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Musk endeavours

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odysseus2000
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Musk endeavours

#52003

Postby odysseus2000 » May 8th, 2017, 12:10 pm

Over at the Fool there was a long thread about Musk that was very polarised between the supporters & haters:

https://web.archive.org/web/20140808063 ... sort=whole

So far Musk has proved his critics wrong & the share price has had a very strong run in 2017.

One can begin to imagine, if you are a supporter, that Musk is creating an empire not unlike those of Ford, Rockerfella, Edison...

His business now include rockets (private), solar, lithium batteries, boring, road transportation...

The consequences of his move to electric propulsion & self drive have caused all major motor manufacturers to begin electric traction programs & to develop autominous vehicles.

For the haters he is still the con that must eventually fail & a natural short, but so far a short that has busted a lot of players.

Personally I find him amazing & profitable for equity trades along with him having entered the minds of many young people as a colourful hero in a way that seems right for the 21st century.

If the precidents of Ford et al are a guide, one expects Musk to get stronger & wealthier & on the flip side one expects to see many folk whose business he is targeting to decline.

Am I deluded? If so how will Musk fail & how can one invest to profit?

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Re: Musk endeavours

#52399

Postby odysseus2000 » May 10th, 2017, 12:17 am

SpaceX has a real unique and potent competitive advantage getting stuff into orbit.

Expect satellite companies to benefit from cheaper launches, albeit at the risk of upstart competition maybe getting ideas?


There are several competitors, two of them being Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who is spending $1billion per year to develop his Blue Origin business and Branson who has three components to his Virgin Galactic business.

For the moment Musk is a very long way ahead with the only practical, as far as I know, 1st stage reuseable rocket ship, with plans to also recover the second stage too.

Several governments have programs & there are other less well funded private competitors.

Unless there is some currently unknown problem it seems probable that space flight will become routine with lunar bases, Mars bases & mining trips to the asteroid belts within about 1 decade. First though will likely come sight seeing trips & a lot of lower cost satellites.

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Re: Musk endeavours

#52422

Postby vrdiver » May 10th, 2017, 7:49 am

odysseus2000 wrote:Over at the Fool there was a long thread about Musk that was very polarised between the supporters & haters:

If the precidents of Ford et al are a guide, one expects Musk to get stronger & wealthier & on the flip side one expects to see many folk whose business he is targeting to decline.

Am I deluded? If so how will Musk fail & how can one invest to profit?

Regards,



If his Hyperloop goes ahead, SolarCity may be your best bet (http://www.outsiderclub.com/report/elon ... tegies/978).

That, or keep tabs on him for anything that he IPOs...

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Re: Musk endeavours

#52433

Postby odysseus2000 » May 10th, 2017, 8:55 am

vrdriver
That, or keep tabs on him for anything that he IPOs...


The link is out of date, Solar City is now part of Tesla which is no longer Tesla Motors reflecting the broader church of cars, trucks, solar, batteries...

Meanwhile the boring company is developing.

Hyper loop is not something he is currently not that interested in, just providing some facilities to test prototypes.

Meanwhile there is the AI stuff, human computer interface and various other stuff along with the massively expanding private Space X.

On the negative side are all the folk who cite Tesla valuation, the current lack of serious production of Tesla cars, the debt at Solar City and a whole host of other things.

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Re: Musk endeavours

#52440

Postby PeterGray » May 10th, 2017, 9:14 am

First though will likely come sight seeing trips & a lot of lower cost satellites.

More satellites will bring forward the day when launchers have to start making decommissioning provision, or near space will start becoming too dangerous to use.

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Re: Musk endeavours

#52496

Postby odysseus2000 » May 10th, 2017, 12:18 pm

Peter Gray

More satellites will bring forward the day when launchers have to start making decommissioning provision, or near space will start becoming too dangerous to use.


I keep seeing this & it makes little sense to me.

One of the features of low earth orbits is decay, that anything in these regions is subject to frictional forces & inevitably falls & burns up. E.g. Many of the NASA Space Shuttle launched observatories, which due to limitations of the shuttle were in low orbits, had to either be boosted back up every few years, or they too were consumed on re-entry.

I may be missing something here, but as far as I know low space orbits are self cleaning. It is higher orbits were there is less friction that I believe would be more problematic & would likely need cleaning if there was too much junk there.

The situation is monitored by the US military. From what I have read they track everything from a few inches upwards.

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Re: Musk endeavours

#52517

Postby ReformedCharacter » May 10th, 2017, 1:42 pm

odysseus2000 wrote:
Peter Gray

More satellites will bring forward the day when launchers have to start making decommissioning provision, or near space will start becoming too dangerous to use.


I keep seeing this & it makes little sense to me.

One of the features of low earth orbits is decay, that anything in these regions is subject to frictional forces & inevitably falls & burns up. E.g. Many of the NASA Space Shuttle launched observatories, which due to limitations of the shuttle were in low orbits, had to either be boosted back up every few years, or they too were consumed on re-entry.

I may be missing something here, but as far as I know low space orbits are self cleaning. It is higher orbits were there is less friction that I believe would be more problematic & would likely need cleaning if there was too much junk there.

The situation is monitored by the US military. From what I have read they track everything from a few inches upwards.

Regards,


Yes, LEOs c. 250 miles high, tend to self-cleanse, nonetheless the ISS is moved from time to time to avoid predicted impacts. There's an image here of a dinged Space Shuttle window:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Space_debris_impact_on_Space_Shuttle_window.jpg

The impact was thought to have been caused by a speck of paint.

'There are over 170 million pieces of debris smaller than 1 cm (0.39 in) as of July 2013'.

The old Soviet MIR was apparently fairly well peppered with small impact damage.

In higher orbits, where most communication satellites travel, it is more of a problem and it can take millennia for decay to occur. The International Telecommunication Union already require that satellites can be de-orbited at the end of their lifetimes. There are already a number of satellite losses due to impact damage. It's definitely a problem.

RC

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Re: Musk endeavours

#53440

Postby odysseus2000 » May 14th, 2017, 10:46 pm

Another view of Tesla from the Sohn conference, notes by the Reformed Broker:

http://thereformedbroker.com/2017/05/08 ... rmedbroker

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Re: Musk endeavours

#53479

Postby dspp » May 15th, 2017, 10:24 am

also interesting in that is the Brexit bit:

This dude is from France. Hot accent.
He’s here to talk about Brexit and Europe in general.
Realize that the UK is not a United Kingdom but a divided one. Both the US and the UK have some of the highest inequality in the world. His trade is to be short Gilts (UK sovereign bonds). 10-year gilt yield is >200bps below 10-year inflation expectations.
He makes the case that there is no trade deal for UK post-Brexit. UK has half of its exports going to EU, EU only exports 15% to UK – meaning UK needs them more.
Top 1% of UK citizens pay 27% of all tax. UK has terrible household leverage – 146% of income in 2017. Public sector finances also weak. Stagnant productivity.
He thinks Brexit cost will cost UK 7% of GDP (!) over the next 8 years, “a staggering number.”
He also explains that the world is overweight the gilt and the pound sterling relative to what it should be given UK’s weighting in the global economy. “Totally unjustified.”
Now he’s talking about European stocks – an 80% gap between S&P 500 vs Europe stocks in the last 8 years. “We think this is about to change, and is at a key inflection point.”
He thinks Brexit is the catalyst. “Because of what is happening, there is a new phase in Europe where we are going to spend a lot more money on defense and infrastructure.” – driven by Russia concerns perhaps? Islamic terror? Went unsaid.
He believes the problem of bad loans on bank balance sheets is finally clearing up.
He thinks the currency will strengthen too. As will inflation expectations. He pitches Unicredit, an Italian bank, as a way to play this improvement.
“JPMorgan has a bigger market cap than the largest European banks in each country.” Which makes no sense considering the EU is bigger than the US. “Germany is poised to capitalize on what needs to happen here.
ECB stress tests are as tough as the US version (CCAR). He thinks their banks don’t get enough credit for how well they’re getting through everything. .

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Re: Musk endeavours

#53555

Postby odysseus2000 » May 15th, 2017, 1:43 pm

This dude is from France. Hot accent.
He’s here to talk about Brexit and Europe in general.



So a clear & unbiased commentator then!

All of the European establishment is doing all things possible to rubbish the U.K. This makes for interesting politics, but best to watch what prices do, not listen to what folk say.

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Re: Musk endeavours

#53590

Postby mswjr » May 15th, 2017, 3:49 pm

He was an advisor to David Cameron on his pro- brexit argument for the referendum. Immediately following the result, he forecast 'major London defaults within twelve months' and UK GDP down by 7%. He has invested substantially in European, especially Italian, banks.
So he isn't exactly impartial, is he.

On a point of detail, he's Italian, not French.

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Re: Musk endeavours

#54604

Postby odysseus2000 » May 18th, 2017, 8:47 am

Volvo giving up on Diesel engines:

https://electrek.co/2017/05/17/volvo-te ... c-vehicle/

Hat to Elon Musk for link

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Re: Musk endeavours

#56240

Postby JMN2 » May 26th, 2017, 8:29 pm

What about this chap here, anything to it?

Mark Spiegel

https://youtu.be/-HswSn4GCpU

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Re: Musk endeavours

#56265

Postby odysseus2000 » May 27th, 2017, 12:54 am

One can make a bear case for Tesla, but this is a very weak one.

1 No competition: Tesla sell cars, there are a lot of folk who sell cars, so lots of competition

2 Obsolete not proprietary: This was true of Ford and his engines, but Ford's stuff was good enough. Are Musk's 18650 batteries good enough? I have yet to find anyone who has driven a Tesla and complained about lack of power or other performance. Sure there are better batteries, but like vhs v betamax, vhs was good enough

3 Stock promotor, giving discounts: Or are these payments, or reduction in buy price, more correctly advertising spend as to get the discount you have to get several others to buy a Tesla at full price.

This guy has been short since around 2013 and has been wrong. His arguments are weak and he is fighting momentum. Better arguments may be effective if the stock price moment falls, but I wouldn't listen to anyone who has been consistently wrong on something like this. Anyone who has followed this guy over the last few years has lost a packet.

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Re: Musk endeavours

#56829

Postby odysseus2000 » May 31st, 2017, 1:26 am

Tesla is now up over 50% for the year.

Probably one reason is the big short interest that is covering to prevent further losses.

For newbies in general when a stock has this kind of momentum it is dangerous to short it or to base decisions on valuation.

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Re: Musk endeavours

#58131

Postby odysseus2000 » June 6th, 2017, 2:29 pm

Buffett argued against roof top solar metering, solar industry including Musk argued for it & look to have won:

https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles ... the-senate

This, if signed, will be a big boost for Tesla.

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Re: Musk endeavours

#60465

Postby odysseus2000 » June 16th, 2017, 8:15 am

Musk on safety:

https://www.inc.com/justin-bariso/elon- ... re=twitter

Hat tip to RobSmith twitter for link.

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Re: Musk endeavours

#61267

Postby odysseus2000 » June 20th, 2017, 12:51 am

Tesla seen as likely to build factory in China:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... tion-plant

Also interesting how fast Chinese EV use is growing compared to US.

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Re: Musk endeavours

#61310

Postby PeterGray » June 20th, 2017, 9:40 am

Also interesting how fast Chinese EV use is growing compared to US.


Though from a much lower base. And the figures in the chart are total sales, not % of new cars - so still a very long way to go before China matches the US in terms of %s

Peter

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Re: Musk endeavours

#61372

Postby odysseus2000 » June 20th, 2017, 1:29 pm

The figures for EV can be confusing, but as I understand it China is registering (I believe this means new cars) more than the US by a large amount & widening:

https://qz.com/972897/china-is-selling- ... ven-close/

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