TSLA Terathread - For the week of Sep 15

Good morning here is the link to last week's Terathread. https://www.reddit.com/r/RealTesla/comments/1nbjnja/tsla_terathread_for_the_week_of_sep_08/

The stock was sitting at around 1.30% gain premarket and then out of nowhere jumps to 7% in the span of like 10 minutes. No news. Tell me how this is not manipulated. It's trillion dollar company it takes huge amounts of money to move the price. In a sane world SEC would be all over this ages ago.

He bought 2.5m of his own shares

420 today let's go dudes! 😎 Stock will be $500 by Christmas and only 42x overpriced

The only way left to pump it. He wants to be richest man in the world again.

Ridiculous, this must be illegal somewhere?

P/E 250

The USA no longer recognises illegality when rich people do it, especially if they're on the far-right spectrum.

It’s like the stock market is no longer a means for businesses to raise funding / tool for incentives anymore - it’s just downright cultish behavior. Elon Musk buying in for the sake of his war against the left etc.

Not this time, Elmo is a paper tiger, propping himself up.

"against the left" - it's against everyone who isn't a far-right white supremacist, which includes a ton of people who don't identify as being 'on the left'.

Buying in 1B nets him 40B? Kinda crazy man

This is his last hurrah, declining sales will push the p/e so far out, the algos wont make Tesla investable anymore for some of the big funds.

There are literally no words to appropriately describe the insanity around that stock. Wow

*MUSK REPORTS PURCHASE OF OVER 2.5M TESLA SHARES: FILING

Bullish it means he believes in TSLA! First time the board or CEO has bought any shares in a very long time Edit: y'all aren't true believers

Tesla P/E ratio is 235.68 Apple P/E ratio is 31.24 Apple market cap with Tesla P/E ratio - $26.18 Trillion Dollars

He just wants to be richer than Larry. In 6 months, Teslas revenue will be halved, no sales, no earnings, and a P/E of 500. Tesla is doomed, its not a question of if, more when.

So you're saying Apple is just a lazy legacy tech company.

He believes in the power of perception. Every day for weeks he’s leaked little morsels of information to have the share price steadily climb even when the fundamentals of the company continue to get worse. I think it’s hilarious that 2 days after he attempted to start a race war in Great Britain he buys 1 Billion in TSLA (his only publicly traded company). The stock would’ve tanked today otherwise.

Elmo wants the share price to match the P/E

He purchased SVP Zhu’s bailout on Friday apparently. Zhu announced a sellout of 7M shares.

Buys $1 billion so he can sell $1trillion later?

So wanting to be the first Trillionaire Felon lol . I think he is running out of ideas to pump

So let me get this straight. This isn’t a company share buyback but Elon buying this to pump the stock. All while waiting for the shareholders to approve a potential 1 trillion dollar compensation package for him. How is his not blatant securities fraud.

If you’ve got a brain, you own Tesla stock today

Because securities fraud is a myth in this timeline

Here we go with the racist rants because you weren’t smart enough to buy the stock.

War against the left. LMAO. What a dummy

Not just money moves stock prices up or down. Market sentiment and confidence moves the market.

Elonversary time. Nine years ago: "*Actually our speed on the line is incredibly slow. I think we are…in terms of the extra velocity of vehicles on the line, it’s probably about, including both X an S, it’s maybe five centimeters per second. This is very slow...Elon: I’m confident we can get to at least one meter per second. So, a 20-fold increase.*" - Confident Con Artist, September 14, 2016 I really don't know what's more insane - Saying an assembly line will move 1 meter per second or Believing that nonsense. *"I think a lot of people think I must spend a lot of time with media or on business things but actually almost all my time, 80% of it is spent on engineering and design. So it's developing next-generation product. That's 80% of it.*" - Tweetoking who just can't stop Xitting 145 times a day, Sep 15, 2016

How is it securities fraud? Is it illegal for company executives to buy shares in the companies they run? Don’t think so.

He’s getting ready to purchase the UK elections so he can turn Britain’s against each other and fuck their economy too

Do I understand this right: is the money he’s using to buy these shares coming from loans that are backed by his other existing shares?

Buys one billion of the stock because there's fewer and fewer ways to pump the stock. Cybertruck: total flop "Cheap" model: China already did that Semi: vaporware Optimus: lightyears behind competition Energy: stiff competition worldwide Cybertaxi: Waymo is *way* better (thanks for the pun Elon) "First Buddy"/car promo at the WH: not anymore FSD: needs lidar Roadster 2: lol Musk buying one billion of the stock signals he must be on to something or knows something(and of course it works because TSLA is up premarket) but I'm pretty sure he will be out of ideas soon to pump to stock. Hint: trying to start civil wars in several of your biggest markets won't help, nor trying to encourage violence against Democrats.

Think about this. April 8th 2025 - TSLA closed at $221 This week it has the possibility to be up $200 on nothing but declining fundamentals over the last 5 months. Declining market share, declining revenue, declining public perception... but think about the future!? Robotaxi is half-baked at best and far behind schedule. So Optimus, oh yeah the market for personal robotics will be great. Also industrial robotics and automous mobile robots are well established. And manufacturers love to stay with companies they know and have spare parts for... Honestly where did $200 in stock come from over this pitiful 5 months? Remember everyone delivering real value is all about pumps and promises. No need for material success.

Ha we were thinking about the same thing at the same time

yup, he'd have probably lost $1B on rebalancing if it were back at $300 at EOQ. $1B to Elon is like $1000 to me.

April puts opened up this month. Added one to the pile: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/TSLA260417P00250000/

From this and other similar comments it is clear there are many of us thinking the same way. Firstly, tell me if you think I am missing something, but Tesla is going to be in negative earnings territory from next month onwards for the foreseeable future, and the share price is all pump, meme and bubble. So what happens next? Does anyone think S&P will want to keep it in the 500? I'd've thought they'd want it out as soon as they can so it's not in there when it does crash. I know they've kept e.g. Intel in, despite continuing losses, but even one quarter in the red opens the door to deletion, and one might expect the members of the S&P Index Committee to be able to see what we can. Does anyone have a handle on the amount of selling that de-indexing of TSLA would initiate, and can we form an opinion as to whether it would, inevitably, collapse the share price? Is there something else i have missed? A final coinciding observation is Elon's predictive timescales seem to be shortening, e.g. from June "probably within a month or two" for Robotaxi to become profitable!

A **con man** is literally a *confidence man*—someone who gains a victim’s confidence in order to deceive, trick, or swindle them. -- ChatGPT

the profit requirement is for inclusion, not removal

https://www.gurufocus.com/news/3107815/tsla-analyst-rating-wedbush-reiterates-outperform-with-500-price-target-tsla-stock-news https://xcancel.com/Teslarati/status/1967330545903517931 When this shit reaches $500, what even more deranged reason do you think Dan Ives will pull out of a garish hat to increase his valuation to $1000?

Absurd analogy. So who is the victim here? Everyone who just made a bundle are certainly not victims. Everyone who is dumb enough not to own the stock aren’t victims. They’re just dumb. So who is being swindled?

the TA says yes, but the fundamentals say no. I'm a happy 2023 Model Y owner but that Tesla is going away. Gone, really.

I wouldn’t hold your breath. 485000 cars being sold in its worst quarter. Where is it going?

It is a necessary, but not sufficient, requirement for both: "A company that substantially violates one or more of the eligibility criteria for the S&P Composite 1500 may be deleted from the respective component index at the Index Committee’s discretion." source [https://www.spglobal.com/spdji/en/documents/methodologies/methodology-sp-us-indices.pdf](https://www.spglobal.com/spdji/en/documents/methodologies/methodology-sp-us-indices.pdf) The S&P Composite 1500 is a portmanteau of S&P 500, S&P MidCap 400, and S&P SmallCap 600. TSLA was eligible to join for c. a year before it was included. If the Index Committee were reluctant to let it in perhaps that means they will be keen to get it out. What do you all think?

If there is a better EV out there for the money, what is it? We have 5 Teslas in our family and none of us would own anything different because all the other EVs we tried aren’t close to Tesla. Anyone who wants an EV and won’t buy the very best EV out there because they don’t like the CEO, is just blinded by stupidity.

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SA links are apparently banned on Reddit. If you want to edit out the link, I can approve the post.

well we can say the longs got their $420.69 price again. Hopefully they use it as an exit not an entry

Long term unemployment rising and stocks at record highs What a backwards set of incentives

I think they'll have positive earnings for at least the next 9 months. Seems to me that in some fashion their credits are "banked" and they have some reserve of them to draw from, as needed. And I have to assume some of the credit sales are long term contracts that didn't anticipate the entire credit system would be dissolved. So they've still got credits coming in for a while, and they can reduce R & D as needed to account for lagging car sales...for a little while.

Done, thanks!

^the ^profit ^is ^part ^of ^the ^con

bEcAuSe ThEy DoN’t LiKe ThE cEo

TSLA has reached extraordinary scam levels. The news is: *“Musk bought 2.57 million shares at various prices on Friday, worth around $1 billion, according to a Monday SEC filing.”* As a result, TSLA jumped from $360 to $400 based on a hidden Friday purchase. Musk used $1B of his own money (largely TSLA equity) to buy back his own shares, and today the stock climbed another 6.5% on the back of this news. This is a textbook pump-and-dump, and the SEC is a farce if it doesn’t step in. It may run higher for now, but when this bubble bursts, the collapse will be epic. Enron destroyed Arthur Andersen -- watch Tesla do the same to PwC.

worst quarter so far

Napkin math: Musk just paid $1 billion for stonk. As I type this, TSLA is up $80 billion...Musk owns around 1/5 of TSLA, so he's up $16 billion. Let's assume he's allowed to leaverage 25% of his stonk - he just created $4 billion out of thin air to fund his lifestyle and other losing ventures. He's not dumb. He's actually quite cunning for a con man. IMHO, this buy is timed to juice the stonk before the next shareholder meeting - at which stonkholders will vote on whether or not to give the BOD control over a $60 billion slush fund of stonk just in case their appeal on his compensation fails, and also his $1 trillion lotto winnings.

Just take some of that extra money (that you don’t have) and buy stocks and you can be rich too! So easy

SEC has been gutted long time ago. Remember how he got in trouble over saying he will take tesla private? Part of that deal was that lawyers were supposed to review his every public message. It's obvious that is not happening. Since then he was caught in multiple lies. I don't mean overpromising "FSD by the end of the year" but blatant lies. Not a peep from SEC.

Might be the single dumbest move in the history of the stock market

unemployment is actually not flashing red right now: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1MjRj

Thanks so much for engaging. I know there had been a revision, from car-has-to-be-delivered-by-end-Sept, to simply requiring a modest deposit to have been made by then. Is there some way we can gauge the likely size of this? Is it enough to keep Tesla in profit? Also, can they really slash R & D and remain credible? Most of the share price is predicated on amazing achievements depending on the product such endeavours.

[https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/sep/15/no-10-condemns-language-used-by-elon-musk-at-far-right-uk-rally-as-dangerous](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/sep/15/no-10-condemns-language-used-by-elon-musk-at-far-right-uk-rally-as-dangerous)

I think TSLA will hit all time high by the end of this week.

>can they really slash R & D Well they've given up on developing cars...and it doesn't matter how much or how little they spend on FSD - it will never work. So what's the harm in spending less?

I think TSLA will go red by the end of the day.

I agree with all that - however I imagine they have to appear to be making progress, or at least trying to, on FSD, Optimus or both, or the share price could collapse even if they maintain positive earnings and stay in the S&P 500.

Where are you getting 485k as being the worst quarter? Tesla sold 337k on q1 2025 and 385k in q2. Q3 isn't looking like it will be much better.

They're constantly making progress on FSD...by gradually moving the goal posts and expectations. As I type this, Branch Elonians are having Muskgasms over how the robotaxi geofence is "rapidly expanding"..."much faster than Waymo ever expanded". Never mind the driver in the front seat. At this point, Tesla ownership (and TSLA ownership) is practically a religion. They want to believe, so they let theselves easily be fooled. Its not like TSLA will ever have to give back the $billions they snookered people out of over FSD. Hell, they ***keep selling*** FSD...just with different fine print that lowers the expectations. And if FSD is any guide, TSLA has several years worth of fake Optimus pumps and goalpost shifting ahead of it. Yes, I agree the house of cards will eventually fall. But for a while now I've believed it will be something completely out of left field...nothing any of us could predict, and certainly nothing as mundane as the financials, that does it.

My working hypothesis includes the S&P Index Committee seeing what we can, and being keen to avoid such a huge house of cards\* being in the 500 when it tanks. If so, when earning go negative, they will kick it out, and then my question is how much selling will this induce, and will it overwhelm Branch Elonians' resources when they try to 'buy the dip'? \* Presumably the largest ever; current TSLA market cap $1.32T, c. 20 times peak Enron c. $70B.

Wow 20 times as big as Enron...for a company that sells half as many cars as Nissan. I think TSLA's only long term hope is to invest more into crypto.

IIRC, Tesla sells *cars*...shouldn't they be in the midst of the EOQ delivery rush, right about now? I wonder if any of the people playing the TSLA slot machine are taking a look at how *car* sales are going.

as we say, Tesla's primary product is TSLA, and they've sold $1.29T worth of it.

PwC screwed up the oscars , if that didn't destroy them why should this in the new world order of "nothing matters anymore anywhere"

I thought he lost the twitter nanny a year or two ago.

I'm curious as to why musk bought the shares now at $390? Why not 6 months ago when it was $220? Or when it was $150 last year? And if its something musk knows where they unlocked something amazing, why the board and other people are selling shares?

Option 1: You never know when the Ketamine hits. Option 2: Needs cover for a terrible quarter. Option 3: Setting the stage for moves related to the compensation plan that was only recently cooked up. Option 4: He is stretched too thin as is and needs this extra leveraged pump for some reason.

My guess is it was simply that Larry Ellison was richer than him for a day and his ego couldn't allow that.

Option 1b: Larry Ellison taunted him during during said Ketamine hit.

Choice quote from a Diner review today: > The staff were present and trying their best, but the lack of automation felt like a missed opportunity. If that doesn't sum up Tesla the idea vs Tesla the actuality.

Tesla formerly sold cars. They have found it's more effective not to make or sell cars.

A catalyst!

PR stunt to drive the price up. I expect that this quarter will be even worse than expected.  It makes no sense to buy at this amount when he gets 10 times this amount in stock deals for selling Xai or just in the pay package he is already fighting for.  This is literally less than 1% of the holdings he already has. It has no effect on his voting power or control of the company. He did spend a billion to make 15 billion but it’s not like he can get that out of the company. Maybe he is trying to refinance his loans.

it will fall sharp tomorrow when the market open. will not go up more than $420 anymore. I am expecting a big fall %7+ at the market openin at 9:30 am EST

At the current Tesla Market Cap you could buy GM 23 times, GM had revenue of $147bn, twice Teslas turnover, and a profit of $6bn.

If Elon had a few spare billions in liquid assets, or a line of credit, he could, presumably, amuse himself by holding the price at exactly $420.69 for days, probably weeks. Maybe he reads this thread and will pick the idea up!

Revenue? But where is GM's geriatric automaton, now retired from scooping popcorn, stuttering like his creator, who can guess there might be Coca Cola in a kitchen he can take you to, if you have a spare couple of hours and the patience to shuffle along with him, eh? Oh, GM don't have one! Ha! And when was the last time you saw one of their cars on the wrong side of a double-yellow line, nobody in the driver's seat, eh? Their dull cars always have someone In the driver's seat! And how famous is their CEO, eh? Can you even think of one memorable incident involving him, or her? Nothing! Not a single accusation of pedophilia, not even a solitary questionable salute!

Elmo has lost his biggest market in Europe and the UK. 600m people that wont be buying Telsa shit. The US is 400m people. What a moron he is.

The timing suggests he might have wanted to draw attention away from [his appearance at a certain controversial political event in London on Saturday](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/sep/15/no-10-condemns-language-used-by-elon-musk-at-far-right-uk-rally-as-dangerous).

Bloomberg) -- Tesla Inc. is being investigated by US auto safety regulators over issues with door handles on certain Model Y vehicles that could result in occupants becoming trapped inside.

**Tesla sales fall a worrisome 10% YOY**, even with the most EV brand recognition and new product launch. The Tesla pushed forward the release of its new model, the Tesla Y L SUV, to steal sales from the ONVO L90. Not since the debacle of the Cybertruck has a Tesla model failed so spectacularly. Terrible reviews of Tesla Y L show the ONVO L90 being superior in features, performance and price. The ONVO L90 is so superior to the Tesla Y L, online netizens have joked that the **Tesla Y L stands for "Loser"**, to describe the losers buying a Tesla Y L when they can buy the ONVO L90. The Tesla Y L sold even worse Li Auto's miserable Li 8 launch, with **only 1,030 Tesla Y L** sold. 1,030 fell far short of 9-10,000 that some were projecting. Tesla's Y L will likely fall far short of ONVO L90's 10,525 launch.

I'm disgusted to see how Tesla stock has gone up over the last week. Musk goes off on a right-wing violent rant and not one major U.S. media outlet has an article or says one word about it. I never thought I would see the media in the U.S. become neutered like this.

That's the scary part. For a country that prides itself on "freedom of speech", the media seems scared of being sued for reporting facts.

Unfortunately in this country wealth gives you the ability to say or do anything. And I’m sure he’s paid off countless people to either sing his praises or not expose dirt or outright illegal activity. The stock price isn’t the company. Eventually when the tide turns it’s going to free fall, again, for about the 3rd or 4th time in the last 5 years. The market is currently in a super bubble, and the state of economy really doesn’t support it. The rich are doing well, and that’s about it.

$420! Funding secured, time to take TSLA private!

That's honestly everything in the US today with politics unfortunately. Musk isn't a rabid racist. He's 'eccentric' and 'outspoken'. RFK Jr isn't an absolute looney toon with no business heading public health he's "taking an unorthodoxed approach". Trump is suing the New York Times for defamation and seeking $15B in damages which is ridiculous given his actual net worth. But for Musk? Being wrong about a story could put a company out of business. Hell that's basically what his buddy Thiel did to Gawker by financing Hulk Hogan's sex tape lawsuit. He's also literally trying to get the FCC to remove the broadcasting licenses of MSNBC and CNN. This is one of the problems with wealth accumulation and corporate consolidation. At a certain point you just need to get a few companies too worried about taking financial losses and all of sudden freedom of the press and reach of information is severely limited. I hate Musk but he was right about some things when it came to the whole deplatforming people where a few companies can just end your livelihood if they agree to (I don't think that happened much in practice but it is a risk). Similarly look at what's going on with all these firings around people saying the wrong things about Charlie Kirk, it has an obvious chilling effect on free speech and self expression. Things quickly move from punishing people for doing very reprehensible things to just everyone wanting to avoid anything remotely controversial. That's incredibly dangerous in today's world because we literally have someone in the White House who doesn't want anything bad being said about anything they're doing. I mean yeah ideally the Supreme Court should rule and stop these practices but I doubt that'll happen and even if it did, who would be first in line to rage about the court overstepping their bounds and interfering with private business? Why Mr. Free Speech himself, Elon Musk.

Wild that the punishment for that was $20M? And a Twitter sitter that never happened. You too can be a CEO that makes material statements about your stock and suffer a fine of 0.01% of your networth

CNN and MSNBC don't have "broadcasting licenses".

Right they literally aren't broadcast networks, but still that's exactly what he threatened. Yes it's ridiculous as is the NYT lawsuit, but the messaging is clear: don't say anything bad about the President, his administration or his business ventures. He's got both the legislature and court on his sides and what the law actually says today under existing prior precedent is rarely indicative of how it'll be interpreted or amended tomorrow.

12 year Elonversary: “*My opinion is it’s a bridge too far to go to fully autonomous cars...It’s incredibly hard to get the last few percent.*” - Robo-Swindler during more lucid times, September 16, 2013

7 year Elonversary: "*Exciting to see some Tesla collision repair operations already completing within 24 hrs. Aiming for same day soon, then under an hour. Goal is for repaired car to be better than before accident. Should always be true if damaged/used parts are correctly replaced with newer parts.*" - Griftimus, September 16, 2018

Cant wait for the sales guidance update next month.

Sales are projected to be down by 30% which beats the analyst expectations of a 42% decline in sales which is bullshit for Tesla. Stock rises 15% on news

They must be within seconds at this point.

A squad of Optimi swarm the car, moving so fast they can only be seen with a strobe light, and faster than an Indy car pit-stop, the car is repaired.

Grok 5 will be able to predict an accident before it happens, look up the driver's social accounts and flame them as a leftist loser on X all without you leaving your vehicle.

The limiting factor in attaching the quarter panel should be the air resistance.

7 year Elonversary: "*Turns out MCT can go well beyond Mars, so will need a new name*" SpaceGrifter, September 16, 2018 MCT Stood for "Mars Colonial Transporter, because...well..you know; the Renderings went to Mars...so obviously that means establishing a Colony is right around the corner. But as per Technogrifter, the Renderings could now go past Mars, so new name was: BFR - officially "Big Falcon Rocket", but oh that Technoking was being clever with the name. What a rascal. Here's the "design": 100t payload, 100 passengers. Its goal was seemingly less ambitious than Mars - would take a trip around the moon with a paying ~~mark~~ *passenger*! A billionaire named Yusaku Maezawa bought a round trip ticket for 2023!!!: [https://www.space.com/41871-elon-musk-spacex-bfr-spaceship-science-fiction-legacy.html](https://www.space.com/41871-elon-musk-spacex-bfr-spaceship-science-fiction-legacy.html) Alas, as anyone who's ever paid for FSD knows, once Elon has your money, he becomes too bored to actually deliver what you paid for. He's a visionary after all - so screw the BFR, toss those renderings out, and hello "Starship". Oddly enough its goals seem even smaller at the moment: success is gauged by clearing the launch pad before the inevitable calamity.

Yes! Literal fascist dictator taking over is described as "pushing the boundaries of executive power, unorthodox legal action" etc. bullshit sanewashing. Land of the free and home of the brave, lol. Most limp dicked response to authoritarian takeover in history.

Can someone remind me what TSLAs current valuation is based on. I'm thinking dancing robots, but I'm not sure if I'm confusing this with the weird dream I had a few nights back.

Ever seen Robocop?

Say 200 000 units recalled at $3000 per unit replacement, logistics etc. $600m hit. let that sink in.

Sounds like were hitting $690 today

11 year Elonversary: "*They will be a factor of 10 safer than a person in a six-year time frame,*" - Grifter-Supervised, September 17, 2014

Presently it takes too long getting the roll of double stick tape started.

No, but MSNBC is owned by a company that does, as NBC has "owned and operated" stations. The distinction won't be important to Trump. The CBS-Paramount-Skydance megamerger was held up because CBS also has O&O stations. That's where Trump can get the FCC to step in and do the shakedown.

It appears Tesla tried to brush the Powerwall issue under the rug, it is all started to kick off now though, some people have been waiting weeks for replacement batteries.

Solar panels, robotaxis, robots, flying cars, who knows what it will be next. Whatever is necessary to make up to boost the stock price

I don't get how anyone can look at Musk's Twitter posts over the last week and not think the man is completely insane. We've gone from everyone on the left caused Kirk's death by encouraging violence -> Musk literally calling for violence in the UK -> A pinned retweet of JK Rowling saying words cannot cause violence and are a way to silence dissent. Sprinkled in between is Musk still maintaining that sites like Reddit are indoctrinating and causing hate. I seriously wonder if he's just completely fried his own memory at this point. Like... if read back something he said a week earlier to him would he know he said it at this point? As in stuff he's actually typed not his sentence fragment, emoji or one word responses. Things he took the time to author himself.

Honestly at this point he's too rich to ever be broke and too rich to ever face justice or consequences. The only hope is that he fast tracks the frying of his own brain. Maybe a few more public appearances while completely lost in a K hole? Other than that he's probably untouchable

JK Rowling quoted Hitler this week in support of her argument. Then after some backlash, quoted Hitler again. Then there's the Sinclair billionaires tonight. Billionaires need to be institutionalized. All of them.

He's bet the farm on AI at this point with both Tesla and xAI. If the AI bubble pops and neither of his companies can actually monetize the tens of billions they've been spending on these projects he's definitely going to be vulnerable, both because of the loss of his own wealth and the money he'll have lost for all his billionaire buddies that have been backing him on all these projects for years. That's pretty much all he has going for him at this point, the fact that he can still make people money in some fashion. Once that's gone he has basically negative value.

Unsurprisingly Musk has the same mix of his family company and his personal investor friends running around in xAI and its money at this point too and it's caused a lot of executive departures there too. We all know how well that worked out for Twitter. Let's see how he'll bail out this bigger combined abomination after he tanks its value yet again. Article: https://archive.is/PvJCR

7 year Elonversary: How it started: >SpaceX: Japanese billionaire to be first "private passenger" on moon mission\*...A Japanese art collector and billionaire fashion entrepreneur is **paying SpaceX an undisclosed but "significant" amount** to charter a **flight around the moon** as early as **2023** aboard the company's planned BFR rocket, a mission that will include a half-dozen other invited artists for what would be the first privately funded moon mission. \- September 18, 2018 How its going: >Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa **canceled his planned flight** around the moon on June 1 due to delays with SpaceX's Starship megarocket, which has yet to fly a single crewed test flight. \- June 7, 2024 That's right - Billionaires were getting Musked long before he conned them into investing in Xitter. Anyway - lets check in on that rocket's progress in 2023, to see how close it got to that lunar mission: *“If we get far enough away from the launch pad before something goes wrong, I would consider that to be a success. Just don’t blow up the launch pad.”* \- Technogrifter Who Doesn't Give Refunds for Imaginary Moon Trips, April 19, 2023

> Linda Yaccarino, who was chief executive of X; Mike Liberatore; who was xAI’s chief financial officer; Igor Babuschkin, a former Google research scientist who was one of Musk’s first recruits to co-found xAI; and xAI’s general counsel, Robert Keele. When your CFO and general counsel leave apparently over unrealistic financial projections and mismanagement you re in trouble. Because those are the people who should solve those problems and apparently they deemed it impossible. XAi makes no sense. Musk is spending insane amounts of money on infrastructure while grok market share is tiny. There is just no way they will be profitable. Ever.

If I'm reading this right, Musk recruited some SV talent to install at Xai and give it an appearance of legitimacy...he raised a gazillion dollars from wealthy idiots...then used the cash to ~~invest in ai~~ *bail out Xitter*...and he moved the usual cadre of sycophants and fixers into the executive offices of Xai, forcing out the original leadership. Seems "on brand" for Musk. My biggest fear: Musk will snooker the US government to invest heavily in Xai, and we will fall hopelessly behind after it turns out to be all hat - no cattle. Kind of like that moon mission Musk is working on.

Could you imagine if Musk let doctors give him a physical and a psychological evaluation? The dissonance of his worshippers bends my mind - he's so very important and irreplaceable, they're lobbying to give him a trillion dollars!!! But nobody dare utters to him: "hey, maybe you dial back the social media addiction and drug use". The guy is fried.

My theory is he's seeking to snooker the US government into giving him a big fat contract for "AI Services". Its sort of his MO (see SpaceX), and there are all sorts of military applications for AI. Edit: I just did a Google search: >In July 2025, Elon Musk's xAI secured a contract worth up to $200 million with the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) as part of a broader initiative to adopt advanced artificial intelligence capabilities. xAI was one of four AI companies selected, along with OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic, with each receiving a contract ceiling of $200 million.

They're burning cash at an astounding rate currently and literally predicating their potential success on their ability to raise capital currently. That small market share they do have.. well it's the result of them dramatically undercutting their competitors on pricing too. Nothing about the business is sustainable and attaching Twitter to it likely only made things worse and obscured the illusion of them having a big external contract. Apparently a lot of their early funding was literally predicated on potential products and usages which haven't really materialized yet either, but I'm sure that hasn't stopped Musk from claiming they'll be cash flow positive in a year or something. Meanwhile he's already start to raid Tesla's piggy bank too. Having the CEO, CFO and general counsel jump at once really demonstrates that this isn't just some quibble over management style but serious concerns about the viability of the business as a whole and the legality of statements they're tasked with defending.

I think he's more interested in government contracts than actual investment at this point. He desperately wants to show high revenue growth from stable contracts to suck up more capital and increase the valuation of the company. I'm sure some of that OBBB and tariff money will end up going to 'modernization' of a bunch of agencies under the guise of firing workers and replacing them with AI. It'll probably be a disaster that makes the healthcare.gov debacle look tame by comparison but Musk won't care as long as it stops the company from imploding for another year or two.

> Should always be true if damaged/used parts are correctly replaced with newer parts." Does that include "gigacast" bodies?

still pisses me off that Elon's $1B buy last week moved the market and optics so much. $1B to him is literally $1,000 to me, and his capital position should be throwing off $1B/month if invested competently.

CFOs tend to not like when you use the company's finances as a slush fund to do whatever. At least Tesla makes (decreasing) money. xAI's finances are surely a disaster.

Even if xAI had solid finances and great revenues running all the money and accounting through Musk's family office is a ridiculously risky move. It's pretty clear from the article Musk doesn't want to bother with the day to day of running the company and there's probably little to no oversight of Birchall at this point. Part of what prevents or detects fraud a lot of the time is that statements and requests have to go across the desks of multiple people and someone notices something is off. Though I do have to admit it would be hilarious if Musk's downfall happens because Birchall decided to Andy Dufresne him and just walks off with a ton of his money.

A member of Elon's fan club said "He is doing less drugs now and he is focused" . . . All I could think is stuff like the following clip, and how low of a bar we have set for TechnoJesus [https://www.youtube.com/shorts/9zzSiPmzX-4](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/9zzSiPmzX-4)

my April puts would be ITM if we'd gone down 25% this month instead of up 25%, but this week I reloaded with an OTM April put at least. Fading every pump up has worked well since S&P inclusion, and Elon is his own worst enemy now.

This is an insane runup but that's how bubbles work. Spirit animals seem euphoric. BTC and GME up. NVidia up. Intel up. It seems like bad timing for a short still. TSLA is just one small stock out of the whole of the market. You should see weakness somewhere before you short IMO. If everyone is manic then the stock has no chance of dropping. Mania never lasts forever. And indeed, it can turn on a dime. But in the vast majority of cases, you have at least a few days where you can short and still get a decent price.

while you're certainly not wrong, I'm looking at the March-April timeframe since I think that will be 'Max Q' for TSLA. On the Q2 call Elon made this promise: * "I think we'll probably have autonomous ride-hailing in probably half the population of the U.S. by the end of the year [blah blah blah] I think we’ll technically be able to do it. So assuming we have regulatory approvals, it’s *probably addressing half the population of the US* by the end of the year." and this: * "We'll be ready with new, more affordable models available for everyone in Q4." TSLA has a P/E ratio of 240 now. NVDA is at 50. And TSLA's is TTM! I think as Elon said in the EC the next few quarters are going to be "pretty rough", with the current price giving us a 500 P/E or even 1000 (I suspect the market is going to be surprised at how fast the regulatory credits go away for Elon). As for the 2nd quote, my thesis is that given Elon's new "low effort" stance for Tesla, the 'cheaper model' is just going to be a decontented Model Y so Tesla can hit the current IRA-subsidized pricepoints with something, instead of seeing their US sales go away entirely. (I drive a 2023 HW4 Model Y AWD and LOVE it but I did get it for $6000 off list plus the IRA tax credit). I don't see Optimus developing into anything; whatever Tesla can do with that other teams can too. So it's all down to robotaxi, and Elon's mouth has written a lot of checks these past 5 years that somebody's going to start having to cash. I added another $260 put for April (bought when TSLA was at $420), to go with the 3 $250 puts I have for March that I bought the day before the EC (when the stock was at ~$330). I didn't get particularly bargain prices for these puts but I'm playing with my fun money on them so NBD.

Gotta say as we hit the last 2 weeks of the $7500 IRA credit, inventory is pretty tight on the west coast for new Teslas, LOL. Not that TSLA's $1.3T market cap has anything to do with that, plus if it just pulls forward demand from future buyers it's doubly neither here nor there. ICE fucking up LG's Georgia plant build-out last week is also material to Tesla's prospects, in a marginally good way I guess. But 2M/yr x $40k ASP x 10% margin x 50 P/E / 3.2B shares = $125 SP so we're 3.3X over those skis now.

I don't get your calculations, can you explain 😅

Not no drugs. Just less drugs. As if that’s a win.

I’m staying away from shorting until it gets to 460. I have zero confidence this drops until after the next Earnings report.

The future is Optimus -> OPTIMUS key employee leaves -> stock goes up

IMHO, TSLA will never see 2 million sales per year. They're on track for 1.5 million this year - and that's an optimistic number. And they've got nothing in the pipeline, outside of fever dreams. But we don't need to attempt to calculate their profit anyway...we know their P/E ratio is 240 right now...the GMs and Toyotas of the world have ratios in the 5-10 range...the Apples and Microsofts of the world stand under 40. Even the most optimistic take shows TSLA is over-valued at least 6 fold as a "tech company", but lets be realistic: TSLA is on par with Mazda, meaning its over-valued 40x.

Maybe Optimus took over his position.

An interesting [comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/teslainvestorsclub/s/tSJq59eLs9) from the Tesla Investors subreddit comparing Robotaxi's chances of becoming profitable, especially compared to Uber

It just means Optimus is ready for prime time and will be coming to a deli near you soon. Just a few months and they will be in every sector of business.

And somehow Mazda can afford to have new models and refreshes more often... it's wild how stagnant Tesla is with no all new vehicles in nearly 6 years..no fresh second generation of anything ever... Meanwhile Mazda has found it's little niche and can have a solid lineup with consistent updates while being orders of magnitude smaller

They’ll just move the goalposts further. Look at Cathie Wood’s 2025 forecast 5 years ago for TSLA and you’ll see just how ridiculous the entire thing is. It’s fiction. The company is all stories, narratives, and things thay may happen at some future date but are taken as fact

I have a theory on how "no new models" is intertwined with Tesla's poor build quality and paper profitability. Stamping dies... what stops TSLA from using the same die from 2012 on a 2025 Model S?...other than the terrible quality it would produce. I think they just keep over-using the same dies, year after year, and hammer the resulting panels as needed. Even their new model, the Cybertruck, strangely avoids stamped parts for the most part.

"Open box manufacturing" or something like that. For knowing so much about manufacturing they really seem to avoid doing what other manufacturers do...

It is not bubble, it is manipulation. When the cat is away, the mice will play. Trump gutted the regulatory agencies.

Chuckle, I look at the "ventilator scoreboard" as a measure of manufacturing prowess. Its really amazing how they were able to leverage their manufacturing power - GM made 30k units and Ford made 50k. Tesla's total: A little over 1k Temu discontinued CPAPS were purchased.

And they made sure any hospital that received them took pictures of the boxes with a photocopied Tesla logo.

[https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-sec-dismiss-case-against-former-nikola-ceo-2025-09-12/](https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-sec-dismiss-case-against-former-nikola-ceo-2025-09-12/) For anyone wondering why TSLA is about to hit ATH - that's why. Fraud is 100% legal. Pump, baby, pump!

Makes sense, Trump built his career on fraud, bullshit and his father's money so naturally those are the attributes he values in other people. Also Baird increased their price target for Tesla by 71% to almost $550 citing some ill defined "physical AI inflection point". So yeah more hype and bullshit.

Manipulation doesn't change fundamental economic facts. Bubbles pop because people run out of cash. Manipulation accelerates this by spending money to inflate the bubble. Our regulations exist not to prevent bubbles, but to minimize the damage bubbles cause when they pop. Unregulated markets froth, bubble, pop more severely than well regulated markets. Our country is making the entire situation worse. See what happened after Calvin Coolidge famously did nothing in the late 1920s to the frothy environment of the swinging 20s.

Of course there are no free meals, but painting the tape is incredibly easy if nobody holds you accountable for it.

Guys, What do you think the impact of Trump's 100000 dollar fee on H1B is going to have on Tesla sales? Resale market? https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/19/trump-h1b-visa-100000-fee

ChatGPT made [this graph](https://i.ibb.co/SXZXCgrf/Screenshot-20250920-081714-Chat-GPT.jpg) for me to show how fast Robotaxi is expanding. Only three months left to [cover half ](https://share.google/I4zGKTTYqjGyI2iRM) the population of the US!

Lol, I wonder if Musk remembers he said he would go to war with anyone that messes with H-1B Visas (paraphrasing but I think it was close to that)

the going to war part was against anyone who supported OBBB. Me buying puts this year in July as we floated up into the earnings call was largely driven by that emotional demonstration by him while the bill was being whipped. We'll see how the June & July bills that removed EPA carbon credit trading (including California's ZEV stuff) will hit Elon's top & bottom lines. (Free money is a helluva drug – it basically built all of Elon's factories for him)

My suspicion is Elon's robotaxi effort is going to scale as well as Bird and Lime scooters, for the same reason. Overall I think Elon's true competitor to go after will be Hertz not Uber, or independent outfits like Hertz will be taking a cut of his opex since he doesn't like hiring people. And as I mentioned earlier, the robotaxi dreamers have to live in a world where FSD is hard enough that only Elon can solve it, but not too hard that it takes him until next decade.

This is what I was referring to, Musk talks about going to war on H-1B visas https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/12/28/elon-musk-immigrants-via/77290081007/

oh, that war LOL . . . the $100k cost is fine for Elon, his H1Bs are making tons of money, so this edict benefits him actually (free up more slots)

Interesting, I guess we will see if he mentions it, not sure how it would make him money but it sounds like there may be exceptions granted by DHS I believe

I am going to add this in here. https://thefederal.com/category/news/trump-h1b-visa-fee-hike-panic-airfares-207707 It's been reported that SFO had a situation on the Emirates flight yesterday because all the Indian travelers wanted off. https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/indians-pleaded-to-get-off-chaos-on-plane-in-us-after-trumps-h-1b-shock-video-101758371139010.html

story said Tesla had 724 H1B visas so this would be a $70M/yr hit. Market cap has gone up $270B this month

DHS secretary (Noem) can make exceptions for industries and/or companies. You know where that's going...

all this is literally pocket change for Elon's companies and is actually win/win for him

This year Tesla sponsored 1700 H1B visas. If there were to pay the 100000$ on them it would amount to 170 milion dollars. That is significant amount of money, even for tesla. The whole point of those visas is cheap labor. My prediction is nothing will come out of this. They will find some loophole and carry on.

Gary Black posted a week or two ago that he thinks the main reason Tesla stock has been going up so much lately (this was before Elon made a purchase) is because hedge funds are loading up, thinking that the analysts consensus for deliveries is too low given the expiring tax credit in the U.S. However, he thinks this will be short lived because hedge funds will mostly likely sell in Q4, expecting sales to again drop and he personally expects full year sales in 2025 to be down 10% from 2024. For what's it's worth, a lot of Tesla bulls are pointing to the gambling site Kalshi, which right now as I'm writing this is predicting 503k deliveries, well ahead of the current analyst consenus. [https://kalshi.com/markets/kxtesla/tesla-deliveries](https://kalshi.com/markets/kxtesla/tesla-deliveries) Funny how Tesla is not a car company when sales are going down, but it is a car company when sales go up for 1 quarter. If they start going down next quarter, Tesla will no longer be a car company again.

yeah. IRS did give Elon a solid by allowing the $250 down payment this month to secure the $7500 credit for Q4 deliveries, but the stock gaining $300B market cap on an obviously temporary two-quarter boost on US sales is not sensical in the slightest. But is why I've bought March-April puts instead of December. I figure that's enough runway for the wheels to fall off on the current set of promises from Elon. Plus I'm still expecting really bad news with loss of CAFE credit income for Q3-Q4 too. I think the stuff we were hearing post-OBBB was overly optimistic for the longs.

I hope you are correct but he might dream up a new promise over the winter.

2 year Elonversary: \*\*\*"\*\*\**When a Neuralink is combined with Optimus robot limbs, the Luke Skywalker solution can become real.*" - Jar Jar Fink, Sep 21, 2023 5 year Elonversary: *"Important note about Tesla Battery Day unveil tomorrow. This affects long-term production, especially Semi, Cybertruck & Roadster, but what we announce will not reach serious high-volume production until 2022*." - Cyber Liar, September 21, 2020, speaking directly to investors at "battery day" And 12 years ago, Cleantechnic posted this headline: "*Tesla Motors Aiming To Build Self-Driving Car Within 3 Years, Elon Musk Says*"

One more Elonversary: Seven years ago today, Griftoking shared a rendering of "Mars Base Alpha". When quizzed by his flock as to how long it would take before they could start forwarding their mail to Mars, his reply: "*Probably 2028 for a base to be built*" A look at the rendering reveals how fake this entire grift is - a trio of "Starships" a few feet away from the imaginary Mars base. No launch pad...no launch tower...no discernable fueling or other support facilities...just rendered there in the Martian dust right next to the rendered Mars base. Okee Dokee. - that's not cartoonishly unreal at all. (Its a Xitter link, so I can't post it here). Anyway, all that data collection is about to pay off! We're just 3 years away from a Mars colony!!!\* Thanks Elon. \*Some restrictions apply. Not Valid in California, Thailand, or Planet Earth.

I missed some "Breaking News" from Sawyer Merritt a few days ago: >BREAKING: Tesla has officially received approval from the Arizona Department of Transportation to start testing autonomous vehicles on public roads. Today, I confirmed directly with the Arizona DOT that Tesla has met requirements to begin testing its autonomous vehicles in Arizona Wow, that's an important milestone!!!...what...wait, are you sure? Oops, I cut off the end of the last line: >with safety drivers. Cue the Price is Right losing horn.

Hell, they don't even need car sales to go up. All Musk has to do is hint at a new factory, and its a "catalyst"...as are all their supercalifragilisticexpialidocious manufucturing methods - the ones they use to build boring old cars.

Hopefully he'll do something to upset Trump enough to get him deported!

Sawyer always has the most informative takes and monumental news. It's a shame that he part-times as a shirt salesman, he could be delivering so much more

Let that Sikh in....

Correct me if I am wrong, but because a Tesla with FSD and a person behind the steering wheel can legally drive anywhere in the USA, and because Musk has, or at least had until recently, a load of spare cars, there is nothing to stop him putting cars out all over the country, using whatever approvals are required to operate regular taxis/rideshare/whatever-you-call-it, presumably easy to get; all he has to do is to hire enough staff.

Regulation has never been any kind of an obstacle, these headlines are just meant to provide the illusion of progress and the idea that some massive rollout at scale is imminent. If this was all about racing across the finish line for FSD they would be doing exactly what you're describing too. If FSD is right around the corner why the hell wouldn't they put like 10k of their inventory cars or used vehicles across the country and collect the scraps data necessary to do so? I mean the cynical take would be that a big part of the reason the Model 2 was cancelled in favor of a dedicated robotaxi platform is because physical production delays provide yet another excuse why they don't have a system actually working, let alone working at scale. Musk will just show up on an earnings call and say "Robotaxi really isn't worth doing without the vehicle at volume, the economics of our next generation of manufacturing are just that compelling" and buy them another year or two.