Why I hate the stock market. Unprofitable Tesla is now worth more than profitable Ford which sells 28 x as many cars

All Gores wrote:

Please tell me how badly you were affected by a 0.7C temperature rise over 150 years.

Feel free to link to any papers that don't use obvious climate scam BS cues like "if", "could", "maybe", etc.

Yes, those are very dangerous scam words - "if", "could", "maybe", "might", "possible", "probable". "likely", "extrapolate", "predict", "plan", "foresee", indeed, anything to do with the "future".

What will you be doing tomorrow?

pop_pop!_v2.2.1 wrote:

Slow Bro wrote:

If you think Amazon is barely making money, you haven't been paying attention. They have reinvested almost all of their profits into expansion and r&d. If at any point they decide to stop expanding, they could turn into a money printing machine overnight.

There aren't any barriers to entry in online retail. This is entirely unlike Microsoft or Adobe where there are intellectual property laws that protect their companies from competition.

If you want to gamble on Amazon, go for it.

I don't own any Amazon stock, but citing "no barriers to entry" as a reason why they could lose out to competitors is a bit silly.

They have built a ton of infrastructure and have proprietary logistics behind a lot of the stuff they do (shipping, stocking, etc...). Maybe they don't have IP protections for some of their innovations, but you can bet they keep them a secret.

Also... they currently HAVE a lot of competition, and they've been destroying it. Another wave of B&M businesses are feeling the effects.

I might not invest in them now, but that's not because I don't think they'll continue doing well. It's because I think the stock has already priced in all of the upside (or slightly more).

It's pretty obvious electric is the future of vehicle transportation in this country. What people don't realize is that these batteries don't last forever. In my opinion, Tesla is positioning itself to be the battery provider for EVERY electric car sold at some point... plus all replacement batteries... it is not inconceivable Tesla is selling 100 billion worth of car batteries alone in 20 years.

Do you dispute (a) the greenhouse effect; (b) rising CO2 levels; (c) that rising CO2 levels are due to man; (d) that CO2 levels are rising enough to increase a greenhouse effect that will alter climate significantly; or (e) all of the above?

If anyone can get a 10x improvement in battery technology, which is definitely possible, then the combustion engine is dead.

Batteries pre-date the internal combustion engine, so they already had a head start, but they still have not caught up to the IC engine. Electric cars have been around for 100 years and they still cost about 50% more than a comparable IC vehicle and they have less range.

So riddle me this, you are convinced we can increase battery performance 10X from here? Why couldn't we do the same for IC?

Or maybe you don't understand the thermodynamics of either process and you are talking out of your ass?

zack348938 wrote:

Several points here:

1. Valuations for companies like Tesla are always valuations of their future earnings potential. Amazon was famously unprofitable for years, yet Wall Street still loved it. In the end, it's easy to see why that love was there despite a lack of initial profitability.

Amazon is still grossly overvalued. Yes they make a profit, but the profit is very low compared to the inflated stock price. Amazon has become huge (market cap) running a low margin business. Unless somehow they can now change their entire business model and double or triple the margins it is a terrible investment. Look at how many companies ever double their margins, best case scenario is you start out with high margins and they slowly erode over time. Reality is that it is very hard to substantially grow margins in an established business.

Of you could buy Apple or Google which have huge margins and way more profits than Amazon and are way cheaper, but what do i know.

Actual Expert wrote:

Going to clear up a few points:

With existing tech, life cycle analysis has an EV with lower carbon cost than ICE by about 60,000 miles.

This is far from established. Please cite sources (other than your ass). Are there even any anecdotal examples of electric cars with 200,000 service miles without a battery replacement. As it is common place for IC vehicles to now go 200,000 with minimal maintenance, for your example to exist in the real world you would need a battery vehicle that can go at least 260,000 miles to beat an IC vehicle. Doing an analysis based on 100,000 miles because that is when you have to put the original batteries in a landfill is hogwash.

The fact that you mentioned Hydrogen indicates you are either some academic noob or you are on white collar welfare (i.e. you work at a DOE lab).

Likewise, why you think a power source that is misaligned with demand and requires a storage system to be feasible is better than stable, carbon free baseload power with load following capability is further evidence you are divorced from reality.

In California, you get HOV access and sometimes preferred parking. It's amazing.

works great until electric cars have 5% of the market and this goes away; fortunately for you that will probably take 10 years. This is a laughable reason to do anything. Yes, CA throws manna from heaven on a lot of stupid endeavors. Nobody is going to need cars in CA anyway as soon as they finish the Madera to Bakersfield bullet train.

Coal Power Trumps Solar Power wrote:

Trump knows something. I'm lookingto invest in coal powered cars. What company is leading that sector?

Tesla. Cuz that's how we generate electricity. Unless we do as DiscoGary suggests and build Nukes. Then the Tesla is a nuclear-powered car.

HarryPaums wrote:

Coal Power Trumps Solar Power wrote:

Trump knows something. I'm lookingto invest in coal powered cars. What company is leading that sector?

Tesla. Cuz that's how we generate electricity. Unless we do as DiscoGary suggests and build Nukes. Then the Tesla is a nuclear-powered car.

And gasoline gets dug up, shipped, refined, trucked, and pumped into a car how? Plenty of electricity with much of it powered by good old coal.

medium_pace wrote:

So riddle me this, you are convinced we can increase battery performance 10X from here? Why couldn't we do the same for IC?

The ICE is already 20-40% efficient, improving that by 10x is not possible.

Increasing the power density of batteries has more potential because of the different technologies available (and still to be discovered).

medium_pace wrote:

If anyone can get a 10x improvement in battery technology, which is definitely possible, then the combustion engine is dead.

Batteries pre-date the internal combustion engine, so they already had a head start, but they still have not caught up to the IC engine. Electric cars have been around for 100 years and they still cost about 50% more than a comparable IC vehicle and they have less range.

So riddle me this, you are convinced we can increase battery performance 10X from here? Why couldn't we do the same for IC?

Or maybe you don't understand the thermodynamics of either process and you are talking out of your ass?

Market forces have applied pressure to ICE performance and efficiency for much longer than they have batteries.

With ICE having won the early initial battle and becoming the dominant form of transportation (IE, not many electric cars out there), there wasn't a "killer app" for battery tech for a long time. NOW (in the last 20 years or so), we're starting to see the demand rise dramatically, as practically everything we use has some kind of battery, and we're increasingly demanding better performance and capacity.

The market will (and is) responding to that. More money is being put into battery tech and research. I really can't speak to the technical aspects, but I'm quite sure that batteries can be improved dramatically.

Think of it in reverse. If electric cars had been the standard going back 100 years, how good do you think batteries would be now? Pretty ****ing good.

I think you misunderstood me. I didn't say Amazon is a good investment.

Can we get off of climate change and back on topic ... slamming Rojo

observer_of_things wrote:

Can we get off of climate change and back on topic ... slamming Rojo

I take back what i said. Tesla is way undervalued according to this guy.

rojo,

The author of this article summarizes the market mania of which Tesla is just one anecdote.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-04-05/stupid-stupid-does

People never learn.

Igy

And you don't think any other company is going to be manufacturing batteries? Just like no other companies are going to be manufacturing solar panels or installing them? The reason why Musk's beloved Solar City was on the verge of bankruptcy before he bought it with Tesla share holder money (at a price above market value so that he could salvage he and his fellow board members' personal investments in the company) is because the market for solar panels / shingles is saturated. There are lots of players in the market already and very few of them are making money. The tiles they have coming out next year have been on the market from competitors for two years. When Tesla bought Solar City, they were losing $6 for every $1 in revenue. The reason Musk made money with PayPal is because he wasn't selling anything concrete. His visionary philosophy works well for software, works well for people like google, amazon, microsoft and yahoo who in the end are not selling a tenable product. It is an entirely different concept when you are talking about a hard product with real capital investments in equipment, etc. Tesla reminds me of another Bay Area company that promised to change the world, over promised and under delivered. Anyone else remember Solyndra?

If you are interested in the bull case . . .

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/piper-jaffray-tesla-one-growth-165500638.html

This seems relevant to this discussion:

"Traders short selling Tesla's (TSLA.O) soaring stock have lost $3.7 billion this year, eclipsing the combined losses of traders shorting Apple (AAPL.O), Amazon.com (AMZN.O) and Netflix (NFLX.O)."

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-stocks-idUSKBN17Y29O?