134: Tesla Madness

Jul 27, 2020

Can we talk about Tesla for a moment? The reason they are relevant today is that their stock is ridiculous. Not that it’s high (which it is) or that the company is loved or hated (which it is) but that its volatility is off the charts. Tons of trades happening every day. For instance one day last week (Monday), Tesla opened $114 higher than its previous close, then gained another $136 within 15 minutes, then dropped by $324 before the market closed. Each dollar of share price corresponds to a market capitalization of $185 million, which means that Tesla lost more than $60 billion of value during the day. That's more than the market cap of Ford and Fiat Chrysler combined. And this happens every day. Walls Street analysts have no idea what to think. Their price targets range from $87 (GLJ Research) to $2,322 (Piper Sandler).

Apparently Tesla stock is super popular among day-traders who don't like to hold any kind of position overnight. Partly as a result, it opened higher than its previous close every day this month up to yesterday. Fun fact: If you bought one share of Tesla at the closing price each day in July and sold it immediately at the open the following morning, you would have made more than $450 between July 1 and July 15.

There’s something to be said about this time period where we’re in the middle of one of the worst periods of unemployment in history, nobody is driving, the roads are empty, yet a car company’s stock is bought and sold in volumes never seen before. The world is crazy.

Oh, I Do Like Tesla

I would to mention that I love Tesla’s position as a pro-environment company. Their mission of “accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy“ is simple, to the point, and more pro-climate change than any other billion dollar business. This long article about how Tesla will change the world is a great read. One thing it shows is that the reason Elon Musk and Tesla are building cars is that’s where the climate damage is being done. It’s an ugly chart, but look at how much of US’s total energy use is for transportation:

27% of all energy is on transportation and that is major use of oil. That’s a big chunk.

Finally, I admire Tesla’s vertical-ness of their business. They have their cars running on their own operating system and dash software, built it its own factories (in US, Germany and China), sold in their own showrooms, getting recharged in their own charging stations around the country, and being powered by their own batteries who are built in their own battery factories. That is very different than any other car business and is head and shoulders ahead of other manufacturers.

All that said, I’m staying FAR away from that stock.

At My House

We went to the beach again this weekend. Fun times of playing in the sand.

Other Stuff

Carter Bays @CarterBays

I have a How I Met Your Mother joke and the punchline is-- actually, to really understand it we have to back up a bit. It was 2005 and I was out at the bar with my friends when all of a sudden (1/11029)

Pretty cool story:

Zoë West @itsZoeWest

Fun Fact: this episode helped to clear a Latino man wrongly charged with murder. He went to a Dodgers game that day and by a stroke of luck, he had accidentally walked in front of the CYE camera during a take. Juan Catalon. There’s a Netflix doc about it.

Fiona Applebum says block Shaun King! @WrittenByHanna

Me and Bernie Sanders https://t.co/31StxXtY00

This guy is pretty damn impressive. With sandals!

Step aside, drive-ins: Now the world is all about boat-in movie theaters.

This is the new sports world we live in:

Cubs Live @Cubs_Live

Anthony Rizzo just handed Orlando Arcia some hand sanatizer when he reached first base. This is baseball in 2020.

Can you imagine having a rough weekend, maybe feeling a bit sluggish and rolling into this job on Monday morning? I have no idea what they are doing or why but it looks crazy and intense: