Welcome to The Morning Dump, bite-sized stories corralled into a single article for your morning perusal. If your morning coffee’s working a little too well, pull up a throne and have a gander at the best of the rest of yesterday.
How Much Money Did Bill Gates (Allegedly) Make Shorting Tesla?
Unsurprisingly, Tesla’s bad news morning turned into a bad news afternoon yesterday, with the stock dropping below $110 after Reuters reported that the company was going to extend its production slowdown in China longer than originally expected. For those keeping track at home, that’s a 25% loss in stock value in the past five (trading) days and a more than 10% drop in value in a day. The result? According to Barrons, Tesla is no longer one of the 10 biggest companies in the United States by market cap: Not great. In reading about the stock yesterday I was reminded of a little tiff between Bill Gates and Elon Musk that occurred earlier this year:
Bill said he hasn’t closed it out, so Elon told him to get lost. No idea if this is true lol pic.twitter.com/iuHkDG3bAd — Whole Mars Catalog (@WholeMarsBlog) April 22, 2022 Musk confirmed the above was real and that he believed Gates was shorting the company’s stock. If Gates really was short on Tesla (and it seems probable) then he could have made billions on that bet alone. Already this year, short sellers have made about $15 billion betting against Tesla. You should not take financial advice from a website run by someone who eats spaghetti in the shower, but the bears are starting to feel a tad overzealous. Sure, there’s bad news now, but Tesla is a profitable company with a strong brand. The exuberance that propelled the stock above what I thought was rational can work in the other direction. The stock is ticking up a bit this morning and may hold there if Musk can avoid tweeting some nonsense. (Ed. note: “If” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence. -PG)
Toyota Made A Lot Of Cars In November
Gather ye Rose-buds while ye may, Old Time is still a-flying: And this same flower that smiles to day, To morrow will be dying. – Robert Herrick The world is not flat and COVID-19 has exposed just how round the world actually is, leading to delays because of: semiconductors, lack of truckers to move things, lack of people to make the things the truckers move, blocked shipping channels, et cetera. The supply chain snafus have hit most companies, though not equally. Toyota, for instance, had a great November. From Automotive News: There are numerous outstanding issues that could interfere in the future so it behooves Toyota to keep pumping out cars while they can.
Lada Wants To Make More Than 400,000 Cars In 2023
Western companies began almost immediately divesting from Russian partnerships after the illegal and brutal invasion of Ukraine. One of the biggest was Renault, which sold its stake in AvtoVaz (its tie-up to produce cars under the Lada brand) for a single ruble. The catch was that, pending the resumption of normal relations, Renault could buy back its share for one ruble. Lada kept making cars, but the lack of parts and western sanctions led to many of their vehicles being built without airbags, radios, anti-lock brakes, or emissions controls. That situation has eased a little, but Lada is still trying to figure out how to build cars without help from the west. Now they’re looking to expand to over 400,000 cars in 2023, according to this Reuters report: By comparison, they made about 200,000 cars in 2022. “Yes, it has been approved,” RIA quoted AvtoVAZ president Maxim Sokolov as saying.
How Do You Pronounce Hyundai?
I think most Americans pronounce Hyundai like Sunday, as proposed in the advertisement above. When a Super Bowl ad tells us to do something, we generally do it. Also, I was with the North American CEO of Hyundai at a dinner last month and he pronounced it like Sunday so I assume that’s correct (inasmuch as any pronunciation can be correct). The British, I’ve noticed, pronounce it differently. That’s fine. The Brits can pronounce things however they want, although it sounds like Hyundai wants them to adopt the day in Hy-un-Dai:
— Rory Reid (@MrRoryReid) December 28, 2022 For once, the Brits are voting to stay with something, at least in Rory’s unscientific poll. The “hy” sound used by Korean speakers is not a common one in English and so the American pronunciation seems to come as close to the original Korean pronunciation as possible without forcing new sounds on the speaker. The British version is just made-up nonsense as far as I can tell. If you want to hear what it sounds like in Korean here’s an ad:
The Flush
At what price would you buy Tesla stock?
Even CarMax’s CEO Thinks Used Car Prices Are Too High Ford Raises The Ford F-150 Lighting Base Price Again Elon Musk Sells $3.6 Billion In Tesla Stock The Volvo XC40 and Escape are the only two SUVs that did well on new IIHS test Lucid Gets A $915 Million Boost From The Saudis McLaren’s V6 Artura Already Recalled For Fire-Causing Loose Nuts
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Photos: Tesla, AvtoVaz, Toyota
As far as I know he’s not come up with a single thing on his own, other than to occasionally muse “wouldn’t it be cool if…” and then thrown a bunch of money at it.
He’s got what I’ll call “billionaire brain mush syndrome.” Basically, he’s rich enough, and surrounded by enough sycophants, that he believes his every thought is genius and he can do nothing wrong. Thus, he never critically examines his own thoughts and perspective – he thinks he’s right the first time, every time, unquestionably. And he thinks everyone agrees with him too – he was genuinely thrown by the boos at the Dave Chappelle show because he didn’t imagine that someone didn’t think he was the best.
I genuinely think Tesla wouldn’t have got off the ground if 2022 Musk was the one in charge. He’s just go so, so much less intelligent as he got bigger and more influential.
But genius? Lmao. Have the Tesla stans found there way to The Autopian? Elon Musk is Tech Trump…a doofus lucky sperm who turned generational wealth into current mega wealth mainly through luck and a few decent investment decisions along the way. He’s an empty suit who simple minded people worship because wealth rules their worldviews and they wish they too could be “brash selfish wealthy man who never has to deal with consequences”.
GTFOH calling Musk a genius. In 3-4 years he’s going to be a no body who’s desperately clinging to relevance by doing reality TV and showing up on daytime TV and whatever the popular social media platform is then saying COOL EDGY STUFF TO TRIGGER THE SNOWFLAKES!
While Trump and Musk aren’t alike in their accomplishments, Musk is similar to Trump in that his personality is polarizing. I don’t meet a lot of people who are neutral on Musk. Some people worship the guy and others hate him. Personally, I think he is a such an epic douche that I have a negative opinion of him despite admiring what he has done (I like Teslas, but I would never buy one because I can’t stand the guy). While his personality gets him a lot of attention, I wonder if he could be more successful if he were less of an ass.
I am so curious to see the tax returns. It’s going to be like reading the business plan for an NFT startup.
The “smart money” was on traditional banking, and that even if electronic transfers did become common, traditional banking firms would dominate them just as they dominated checking accounts and credit cards.
Musk’s money was all-in on PayPal.
The “smart money” said electric cars weren’t viable, and if they were, they were too early, and that even if now was the time, NiMH batteries were the only viable solution and we’d have to wait for the patents to expire before getting started.
Musk’s money was all-in on Tesla.
The “smart money” said private space travel was a fool’s errand, and reusable rockets would never work. Any reusable spacecraft would have to be developed by NASA in partnership with existing aerospace firms.
Musk’s money was huge on SpaceX.
At least three separate times he saw things about the future that few others could. And all three times, he saw them clearly and brightly enough to place huge bets on his vision. There is a degree of genius in that, and to dismiss it casually because we hate the true personality that has been revealed is to dismiss the notion of genius itself.
Sure, he wouldn’t have been begging in the streets had he failed, but you can’t pretend he didn’t risk huge financial changes in his potential lifestyle on at least four different occasions, three of which have been successful so far.
I don’t think the fourth huge risk, Twitter, is going to work out he way he envisions.
Retroactively claiming that PayPal, Tesla and SpaceX were all obvious good bets to everyone who lived through those years is the real “COOL EDGY STUFF”.
He bought Tesla when the engineers were already on their way to a functional vehicle. He was such a glory hog pain in the ass with such bad ideas for a production car that the original Tesla guys bailed. If not for Musk’s meddling, Tesla cars would have arrived much earlier and with door handles that work in the ice and aren’t $1k to replace when they don’t. Musk money helped Tesla. Musk himself has been an almost constant obstacle – continuing to today when he’s spending all his time on Twitter yet still tanked Tesla stock from a distance. Without his meddling in design and production, Tesla could have been in a much better position today. As it stands, real actual car makers are about to make his poorly built vehicles irrelevant.
Space-X wasn’t really genius. It’s just someone coming into an established industry that was about to go from public to private. NASA has been putting rockets, satellites and people in space for a very long time. Now they pay contractors to do it.
I haven’t read David’s article about his move yet so I fully expected the link to take me to a Tweet of Elon’s explaining how he eats while he shits, showers and shaves because efficiency or some other excuse for being a weirdo. Glad it led me to Tracy, who is indeed a weirdo but of the lovable kind. If he was eating in the shower I’m sure he had his reasons. Probably the only place in the house clean enough to prepare food, lol. I kid, kind of. I was a bachelor of similar tastes at one point so I know how dire things can get.
Insert “Never Fucking Was” meme here. Because it wasn’t. TSLA wasn’t making products, or posting hundreds of billions in revenue. They were hiding the cash hemorrhaging by selling emissions credits to FCAtlantis for billions of dollars. When their revenue was $6.8B, more than half of that was selling emissions credits to actual 10 biggest companies.
“Elon asked if he still had a half billion dollar short position on $TSLA.”
Because this has to be said over and over and over again: if you believe anything Elmo says, then you are as deeply unintelligent as he is. There is no ‘half billion dollar short position’ on TSLA. There is no illuminati cabal shorting TSLA because they want to see it fail. Less than 3% of TSLA’s shares – that’s it – are shorted. That’s public data. For comparison? 3.75% of F (Ford) shares are shorted. There is no fucking conspiracy, there are no ‘massive short sellers,’ and anybody with more than 50 uncontested IQ points would be shorting any stock at a P/E of more than 25, forget 200.
Musk needs to pull a Lowtax.
“Now they’re looking to expand to over 400,000 cars in 2023”
Good luck finding workers or buyers when your genocidal dictator-for-life sends everyone to die for the Nazi cause. Permanent blockade of the terrorist state of ruzzia now.
“Hyundai wants them to adopt the day in Hy-un-Dai:”
… wait, I’ve been pronouncing it wrong this whole time? Well shit. At least I got Kia right. Right? Right!?
“At what price would you buy Tesla stock?”
Not at any price. They have no future. They had first mover advantage, and rested on their laurels, because they’re micromanaged by a narcissistic, racist maniac who is now claiming he designed the Model 3. More than 50% of their revenue comes from selling emissions credits to established manufacturers. 2021 was their best year ever, with 302,000 cars sold in the US – a number that Toyota does every 5 weeks. And in Europe? VAG outsold Tesla 2:1 counting only BEVs. Like for like, apples for apples, it was not even close. And VAG’s EVs have 10 year newer technology across the board, don’t insist that you need to control wipers and open your glovebox from a glued-on iPad, and cost orders of magnitude less – meaning average consumers can actually buy them.
Regarding dictators, Nazis and hiring staff… If Henry Ford (an actual Nazi sympathizer) could do it, I’m sure the people at Tesla can as well.
Regarding VAG outselling Tesla 2:1 in the EU… For now. VAG has been protected by EU tariffs and also by Tesla not having enough production capacity. Those two realities are coming to an end as the Berlin plant ramps up.
But globally speaking, Tesla is way ahead of VAG. But in terms of BEV units sold (and excluding plug-in hybrids), Tesla is #1 by a wide margin. Scroll to the bottom of this link: https://cleantechnica.com/2022/12/05/top-selling-auto-brands-auto-groups-for-ev-sales-globally/
… and you’ll see that for Tesla outsells VAG globally by a ratio of 2-to-1.
Nothing you said, have to say, or about your life as a whole is valid, or has any worth.
Hard to say, as I’ve never owned stock in anything. My financial speculation runs more towards gambling on the future desirability of early-’80s Austin Rover Group products, so pretty clearly I shouldn’t be allowed to go anywhere near the stock market.
In college, we had a lot of Japanese students. They tried to pronounce my name, but the D R sound was not something they could hit. To them, my name came out “Deroo” or “Delebu” which was more than enough effort.
On the other side of things, I had a roommate named Yosuke, but the RA had written Yusuke. It was months before he let on that we were all pronouncing his name wrong. He thought Americans had trouble with it like our Japanese students had trouble with my name.
