs but carrying costs and the opportunity to be wholly wiped out. And as this thread helps demonstrate it's just not possible to predict the movement of a stock.
dculberson said:In general shorting is a terrible idea and nobody should do it, especially not people with less than millions in their investment accounts. It's an expensive way to make bets and there are not only transaction costs but carrying costs and the opportunity to be wholly wiped out. And as this thread helps demonstrate it's just not possible to predict the movement of a stock.
I agree, but there are ways to express a negative opinion through options that limit potential losses, etc.
As Keynes said in the 1930s: “Markets can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.”
I for one get all my investment advice from low-budget car racing forums!
Buy gold! Forget FIAT currencies. 
Most companies are worth something based in part on a return on profits, but also based on the other value attributes of their business. Apple is worth a lot in part because they generate a lot of profit. Amazon is worth a lot because they dominate a market and *could* generate massive profits if they slowed investment in their business and growing their share. Compare Telsa's value to the profit potential they could have if they owned a big part of the luxury car market - it doesn't align with any reality. Tesla's market cap is ~$160B, Mercedes $49B, BMW $43B, VAG $85B. Telsa is worth the same as all of them combined! I think Tesla is here to stay, but I can't justify the share value, it's beyond speculative. I have no idea WHEN it's going to drop, could be a decade, hence, I'm not shorting it. I doubt anyone on here does either. The concept of this thread and reviving it really does make that clear.
Stuff is worth what buyers are willing to pay for it. What's gold worth? It's not one of the more useful resources, but it's worth what people will pay for it, kind of like Telsa stock. The overall market is high, but that's also because there's more money to invest than there are good places to invest it. It's a combination of wealth stratification, an aging population who have saved up for retirement, being late in a business cycle, etc.
In reply to Snrub :
I think investing analysts keep mistaking Tesla as a car company, and they are not. They are a market creating technology company. Think about all of the electric cars coming out from every other manufacturer and how they still aren't as good as a Tesla, the supercharging network, the power management systems, the over the air updates, the psuedo-self-driving tech, and legislation like Britain's back in everything but electrics. They didn't invite the electric car, but they invented the electric car market (see IBM and computers, Windows and OS's, Amazon and online shopping, etc).
Rule of thumb is that 'growth' companies like Tesla don't pay divvies. You get divvies from companies that don't experience a lot of growth because they are mostly involved in mature fields. A tool company might pay a dividend for example because there won't be a ton of growth in drills and hammers. You buy the stock for the steady income. Every now and then you can get a divend paying company that IS growing like UTI. That's gravy.
I read an article in the WSJ the other day about a guy who had plowed his whole savings into Tesla at 4 or 5 hundred. He was STOKED. Had the 'T' tattood into his arm. I chuckled. Remember folks, you don't make (or lose) a dime until you sell. I've seen so many hold it in hopes of more and get burned badly by their greed. Pick your sell price when you buy in and when it gets there you berking sell. Takes discipline.
Markets are rational over the long term, and irrational in the short term.
Thus, to short Tesla stock would be to believe that the company will perform poorly AND that the market will punish them appropriately in the short term. In a market where nobody expects them to be profitable, much less pay a dividend.
Thus, options trading is generally for people with throwaway money, or who have gotten bored with the table games in Vegas, or who want to be activists and try to influence public perception of a company to cover their short. Are you any of those?
ShinnyGroove said:Markets are rational over the long term, and irrational in the short term.
Thus, to short Tesla stock would be to believe that the company will perform poorly AND that the market will punish them appropriately in the short term. In a market where nobody expects them to be profitable, much less pay a dividend.
Thus, options trading is generally for people with throwaway money, or who have gotten bored with the table games in Vegas, or who want to be activists and try to influence public perception of a company to cover their short. Are you any of those?
Yes! To put it in other words, and I can’t remember who said it, “..in the short term the market is a voting machine. In the long term it is a weighing machine..”. Meaning that short term is determined by sentiment and is not necessarily a reflection of value. In the long run the value of a company becomes known.
Now, figure out what means short term and what means long term and you can move to Monaco and play around with your own F1 Team. Neither you, your friends, or family will ever need to “work” again.
A 401 CJ said:Yes! To put it in other words, and I can’t remember who said it, “..in the short term the market is a voting machine. In the long term it is a weighing machine..”.
That would be Warren Buffett.
You'll need to log in to post.
