[sfblah]

Does anybody else share my sort of shell-shock WRT Tesla? I'm one of those who thinks its stock (and probably all the big tech names) are in a bubble. But whenever I say that I get shouted down, downvoted, told I'm an idiot, etc. I'm hoping this comment is vanilla enough to be safe... just curious if others have had the same experience.

To be clear: I'm not interested in debating the value of Tesla. I'm curious if others have the same emotional reaction at this point. That's it. If you think Tesla is worth $1T, good. Fine by me. I don't want to debate it or be told I'm a piece of garbage.

[the-dude]

You are not alone. Regular (non-tech) stock market analysts are comparing current valuations with the dot-com bubble.

But there is no TINA ( https://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/tina-there-no-alternati... ).

The money needs to go somewhere.

[webXL]

So there is an alternative?

[the-dude]

I left that sentence as it currently is despite the ambiguity.

Btw, I have a Nigerian acquaintance who likes to discuss a business proposal with you. How do we contact you?

[webXL]

Send 100 bitcoins to 16kUa2e6MMCSiaHnmH88zVkKwoTpgaNATE then I'll send 101 back with my contact details

[the-dude]

Could you provide us with picture of yourself carrying a salmon? Then we can be sure it is really you.

[nine_k]

Buy gold ;)

I wonder why TSLA is compared to dot-com stocks. Tesla produce real, tangible things, with sale and resale value; same applies to their factories. They are in the "real sector", while dot-coms were (and are) in the "virtual" services sector propped by ad revenue.

TSLA can be a bubble, but it must be a different kind of it.

[est31]

Tesla produces real things, yes, any they have already driven change in the car industry. But even if Tesla displaces all other carmakers, which isn't likely, there is a total limit to the car market.

Another reason to tell why Tesla's stock is in bubbly conditions is the timing. Why is it soaring up right now? Is there some event that makes it more likely that people buy cars? No. The current events actually point towards the opposite direction of a recession, where people don't buy new cars. But they are overruled by different events which are more about more about money not knowing where it should go.

This video makes some very interesting points on the "too much money in the markets" question: https://youtu.be/Im0rzTWplwU

[woodandsteel]

I have no idea whether or not Tesla's stock is over-priced. However, it is definitely more than an auto company. It has a solar division, and it make electricity storage systems for home and utilities. Also, there are strong indications it is about to go into manufacturing li-ion cells. It seems to me it is quite possible that at some point it will be worth a trillion.

Let me add it is interesting that people who say Tesla is over-valued so often make this mistake, even though most of what I said is widely known. Perhaps people are being intentionally misleading.

[pete762]

If it is widely known, then there is no money to be made

[sfblah]

Thanks for the video. Worth the watch.

[riffraff]

WebVan[0] and Pets.com[1], two of the most well known busts of the dot-com era, did not use ads.

Ad-based-internet became a big thing many years later, I believe.

(I do agree that TSLA is different, anyway.)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webvan [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pets.com

[wilg]

Strange that you would say Pets.com didn't use ads given in your link there is a section about their famous sock puppet mascot with the following quote:

> Pets.com hired the San Francisco office of TBWA\Chiat\Day to design its advertising campaign.

Also here's a collection of Pets.com TV ads: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sICSyC9u5iI

And Webvan did ads too: https://www.bizjournals.com/sacramento/stories/2001/03/05/da...

[benmller313]

I think you misunderstood, the point was that pets.com's revenue model wasn't based on free services supported by advertising sales.

[riffraff]

they advertised, sure, but were not "propped by ad revenue".

Advertising was a cost for them, like it is for Tesla, they weren't in the business of _selling_ ads, like Google or Facebook.

[ac29]

Just because Tesla welds together their primary products doesnt make them any more "real" than the products of Microsoft, Netflix, or Google. Sure, you can't melt down a season of a Netflix TV show and sell it as scrap, but Tesla's value is almost entirely in their IP as well.

[beamatronic]

Did that in 2008. Heard the brrr machines then. Gold crashed. I was only now, 12 years later, able to sell and break even.

[nine_k]

Hmm. Did the same in 2008. Somehow I bought it in the summer when it was still cheap, and gold crashed soon, but went back up in the winter, and stayed above my purchase price all the way since then. (I wish I sold it in 2012, though, before the next crash.)

[devy]

TINA explains NASDAQ:TLSA "bubble" perfectly.

[ianai]

Just an anecdote but TINA is the reason I’m in the market right now. Though it doesn’t help that home prices around me are rocketing.

[ogre_codes]

I honestly don't know. I owned it briefly a while ago and got scared off, only to buy back in recently... and watch it double. Right now Tesla is priced as if it was the most successful auto company in the world. I'm a little skeptical they are going to get much bigger than VW is so it's tough to see them doubling again, but maybe? I think after the split plays out, I'll likely trim my position back a bit.

I will say Tesla seems to have a pretty large competitive advantage (and perception advantage) in the market right now. It also seems like they are paying quite a bit less for batteries at the moment than anyone else.

Most Tesla competitors are announcing future vehicles with pricing and range competitive with Tesla's current vehicles, which suggests to me those same competitors are about 18-36 months behind Tesla still.

It seems clear to me anyhow that in next 20 years most new cars will be electric. How big a chunk of the market can Tesla carve out before the rest of the competition finally catches up?

Definitely my most speculative non-options stock.

[GuB-42]

I don't think that Tesla is a bubble, more like gambling.

Tesla right now clearly isn't worth $1T, but it is definitely on something big. Electric cars look well set to be the future, and so are the batteries that go with them. And currently, Tesla is a leader in both these fields. Furthermore, Tesla is creating an ecosystem not unlike Apple with its cars, it includes their supercharger network and all their software. And we all see how successful Apple is.

So yeah, huge potential. However, it is all speculation. Maybe traditional car manufacturers will wake up and offer decent electric cars. Maybe their ecosystem will fail to capture their market. If that happens, even if Tesla stays profitable, its value will crash. That's because Tesla will stop being a bet on the future and become just another mid-rank car manufacturer.

Personally, I am not into gambling, so I won't buy and I won't short.

[basch]

It is worth $1T in the sense that people have said "this team looks like the best team to give $1T to to build cars."

Sure, everyone is investing to make money and extract it later, but its also a bet that they will be a player for a while, are more efficient at using the cash then their competitors, can scale better. At the end of the day it is capital allocation, and the market has decided this team is the best team to handle the task. (Or it is a true bubble, where everybody doesnt want to miss out, but I think its some of the former too. Ford and GM are legacy businesses that have legacy overhead.)

[robjan]

$1TN is just the last price multiplied by the number of shares. The amount Tesla raised was just however much they earned from the original sale of stocks.

[basch]

Tesla can buy other companies with it's stock.

Facebook's stock is basically Mark's personal currency.

I understand that buying stock isn't straight up giving a company cash, but by pumping up its value, the shares the company is in control of are worth more. I also totally get how thinking people are this altruistic with investing is naive, and it's probably just fomo and short squeezes in a death spiral.

[oh_sigh]

my context: I've bought and hodl'd TSLA since the day of the IPO @ ~$19.

I agree with you I have no idea why it is valued the way it is. My original thought for getting on at the IPO was that since they were one of the first big electric car players, they would get a patent portfolio that would be worth a lot in the future even if they failed as a car manufacturer. Of course, that logic went out the window when Elon promised to license the patents freely to anyone who wanted to build electric cars a number of years ago.

I can understand people valuing TSLA at more than, say, Ford, because of their future prospects and because they aren't burdened with legacy issues like worker pensions, but it's hard to believe it should be worth 10x. It also isn't clear to me how TSLA went down ~10% over the past 5 days but is right back up there on news of the split.

[tejohnso]

You're not alone.

I wouldn't buy it at these levels (or even close to), but I wouldn't short it either.

(paraphrasing C.Munger)

[pinky1417]

I appreciate seeing Charlie Munger show up on HN. He may not be a technophile but his business and life principals are applicable everywhere.

I share Munger's opinion, not just on Tesla. I don't short companies because, as John Maynard Keynes said, “the markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.” And if I were to short companies, I'd be more likely to choose a Kodak anyway because at least Tesla has a crazy genius CEO who could conceivably grow Tesla to a point where everyone says Tesla's August 2020 would seem reasonable.

[bb88]

>...as John Maynard Keynes said, “the markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.”

That really explains a lot with what's going on in the current economy.

[est31]

I think a lot of people share it, that's why they shorted Tesla stock before the last quarterly report. This only made the problem worse though as the brrr agency didn't want to let the price go down so it went up in a short squeeze. We'll end up with either a big burst in a few months, or inflation. But it'll take at least until the election.

[quickthrowman]

Yes, I feel the same way. I’m not too hot on them being added to the S&P 500 index, which they technically qualify for now. It remains to be seen when it will be added.

I’m not short TSLA, FWIW.

[dpedu]

Tesla was undervalued. Stocks aren't priced what they are because of how well the company is doing today, but how well investors believe it will be doing tomorrow.

Think about it - the world has been screaming for green this and that and electric vehicles are one of the biggest pieces of a such a world. Tesla and no other company is synonymous with this kind of technology. When you think electric cars, "Tesla" is the first brand in your head, in anyone's head, without fail. That is an extremely powerful position to be in.

[omgwtfbyobbq]

Yes and no. My sense is the market will be speculative no matter what. In the past, that speculation was on the negative side, and now it's on the positive side.

I can see Tesla rivaling Toyota in revenue in the next five to ten years given how slowly they and others have moved on EVs. But I could also see Tesla running into trouble if they screw up their expansion or if another large manufacturers bets the farm on EVs.

[bitxbit]

On HN and elsewhere, I had same reactions. There’s not a lot of rational debate. Stock is mainly driven by short-term OTM options.

[kmfrk]

I mean, even Elon Musk seems to agree with you based on his tweets.

[o-__-o]

If they can successfully enable fully automated self driving cars, then I think the value is entirely justified. See FaceBook.

Disclaimer: I bought Tesla calls today and now assume I’m rich so your opinion may differ

[nine_k]

I bet on self-driving trucks instead. They can go like 95% of the way via highways driverless, only accepting a driver to drive it through a city to a loading ramp, and maybe to a pump midway a very long trip. Drivers will not disappear soon but will provide local service.

Having a driverless car which can navigate through a city would be great, but it is a much more complicated problem to solve.

[mac01021]

Is there a good asset to buy to bet on those?

[nine_k]

I wish I knew! There are a few, and different experts suggest different winners.

[dexterdog]

If they can pull that off and patent it and get a cut of everybody else doing it or block them from doing it at all then the price is justified. Otherwise they'll just be some tiny volume auto maker.

[jeanvalmarc]

Narrator: they can't.

[sfblah]

Well, to be fair, I hate driving. So if they do, I'll buy one. Simple as that. I'm waiting!

[3pt14159]

I'm longterm bullish on Tesla, even if I think that in the short run the stock is overvalued. Take a look at the Tesla Semi, for example. This thing is going to change road based logistics big time. More energy efficient. Wired in for full self-driving once the AI gets there. Once those things start coming off the line they're going to disrupt an entire global industry. That's just one of their vehicles.

[runawaybottle]

Tesla is in bed with China, a country deadly serious about electric vehicles. Plus, many of the other car manufacturers buy electric parts for their own EVs from Tesla.

The worldwide initiative in this direction is strong, so the projected valuation could be just about right. Tesla is part of a global bet.

[xenihn]

I'm a bit bitter that I sold my five shares at break-even in March after having been down for a year. But then I just think of all the people who sold more shares after holding it for far longer right before the insane growth.

[teruakohatu]

> I don't want to debate it

Kind of sounds like you do want to debate it. I have no idea if it is or is it a it overvalued but plenty of people do share you view, and they lost a lot of money betting against Musk.

[sfblah]

No I really, really, really don't want to debate it. I'm not kidding. And I have no position either way and never will. I'm just an observer.

[me_me_me]

we are in global pandemic, were a lot of people lost jobs, or quality of life decreased.

Despite this stock market is doing well.

The only conclusion I can see is that the stock market is completely decoupled from real life. Biggest parties participating in it are completely unaffected by reality of majority of population.

The same people who are rabidly shouting bitcoin is a pyramid scheme are buying stock of companies not because they trust its a good business model, but because its a a unicorn that will 2x in value for quick sale profit.

[chemmail]

Exactly what ISN'T a bubble? Countries, empires, worlds, galaxies, rise and fall all the time.