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And Tesla just surpassed Walmart in market cap even though their total quarterly deliveries have been relatively flat around 80-90k per quarter for almost 2 yea

by xoxoy 6y ago

And Tesla just surpassed Walmart in market cap even though their total quarterly deliveries have been relatively flat around 80-90k per quarter for almost 2 years.

01100011 6y ago
It's an obvious short opportunity but how can you know how long the market will remain irrational?
- api 6y ago
  Is it? Which company has more growth ahead of it? Wal-Mart is slowly digesting in the Amazon Saarlac pit like all retail. Stocks are valued by growth unless they pay a lot of dividends, and dividends are rare today.
  - mpfundstein 6y ago
    quite funny that you are downvoted. you are totally right tesla is a forward looking company that will continue to surprise while walmarts whole business will suffer due to the implications of the corona crisis.
  - eldavido 6y ago
    Not quite that simple, Amazon tried to buy Whole Foods last year and has basically failed to get traction on groceries. Not saying you're completely incorrect but there's room for a lot of companies in retail doing a lot of different stuff.
    - mkr-hn 6y ago
      I always assumed the Whole Foods purchase was about data collection and retail space for developing and deploying store automation.
  - nip180 6y ago
    Walmart is growing, and hits over $500B revenue a year. Growing at that scale is impressive. Tesla sales luxury cars during an economic recession. Walmart sells cheap food and household goods. I’d buy Walmart stock before Tesla if I had to choose a long position on one or the other.
  - 01100011 6y ago
    I need what Walmart sells. I don't need anything Tesla sells.
    - Tade0 6y ago
      Problem is, anyone can have what Walmart sells. Nobody really has what Tesla sells.
      - adventured 6y ago
        > Problem is, anyone can have what Walmart sells. 5,000 massive scale physical retail buildings (at a time when other physical retail is being mauled), a brand with buyer loyalty that took half a century to create, operating on a 3% profit margin in a hyper low margin business, and excellent real-estate locations across most of the US. Be sure to wave to Kmart, Penneys, FW Woolworth, JG McCrory's and Sears on the way to having what Walmart has. No, you can't have what Walmart has. Nobody can afford to replicate what Walmart has built up over time. And if you try to compete with them via ecommerce instead of physical retail (thinking that will somehow be cheaper), you'll need to spend tens of billions of dollars on distribution to do it (and good luck competing with Amazon). If you had to choose who to compete with, Walmart & Amazon or Tesla, that's a comically easy choice. That's why companies like Nikola or Rivian exist (and 37 Chinese Tesla clones), and absolutely nobody is eager to build a thousand new giant physical retail stores to go after Walmart (besides, you can't get the money to do it, there are no funding sources for that financially suicidal move).
        gleenn 6y ago
        I understand your point for the most part, but the argument isn't that you have to build exactly what Walmart has (hundreds of buildings with mass distribution). Any Joe can setup a grocery/goods store tomorrow. Will they crush Walmart any time soon? Nope. Good luck trying to build what Tesla has. Call me a fanboy, but there is some amazing technology in those cars, and while strapping a battery on a frame with a electric motor looks easy, doing it at scale and as efficiently as they do is definitely not. Many of those 37 or whatever Chinese knock-offs have failed already. I would never buy a knock-off electric car, but I would definitely shop at Joe's convenience store to pick up some bananas, I do it daily actually.
- ttul 6y ago
  You can’t know.
- cryptica 6y ago
  The market is rational, the monetary system is what's insane. If the Fed doesn't start raising interest rates, this insanity will only continue and intensify. Buying cryptocurrency is the purest, most direct, most effective way to benefit from the current madness. The Fed is just going to keep printing as much money as is necessary to meet its full employment mandate (which is physically impossible at this stage due to automation). Employees all over the world are currently going round in circles and digging holes and filling them back up. Any white collar worker who takes their job seriously at this stage needs to wake up... What's going on is so obvious. Just bring in UBI and abolish the Fed. Better have idle people getting paid to do nothing than busy people getting paid to pretend to do something and engaging in self-deception... And let's not forget all the people who can't get a job because their useless skills are not useless in exactly the right way as demanded by their equally useless employers. I've seen many people get rich who have about the intelligence of a wild macaque and I've also seen very smart people struggling to make ends meet.
  - bokuwakirada 6y ago
    I know the above is not a popular opinion and grating to many, but I have to agree. My job as a SWE is just reinventing wheels and tackling problems that are not worth solving. I’m paid 7 figures (thanks to stock appreciation) to invent more efficient ways to shovel ads and infiltrate users’ privacy. Meanwhile basic science researchers languish as impecunious precariat. Even a humdrum poet devoid of creativity working a dead end service job is more meritorious than I.
- zipwitch 6y ago
  "The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent." Here's a piece on the origin of the quote: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/08/09/remain-solvent/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/08/09/remain-solvent/
- sixQuarks 6y ago
  This is what people have been saying about TSLA since it was a $200 stock. I'd be very careful.
  - reitzensteinm 6y ago
    I agree 100%. I've been bearish on the price since $400, but I wouldn't touch a short with a ten foot pole even today.
hinkley 6y ago
Part of me is kicking myself for selling back in like March, but there is no version of me that would have made it past the first of the month without profit taking. I'll just have to console myself with the 200% profits I made instead of the 900% I could have made.

by xoxoy 6y ago

And Tesla just surpassed Walmart in market cap even though their total quarterly deliveries have been relatively flat around 80-90k per quarter for almost 2 years.

01100011 6y ago

It's an obvious short opportunity but how can you know how long the market will remain irrational?

api 6y ago
Is it? Which company has more growth ahead of it? Wal-Mart is slowly digesting in the Amazon Saarlac pit like all retail. Stocks are valued by growth unless they pay a lot of dividends, and dividends are rare today.
- mpfundstein 6y ago
  quite funny that you are downvoted. you are totally right tesla is a forward looking company that will continue to surprise while walmarts whole business will suffer due to the implications of the corona crisis.
- eldavido 6y ago
  Not quite that simple, Amazon tried to buy Whole Foods last year and has basically failed to get traction on groceries. Not saying you're completely incorrect but there's room for a lot of companies in retail doing a lot of different stuff.
  - mkr-hn 6y ago
    I always assumed the Whole Foods purchase was about data collection and retail space for developing and deploying store automation.
- nip180 6y ago
  Walmart is growing, and hits over $500B revenue a year. Growing at that scale is impressive. Tesla sales luxury cars during an economic recession. Walmart sells cheap food and household goods. I’d buy Walmart stock before Tesla if I had to choose a long position on one or the other.
- 01100011 6y ago
  I need what Walmart sells. I don't need anything Tesla sells.
  - Tade0 6y ago
    Problem is, anyone can have what Walmart sells. Nobody really has what Tesla sells.
    - adventured 6y ago
      > Problem is, anyone can have what Walmart sells. 5,000 massive scale physical retail buildings (at a time when other physical retail is being mauled), a brand with buyer loyalty that took half a century to create, operating on a 3% profit margin in a hyper low margin business, and excellent real-estate locations across most of the US. Be sure to wave to Kmart, Penneys, FW Woolworth, JG McCrory's and Sears on the way to having what Walmart has. No, you can't have what Walmart has. Nobody can afford to replicate what Walmart has built up over time. And if you try to compete with them via ecommerce instead of physical retail (thinking that will somehow be cheaper), you'll need to spend tens of billions of dollars on distribution to do it (and good luck competing with Amazon). If you had to choose who to compete with, Walmart & Amazon or Tesla, that's a comically easy choice. That's why companies like Nikola or Rivian exist (and 37 Chinese Tesla clones), and absolutely nobody is eager to build a thousand new giant physical retail stores to go after Walmart (besides, you can't get the money to do it, there are no funding sources for that financially suicidal move).
      - gleenn 6y ago
        I understand your point for the most part, but the argument isn't that you have to build exactly what Walmart has (hundreds of buildings with mass distribution). Any Joe can setup a grocery/goods store tomorrow. Will they crush Walmart any time soon? Nope. Good luck trying to build what Tesla has. Call me a fanboy, but there is some amazing technology in those cars, and while strapping a battery on a frame with a electric motor looks easy, doing it at scale and as efficiently as they do is definitely not. Many of those 37 or whatever Chinese knock-offs have failed already. I would never buy a knock-off electric car, but I would definitely shop at Joe's convenience store to pick up some bananas, I do it daily actually.
ttul 6y ago
You can’t know.
cryptica 6y ago
The market is rational, the monetary system is what's insane. If the Fed doesn't start raising interest rates, this insanity will only continue and intensify. Buying cryptocurrency is the purest, most direct, most effective way to benefit from the current madness. The Fed is just going to keep printing as much money as is necessary to meet its full employment mandate (which is physically impossible at this stage due to automation). Employees all over the world are currently going round in circles and digging holes and filling them back up. Any white collar worker who takes their job seriously at this stage needs to wake up... What's going on is so obvious. Just bring in UBI and abolish the Fed. Better have idle people getting paid to do nothing than busy people getting paid to pretend to do something and engaging in self-deception... And let's not forget all the people who can't get a job because their useless skills are not useless in exactly the right way as demanded by their equally useless employers. I've seen many people get rich who have about the intelligence of a wild macaque and I've also seen very smart people struggling to make ends meet.
- bokuwakirada 6y ago
  I know the above is not a popular opinion and grating to many, but I have to agree. My job as a SWE is just reinventing wheels and tackling problems that are not worth solving. I’m paid 7 figures (thanks to stock appreciation) to invent more efficient ways to shovel ads and infiltrate users’ privacy. Meanwhile basic science researchers languish as impecunious precariat. Even a humdrum poet devoid of creativity working a dead end service job is more meritorious than I.
zipwitch 6y ago
"The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent." Here's a piece on the origin of the quote: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/08/09/remain-solvent/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/08/09/remain-solvent/
sixQuarks 6y ago
This is what people have been saying about TSLA since it was a $200 stock. I'd be very careful.
- reitzensteinm 6y ago
  I agree 100%. I've been bearish on the price since $400, but I wouldn't touch a short with a ten foot pole even today.

hinkley 6y ago

Part of me is kicking myself for selling back in like March, but there is no version of me that would have made it past the first of the month without profit taking. I'll just have to console myself with the 200% profits I made instead of the 900% I could have made.