10 ms·

Tesla's stock just hit a record $420

137 points by berbec 7y ago

rwerkjlkjweq 7y ago
WSB is going bananas over this: https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/ https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/
- rayvy 7y ago
  lol an autist has found his way to HackerNews I see :D (don't downvote me, WSB joke)
  - hi5eyes 7y ago
    we been here
  - Infinitesimus 7y ago
    We use HN headlines for DD
ggambetta 7y ago
Funding secured.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
zozbot234 7y ago
Will be interesting if it hits $420.69 or so.
- isoprophlex 7y ago
  vaporwave track plays in the background https://youtu.be/bAgmGZ9iQ2Y https://youtu.be/bAgmGZ9iQ2Y
- corporate_shi11 7y ago
  That's a key level
breakyerself 7y ago
Blunts for Elon.
- mdszy 7y ago
  That he'll completely fail to smoke properly.
laichzeit0 7y ago
Akin to the Rust Evangelism Stike Force and the Julia evangelism force I expect no less than the Tesla haters to be here soon telling us that Autopilot is crap and they should use LIDAR etc. and that Tesla will inevitably fail because of this and several other standard responses.. gets the popcorn
- Jamwinner 7y ago
  A bit early for strawmanning isnt it?
- RealityVoid 7y ago
  I do think that they will need LIDAR to achieve the level of autonomy they advertise will be available. That being said, that does by no means mean the demise of Tesla. Even if they fail delivering autonomy promises with the current gen of hw, they could still deliver a solid vehicle.
- rwerkjlkjweq 7y ago
  You forgot about how ugly the CyberTruck is, and why would anyone buy such a monstrosity. That being said, HN is not so bad towards Tesla. The real haters are at FT (Financial Times). It's hard to tell what they hate more, Tesla or Bitcoin.
- dang 7y ago
  Please don't do this here.
martythemaniak 7y ago
The stock is blazing! Weed jokes aside, the market has finally caught up to the fact that Tesla is years ahead of their competitors. I bought my Model 3 18 months ago and it felt like buying a car from the future. I think my feeling was correct. 2019 saw a number of serious competitors (Audi, MB, VW, Porche) release their first EVs and they've all been somewhat disappointing. Very solid first releases taken in isolation, but the market expectations were that the "Big Boys" were coming in and were going to wipe the floor with Tesla. Turns out they couldn't, Tesla's head start is real and consequential. If you go out and actually try to put down $40-50k on a car and judge all EVs on a collection of attributes (range, efficiency, safety, charging options, tech, etc) Tesla clearly stands out. It's tough to convince yourself to put down a nearly-equivalent amount of hard-earned money for another brand, so it is no coincidence that they outsell other EVs by a very wide margin.
- disconnected 7y ago
  > the market has finally caught up to the fact that Tesla is years ahead of their competitors. Incorrect. The stock value is being pushed up by: 1. Unexpected quarterly profits in October; 2. Tesla planning to open a new factory in China and securing a 1.4 Billion dollar loan to do so; 3. Apparent strong interest in the Cybertruck and the impending announcement of the Model Y; 4. USA and China are easing the trade war, which is pushing the whole stock market up (there have been "records" left and right in the past few days). But the big one is number 2. Tesla moving into China means that they can tap into the humongous Chinese market.
  - martythemaniak 7y ago
    Well, TSLA is a very sentiment-heavy stock, so it's hard or impossible to say what exactly caused this recent run. For example, they've been guiding Q3 and Q4 profitablity since ~Q2 or earlier. They started building the Shanghai factory in Q1, the Model Y was announced in March, the Truck's been talked up since forever, etc. What's really changed is that the Taycan is no longer a mystery, but a real car with a real price tag and real range. The ID.3 is almost-real and struggling with software issues. The E-Tron, new Leaf, new Bolt, etc have real sales figures. When these were unknowns, you could be reasonably skeptical of Tesla's claims, but that's increasingly untenable. Or, as the great Silicon Valley philosothoughtleader Russ Hanneman said: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzAdXyPYKQo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzAdXyPYKQo
slg 7y ago
Besides all the funding secured and pot jokes, can anyone explain what has happened to this stock recently? Over the last two months it has gone up roughly 30% after already having a big immediate jump after the last earnings. Is this mostly related to long term shorts finally closing their positions in the wake of those earnings? Or was there some big Tesla news that I missed that changed the perception of the company's financial position?
- asdfqwer234 7y ago
  Musk was able to get funding in China for the Gigafactory there. That's my best guess https://techcrunch.com/2019/12/23/tesla-lands-1-4-billion-from-chinese-banks-to-build-out-its-shanghai-gigafactory/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/12/23/tesla-lands-1-4-billion-fr...
- manigandham 7y ago
  Stock prices are based on perception of where it's going. The surprise profit from the last earnings, trade deal leading to lower tariffs, new China factory opening up that market, and the general quality of electric car competition released this year have all shown that Tesla is still far ahead of the game and close to running a sustainable operation.
- lazyjones 7y ago
  It's probably not one single reason. Tesla has had a lot of good news lately, from reports about Elon behaving a little better (and winning that defamation lawsuit), to competing EV from companies like Mercedes and Audi not really selling well and securing a large area for GF4 near Berlin. The most impressive feat for me was how quickly they built GF3 and started production in China, but my tiny contribution to the stock price was earlier this year (late May), the return to profitability in Q3 probably impressed many investors as well.
  - noodle 7y ago
    Other smaller stuff too: - Porche's Taycan EV is supposed to be the closest direct competition for Tesla cars, but its having production issues. - Tesla just pushed a new software update that includes a lot of useful features (voice keyboard/commands, an official camping mode, saving camera clips on honk, etc) - A lot of miscellaneous positive press is cropping up from the end of the year and end of the decade type reporting - Time for example put it as one of the "best gadgets of the decade". - They recently released and presumably are testing a paid software update to boost M3LR off the line acceleration, which is an interesting situation to obtain revenue from already sold cars. - Internally they're pushing to sell a lot to break sales numbers before EOY. Some places are reporting that they're even selling showroom floor models. - They secured a US$1.4B loan from Chinese banks for GF3 acceleration, which was already ahead of schedule. - They closed on the land for GF4 and are reportedly looking to start building Jan 2020. - The recent news of possibly reinvigorating the EV tax credits in some way probably also helped. - Solar is ramping up as well.
pastor_elm 7y ago
Funding secured.
eindiran 7y ago
Just for reference, the claim that "420" comes for a police code for marijuana possession is completely incorrect: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/420_(cannabis_culture) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/420_(cannabis_culture)
- look_lookatme 7y ago
  Seems like a strange thing to go around correcting people on. I didn't even know it was supposed to be a police code, it's just some silly code word for weed that like 85% of American english speakers understand to mean weed.
  - slap_shot 7y ago
    I, for one, always thought 420 was a reference to a police code for possession (similar to 187 for homicide). Eidiran's post just led me to a few posts about it, and I found this article where you can see a video of the guys back at the exact place of their high school they met at 4:20. I really enjoyed this. https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/The-420-code-The-high-larious-definitive-story-12849127.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/The-420-code-The... Depending on how one spent their high school afternoons, it might bring back memories :)
  - quasarj 7y ago
    The linked article made this claim, so it's perfectly fine to debunk it here.
CriticalCathed 7y ago
The shorts on twitter are particularly venomous today. I have to wonder if they're too emotionally involved in this. Tesla is seriously flawed but "fraud" is truly ludicrous.
stillmotion 7y ago
> 420 often refers to the police code for cannabis possession Hah, this journalist is so out of touch with the joke. 420 is the time to blaze it!
- sudoaza 7y ago
  420 was the California Bill for medical marijuana legalization (and of course the time to blaze it).
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    > 420 was the California Bill for medical marijuana legalization “420” was established term for weed before SB 420 of 2003 was introduced; the slang didn't come from the bill but the bill was introduced on a timing to exploit the slang. Also, Medical Marijuana was legalized by Prop 215 of 1996, SB 420 of 2003 was a measure to revise some provisions of the regulatory regime.
- nabla9 7y ago
  420 was the price Musk planned to turn Tesla private "funding secured" Musk lied.
  - ecpottinger 7y ago
    Yet the stock is now $421.
    - scrumbledober 7y ago
      Which means to go private he would have to secure funding quite a bit higher than that
dangerboysteve 7y ago
Every Tesla stock price increase story is always followed by the mandatory story of Tesla short sellers getting crushed.
- rcMgD2BwE72F 7y ago
  Because it's the most shorted stock in history relative to its float/market cap?
tus88 7y ago
Take that shorters!
rossdavidh 7y ago
I cannot believe that the significance of the $420/share price just now occurred to me.
DeonPenny 7y ago
It was just at $140 a month or two ago I feel like. Incredible
- jfengel 7y ago
  It hasn't been at $140 since 2013. It dipped to $150 in 2016, and $185 in the spring after a long, slow decline early in the year. If you'd bought it during that dip it would have been a big win.
OrgNet 7y ago
stocks (on average) tend to always go up...
- runeks 7y ago
  Except for those that go down, of course.
oluomike1 7y ago
https://techcrunch.com/2019/12/23/tesla-lands-1-4-billion-from-chinese-banks-to-build-out-its-shanghai-gigafactory/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/12/23/tesla-lands-1-4-billion-fr...
Animats 7y ago
Tesla finally seems to be focusing on building cars in volume. Not making heavy-truck prototypes. Not talking about "transportation as a service". Not claiming self-driving. Just making electric cars at a profit. That's good for the stock price.
- rcMgD2BwE72F 7y ago
  >Tesla finally seems to be focusing on building cars in volume. That has always been the case. Perhaps you meant "Media and markets know focus on Tesla's building cars in volume". It takes time to build plants, install machine them and organize the whole logistics/delivery part. They've always been focusing on this, and had to run the show so people would be ready to take delivery by the time they reach mass production.
faissaloo 7y ago
Weed number

137 points by berbec 7y ago

rwerkjlkjweq 7y ago

WSB is going bananas over this: https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/ https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/

rayvy 7y ago
lol an autist has found his way to HackerNews I see :D (don't downvote me, WSB joke)
- hi5eyes 7y ago
  we been here
- Infinitesimus 7y ago
  We use HN headlines for DD

ggambetta 7y ago

Funding secured.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

zozbot234 7y ago

Will be interesting if it hits $420.69 or so.

isoprophlex 7y ago
vaporwave track plays in the background https://youtu.be/bAgmGZ9iQ2Y https://youtu.be/bAgmGZ9iQ2Y
corporate_shi11 7y ago
That's a key level

breakyerself 7y ago

Blunts for Elon.

mdszy 7y ago
That he'll completely fail to smoke properly.

laichzeit0 7y ago

Akin to the Rust Evangelism Stike Force and the Julia evangelism force I expect no less than the Tesla haters to be here soon telling us that Autopilot is crap and they should use LIDAR etc. and that Tesla will inevitably fail because of this and several other standard responses.. gets the popcorn

Jamwinner 7y ago
A bit early for strawmanning isnt it?
RealityVoid 7y ago
I do think that they will need LIDAR to achieve the level of autonomy they advertise will be available. That being said, that does by no means mean the demise of Tesla. Even if they fail delivering autonomy promises with the current gen of hw, they could still deliver a solid vehicle.
rwerkjlkjweq 7y ago
You forgot about how ugly the CyberTruck is, and why would anyone buy such a monstrosity. That being said, HN is not so bad towards Tesla. The real haters are at FT (Financial Times). It's hard to tell what they hate more, Tesla or Bitcoin.
dang 7y ago
Please don't do this here.

martythemaniak 7y ago

The stock is blazing! Weed jokes aside, the market has finally caught up to the fact that Tesla is years ahead of their competitors. I bought my Model 3 18 months ago and it felt like buying a car from the future. I think my feeling was correct. 2019 saw a number of serious competitors (Audi, MB, VW, Porche) release their first EVs and they've all been somewhat disappointing. Very solid first releases taken in isolation, but the market expectations were that the "Big Boys" were coming in and were going to wipe the floor with Tesla. Turns out they couldn't, Tesla's head start is real and consequential. If you go out and actually try to put down $40-50k on a car and judge all EVs on a collection of attributes (range, efficiency, safety, charging options, tech, etc) Tesla clearly stands out. It's tough to convince yourself to put down a nearly-equivalent amount of hard-earned money for another brand, so it is no coincidence that they outsell other EVs by a very wide margin.

disconnected 7y ago
> the market has finally caught up to the fact that Tesla is years ahead of their competitors. Incorrect. The stock value is being pushed up by: 1. Unexpected quarterly profits in October; 2. Tesla planning to open a new factory in China and securing a 1.4 Billion dollar loan to do so; 3. Apparent strong interest in the Cybertruck and the impending announcement of the Model Y; 4. USA and China are easing the trade war, which is pushing the whole stock market up (there have been "records" left and right in the past few days). But the big one is number 2. Tesla moving into China means that they can tap into the humongous Chinese market.
- martythemaniak 7y ago
  Well, TSLA is a very sentiment-heavy stock, so it's hard or impossible to say what exactly caused this recent run. For example, they've been guiding Q3 and Q4 profitablity since ~Q2 or earlier. They started building the Shanghai factory in Q1, the Model Y was announced in March, the Truck's been talked up since forever, etc. What's really changed is that the Taycan is no longer a mystery, but a real car with a real price tag and real range. The ID.3 is almost-real and struggling with software issues. The E-Tron, new Leaf, new Bolt, etc have real sales figures. When these were unknowns, you could be reasonably skeptical of Tesla's claims, but that's increasingly untenable. Or, as the great Silicon Valley philosothoughtleader Russ Hanneman said: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzAdXyPYKQo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzAdXyPYKQo

slg 7y ago

Besides all the funding secured and pot jokes, can anyone explain what has happened to this stock recently? Over the last two months it has gone up roughly 30% after already having a big immediate jump after the last earnings. Is this mostly related to long term shorts finally closing their positions in the wake of those earnings? Or was there some big Tesla news that I missed that changed the perception of the company's financial position?

asdfqwer234 7y ago
Musk was able to get funding in China for the Gigafactory there. That's my best guess https://techcrunch.com/2019/12/23/tesla-lands-1-4-billion-from-chinese-banks-to-build-out-its-shanghai-gigafactory/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/12/23/tesla-lands-1-4-billion-fr...
manigandham 7y ago
Stock prices are based on perception of where it's going. The surprise profit from the last earnings, trade deal leading to lower tariffs, new China factory opening up that market, and the general quality of electric car competition released this year have all shown that Tesla is still far ahead of the game and close to running a sustainable operation.
lazyjones 7y ago
It's probably not one single reason. Tesla has had a lot of good news lately, from reports about Elon behaving a little better (and winning that defamation lawsuit), to competing EV from companies like Mercedes and Audi not really selling well and securing a large area for GF4 near Berlin. The most impressive feat for me was how quickly they built GF3 and started production in China, but my tiny contribution to the stock price was earlier this year (late May), the return to profitability in Q3 probably impressed many investors as well.
- noodle 7y ago
  Other smaller stuff too: - Porche's Taycan EV is supposed to be the closest direct competition for Tesla cars, but its having production issues. - Tesla just pushed a new software update that includes a lot of useful features (voice keyboard/commands, an official camping mode, saving camera clips on honk, etc) - A lot of miscellaneous positive press is cropping up from the end of the year and end of the decade type reporting - Time for example put it as one of the "best gadgets of the decade". - They recently released and presumably are testing a paid software update to boost M3LR off the line acceleration, which is an interesting situation to obtain revenue from already sold cars. - Internally they're pushing to sell a lot to break sales numbers before EOY. Some places are reporting that they're even selling showroom floor models. - They secured a US$1.4B loan from Chinese banks for GF3 acceleration, which was already ahead of schedule. - They closed on the land for GF4 and are reportedly looking to start building Jan 2020. - The recent news of possibly reinvigorating the EV tax credits in some way probably also helped. - Solar is ramping up as well.

pastor_elm 7y ago

Funding secured.

eindiran 7y ago

Just for reference, the claim that "420" comes for a police code for marijuana possession is completely incorrect: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/420_(cannabis_culture) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/420_(cannabis_culture)

look_lookatme 7y ago
Seems like a strange thing to go around correcting people on. I didn't even know it was supposed to be a police code, it's just some silly code word for weed that like 85% of American english speakers understand to mean weed.
- slap_shot 7y ago
  I, for one, always thought 420 was a reference to a police code for possession (similar to 187 for homicide). Eidiran's post just led me to a few posts about it, and I found this article where you can see a video of the guys back at the exact place of their high school they met at 4:20. I really enjoyed this. https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/The-420-code-The-high-larious-definitive-story-12849127.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/The-420-code-The... Depending on how one spent their high school afternoons, it might bring back memories :)
- quasarj 7y ago
  The linked article made this claim, so it's perfectly fine to debunk it here.

CriticalCathed 7y ago

The shorts on twitter are particularly venomous today. I have to wonder if they're too emotionally involved in this. Tesla is seriously flawed but "fraud" is truly ludicrous.

stillmotion 7y ago

> 420 often refers to the police code for cannabis possession Hah, this journalist is so out of touch with the joke. 420 is the time to blaze it!

sudoaza 7y ago
420 was the California Bill for medical marijuana legalization (and of course the time to blaze it).
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > 420 was the California Bill for medical marijuana legalization “420” was established term for weed before SB 420 of 2003 was introduced; the slang didn't come from the bill but the bill was introduced on a timing to exploit the slang. Also, Medical Marijuana was legalized by Prop 215 of 1996, SB 420 of 2003 was a measure to revise some provisions of the regulatory regime.
nabla9 7y ago
420 was the price Musk planned to turn Tesla private "funding secured" Musk lied.
- ecpottinger 7y ago
  Yet the stock is now $421.
  - scrumbledober 7y ago
    Which means to go private he would have to secure funding quite a bit higher than that

dangerboysteve 7y ago

Every Tesla stock price increase story is always followed by the mandatory story of Tesla short sellers getting crushed.

rcMgD2BwE72F 7y ago
Because it's the most shorted stock in history relative to its float/market cap?

tus88 7y ago

Take that shorters!

rossdavidh 7y ago

I cannot believe that the significance of the $420/share price just now occurred to me.

DeonPenny 7y ago

It was just at $140 a month or two ago I feel like. Incredible

jfengel 7y ago
It hasn't been at $140 since 2013. It dipped to $150 in 2016, and $185 in the spring after a long, slow decline early in the year. If you'd bought it during that dip it would have been a big win.

OrgNet 7y ago

stocks (on average) tend to always go up...

runeks 7y ago
Except for those that go down, of course.

oluomike1 7y ago

https://techcrunch.com/2019/12/23/tesla-lands-1-4-billion-from-chinese-banks-to-build-out-its-shanghai-gigafactory/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/12/23/tesla-lands-1-4-billion-fr...

Animats 7y ago

Tesla finally seems to be focusing on building cars in volume. Not making heavy-truck prototypes. Not talking about "transportation as a service". Not claiming self-driving. Just making electric cars at a profit. That's good for the stock price.

rcMgD2BwE72F 7y ago
>Tesla finally seems to be focusing on building cars in volume. That has always been the case. Perhaps you meant "Media and markets know focus on Tesla's building cars in volume". It takes time to build plants, install machine them and organize the whole logistics/delivery part. They've always been focusing on this, and had to run the show so people would be ready to take delivery by the time they reach mass production.

faissaloo 7y ago

Weed number