Chevy Volt a Failure - GM to Layoff 1,300

I don't know if these numbers are exact. But this is courtesy of S3 Partners. Tesla is the most shorted stock there is -- out of all stocks. At the current price, the current short interest is just short of $12 billion. On the move today, those shorts have taken something like a $1.1 billion mark to market loss on paper.

 

I have been really busy, so never actually went to eBay to see what they were going for. Wow.

I thought this article was pretty funny.

Tesla’s $1,500 carbon fiber surfboard is dumb

I know zilch about surfing, so I don't know how much stock to put into it. For all I know, it could have been a "Let's make fun of a Tesla (always fun!) and get some good quotes from surfers goofing on them" story.

 

I love technology. Everyone should love technology. The advent of the automobile itself revolutionized the world economy and raised standards of living immeasurably and changed the world.

What I don't like are command-like economy attempts to try to decide what technologies to force on everyone. 1) It doesn't work. It gives us a lot of corruption and cronyism and it comes at huge public cost. 2) Because of that cost, it siphons money from potentially more productive uses that can actually produce the viable future technologies that might have revolutionary effect on the world. It slows down progress. 3) And we never know the opportunity cost, although we all can see the years of the future we are sacrificing running up various amounts of debt playing a corrupt game.

I suspect (but I don't know) that self-driving technology is going to hit some logistical glitches along the way that will make it so that it isn't a reality quite as soon as some people are predicting. Maybe I am wrong about that, but I posted about that earlier on the thread.

However, one thing I find really encouraging about it are the players developing that technology and the PRIVATE investments (not public money sprinkled around corruptly) they are making. That generally signals the kinds of capital expenditures where you have entrepreneurs who can smell something big that they think might be very profitable for them if they can become the leaders. The leaders in that space are Waymo (which is Google) and General Motors (of all companies). I've talked about the ridiculous valuation of Tesla on this thread. We haven't talked much about GM lately. What happened with GM in 2008 was a travesty, in my opinion. But I won't rehash. Today? It's actually a fairly well-run company (in the relative sense of the word) -- at the moment, at least. Peak auto probably passed about a year ago, and the run up in sales we saw for about 7 or 8 years was due to a subprime auto market that gave a lot of people in America a pretty big monthly car payment they struggle to make, that is going to roll over on them, and which they won't be able to afford if (when) rates normalize when central banks lose control of the manipulated environment they have created. But unlike Tesla which sells cars in the tens of thousands, GM sold more than 10 million vehicles worldwide two years ago. About 9.6 million last year. That is an actual business.

Also unlike Tesla, which doesn't even trade at a multiple because all it does is lose money, GM is trading at a price to earnings ratio of about 6, based on current earnings. Which is pretty cheap for this bubbled up market. The stock has gone absolutely nowhere (as have most -- it's been a handful of bubble stocks, including Google, which owns Waymo, that have gone up). If you are a value investor, who believes that the environment we are in is going to have to change in terms of valuations and cheap money creating inflated asset values, things like GM might be compelling to you. Because even though in the past GM has never been known as a huge innovator, if they are among the first to make inroads in self-driving technology -- and they have been doing a lot -- that is about as cheap a stock on a valuation basis as you are going to find in today's overvalued market. That is just a risk versus reward statement.

I am kind of wary of some people now taking that post as, "Ragu said to load up on GM stock," and then doing jerky posts every day tracking the stock price. I'm not saying anything close to that. But I am pointing out that if you are looking at that space and these technologies, and think self-driving technology has potential to make someone a lot of money, logically if you are looking at downside risk versus potential upside, the company being largely ignored (GM), but which actually is investing a ton in self-driving technology (Softbank -- it is always Softbank, which is being fueled by the Japanese Central Bank bubble machine -- just invested $2 billion in GM's self-driving subsidiary), very well could (again, I said could, not is) be hiding in plain sight on people, and offering WAY MORE value than something like Waymo, which as a part of Google is very richly valued to kind of a grotesque extreme.