TESLA, Third time

TESLA FOR THE THIRD TIME

First, September 2014, second August 2015 and now, January 2016. Although I write about the past a lot, this is the only longitudinal series.

Today, January 13, 2016, the stock of Tesla is about $210 per share, again pretty volatile but with a total market value of nearly $28 billion. 

It is hanging in there, the bubble has still not burst. But we will keep track. General Motors still has a bit of an edge in total market value (market cap) at $48 billion. 

We will continue to keep track.

TESLA REDUX

The post below was written 11 months ago. I don't think it was ever posted, which is no surprise as I write a lot of stuff that never sees the light of day...fortunately!! But the date was September 4, 2014 and the observations were made below. Just wanted to update.

The stock was at $290 and the sky was the limit. By April, the stock dropped to $180; yesterday it was $270 and this morning it is opening in the $240 range, or down 10% plus. That’s volatility.

The previous article pointed out the small production and it is still a problem as 2015 was the year that they would achieve a pace of 100,000 units per year. Well, folks, it ain’t gonna happen—they changed “guidance” by -15% and still think 100,000 is going to happen…next year.

Meanwhile, the company loses $16,000 per car, up from a loss of $11,000 per car last December. The $2.3 billion raised in the market last year is essentially gone, burned up.

Are we starting to see a trend here? It is still valued at $34 billion (which is less than Apple, valued at $650 billion) but I can’t reconcile that with the current GM value of $50 billion.

Is anybody else thinking tulip bulbs? Google “tulip bulb craze.”

Soooo, the logical thing to do is short the stock, right? Not so fast, there, Baba Looey. It is already close to being “fully shorted” meaning a lot of short interest which is also dedicated buying interest since the shorts have to be covered eventually. The bigger influence, in my mind, is the power of Wall Street. Don’t discount the ability of the brokers who are going to pick up hundreds of millions when they place the $2 billion or $3 billion in the next financing round.

Let us just sit back and keep track and determine if the markets are, indeed, efficient.

TESLA

I have not been an electric car fan, principally because I think it requires too much government support to make them even marginally competitive in the marketplace. Now, Tesla is getting about $3 billion or more in tax breaks to put a factory in Nevada.

The second reason I don't think electric cars should have a place on the planet involves the ecological damage created by the batteries. The awful ecological disaster in Canada where the raw material is mined has been used by NASA because it resembles a moonscape. The factories where the lithium is processed in China are polluters on a cosmic scale.

But...since the cars run part of the time on batteries (Tesla's are all electric, not hybrid as I understand it), they are "green." Now, the power plants that supply the electricity to power the batteries are deemed to be enemies of the environment by the politicians, but that doesn't appear to matter.

Now, get this:

Excitement over Tesla’s future has caused Wall Street to give this momentum stock a $35 billion market capitalization, versus General Motors’ $55 billion. Tesla sold 39,149 cars through June 30, while GM sold north of 9.7 million vehicles last year alone. Tesla has posted net losses of $581.93 million from January 2012 through June 2014, while GM has posted net income of $13.84 billion over the same period...

Not in this article, but in another it was noted that Mountain View, California saw a lot of Tesla purchases. I guess you can afford one when your house is worth $1 million, $773 per square foot.

DOES COSMO COVER RESULTS GIVE US HOPE?

November's 50th anniversary issue of Cosmopolitan magazine should have been a blockbuster. After all Christmas ads, 50th anniversary, but they were able to yank a defeat from the jaws of victory.

How? By putting the Jenner/Kardashian family on the cover and calling them America's "First Family." Well, I suppose better than the actual, "First Family," but still.

Anyway, sales tanked. About a 20% drop in sales of the magazine, meaning about 100,000 Americans who typically bought the magazine voted with their dollars and said "NO!"

Gives ya hope, don't it?

GUN VIOLENCE

Instead of trying to figure out a way to pillory the police, somebody ought to be talking about how violent crime in this country has decreased since its apex in 1991.

I don't know if the police have anything to do with it, but the rate of violent crime in this country has decreased by 49% since 1991. Does anyone talk about this on TV?

The way gun violence is measured has changed over the years, but since 1993, it has been consistent and the decline in gun violence is similar to the decline in total crime violence. In 1993, there were 7 homicides per 100,000 people, and in 2013, that had dropped by nearly half to 3.6 per 100,000.

In 1993, victims of crimes involving guns that did not result in death were 725 per 100,000. By 2013, that number had decreased to 175 per 100,000.

Yet, there is the outcry to take the guns away from law-abiding citizens.

Makes ya wonder, don't it?

And these are government statistics and the Pew Research which have not been doctored by MSNBC or Yahoo or the networks.

As an aside, I was provided an article from the New Yorker that had a title somewhat like this: "Republicans would rather be shot than agree with Obama." Do they also run insightful articles like this about Democrats? And they say the media is not prejudiced.

THE LAW, CALIFORNIA, SURROGACY AND AN UNWANTED BABY

We have a Soloman dilemma going on:

Here's the url:  http://nypost.com/2016/01/04/surrogate-mom-carrying-triplets-sues-to-stop-forced-abortion/

Here's the issue:

1.     A 47-year old California woman contracted with a Georgia (man/couple?) to act as a surrogate mother.

2.     She is carrying triplets and the father wants her to abort one of them because he only wants two.

3.     She is refusing.

Here is what I wonder--why is there even a dispute? How can someone threaten to financially ruin the mother (yeah, forgot to tell you that is what he is going to do) because she doesn't want to abort? Wonder what the various political factions will say? Will the pro-abortion faction support the father's "right to choose," as supported by his contract? Or, will they support the life of the unborn baby?

Likewise, the anti-abortion crowd...well, I suppose they would naturally support the surrogate mother.

This is weird enough to come from California, I guess. Another factoid, the surrogate mom wants to adopt the third baby, but the father just wants it killed. Wonder how you choose?

Interesting.

FRANK SOLICH

Frank was the first Serbian I ever knew, and he was the first Nebraska first-team football player I knew, too. We were fraternity brothers in the mid-60's, and today his Ohio University Bobcats take on the Appalachian State Mountaineers. The Mountaineers are best known for their 2007 upset of Michigan...and that Danny is an alum.

That alum status makes us a "house divided," but we will be rooting for a good game.

Frank was booted from his post as Nebraska head coach because he was "only" winning 9 games a season. In favor of a couple of not-so-goods. Frank still has the best winning record at Nebraska except for Bob Devaney and Tom Osborne.

All of us Sigma Nus of the era are proud of Frank, his play, his cover of Sports Illustrated, his record as a coach and his character. There were a lot of high-performance people that came out of those early baby-boom classmates and fraternity brothers, and he is an excellent example.

Football, even back then, took a toll on social life, so I can't say that Frank was one of my close friends, but he was a good guy and a regular guy. For one thing, he is small--his playing weight was listed at something like 165 pounds. He played fullback and held the single-game rushing record for Nebraska for many years until the advent of the I-formation, and a guy named I.M. Hipp broke the record.

Both Frank and Larry Wacholtz, a North Platte boy who played defense, were sensitive about their size in major college football, so they would tape weights under their shorts for weigh-ins--which he never confirmed nor denied.

A vivid memory for me was a Saturday night. A classmate of mine, Jim Stevenson and I were juggling baseballs trying to perfect the technique of passing back and forth. Frank came by, had only a short time before a date (while Jim and I were LOSERS!! staying in) but he wanted to learn how to juggle. "Frank, be happy to teach you, but it takes a long time to learn. Years." Within a few minutes, he was doing as well as either of us, and Jim was a Division-1 baseball athlete. Frank's athleticism was beyond anything I had ever seen.

Jim's name is on the Wall in Washington, killed in action in Viet Nam. How much the world missed.

The Camellia Bowl in Montgomery, Alabama. Today. Should be a good game.

ANGELA MERKEL

TIME magazine "Person of the Year." Welcoming into Germany the throngs of Syrian refugees.

WAIT: I think it was Abraham Lincoln who advised, "Don't believe everything you see on the internet."

Jerry sent me a terrific article, you can locate it here: http://www.oil-price.net/en/articles/oil-prices-and-syrian-civil-war.php

It posits that oil and oil prices have a lot to do with the current Mideast crisis, and it goes on to explain a lot more than that since most of us would agree with the broad premise.

The following notes are my takeaways from that article, and I recommend your own reading of it if you have an interest.

LEBANON, 1975

What does this have to do with anything? Well, it is a good example of what might happen in the EU due to Merkel's policies. Not to Germany, but to others.

Back in the 1970's, there were 400,000 Palestinian refugees, primarily in Jordan. Jordan kicked them out and they went, mostly, to Lebanon. Lebanon was, at that time, prosperous and had a large Christian population dating back to the Crusades. Naturally, the immigrants overwhelmed the "Switzerland of the Middle East" and the country has never recovered. They turned their new home into a pigsty like they came from.

KEEP THE BEST, EJECT THE REST

Germany needs cheap labor and the Turkey connection has dried up as Turkey's economy has improved upon entry into the EU. The immigrants will fill the bill, and Merkel has given them nine-month permits. Out go the ones who don't work out...or work.

DUMP ON YOUR NEIGHBORS?

A short time ago, Germany sponsored legislation to require EU countries to accept migrants from other EU countries. Where will these rejects go? Likely places would be Sweden, Norway and Denmark who, unlike Germany with 81 million people, have much smaller populations (like, 5 million or so) that will be overwhelmed. Just like Lebanon.

Trump was roundly criticized for saying there were Muslim no-go districts for British cops. The police in Birmingham acknowledged that is the case. There are neighborhoods in the UK that are ruled by Sharia law, and the police do not go there.

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE?

Angela Merkel is in the "pole position" for that Prize. After some of these other events work out, do you think the committee will admit, as they did with Obama, that their choice was a mistake?

IN THEIR OWN WORDS

ISIS has said, "We'll use and exploit the refugee crisis to infiltrate the West." Boy, what a surprise, although when you hear the news networks, they are evidently unaware.

Here is the problem--Lebanese officials (back to Lebanon, and they might know a bit) estimate that 2.2% of Syrians in refugee camps are affiliated with ISIS. So, if we allow 10,000 Syrian immigrants to enter the US, that would allow 220 who are affiliated with ISIS. Wonder if they could do any damage?

OIL

Back to the original article--the whole Syrian conflict is based, as are most ME conflicts, in the oil business. The Shia-led countries (Iran, Iraq, Syria) want a pipeline to go through Syria to the Mediterranean. The Sunni countries (principally, Saudi Arabia and Qatar) want another pipeline to go through Syria and through Turkey.

The Sunni pipeline would seriously compete with Russia's pipeline to the Western EU. Russia has been aligned with the Shia for decades; the US with the Sunni. The Russians are going to wipe out ISIS that has been funded in large part by Saudi Arabia and Qatar (so was the Arab Spring until it got completely out of hand and turned into a bunch of criminals).

Note, however, two important concepts: this is about oil and about fine points of distinction between seemingly similar religions. The geography defined to prevent the reemergence of the Ottoman empire (the Sykes-Picot Agreement, 1916) has less to do with it than religious matters. Sunni versus Shia. That fact does not square with our Western attitudes and is not recognized by our politicians and certainly not by the media.

Just a taste of the article, take a look, and special thanks to Jerry for forwarding it.

AL GORE

Al Gore is one of my favorite topics--made millions through promoting false information. The following has been stolen from Facebook, a post on December 3.

Source: http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323452204578288343627282034

Author Zac Unger was originally drawn to the arctic circle to write a “mournful elegy” about how global warming was decimating the polar bear populations. He was surprised to find that the polar bears were not in such dire straits after all.

“There are far more polar bears alive today than there were 40 years ago,” Unger told NPR in an interview about his new book, “Never Look a Polar Bear in The Eye.”

“There are about 25,000 polar bears alive today worldwide. In 1973, there was a global hunting ban. So once hunting was dramatically reduced, the population exploded.”

“This is not to say that global warming is not real or is not a problem for the polar bears,” Unger added. “But polar bear populations are large, and the truth is that we can’t look at it as a monolithic population that is all going one way or another.”

According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, there are an estimated 20,000 to 25,000 polar bears worldwide, living in Canada, Greenland, the northern Russian coast, islands of the Norwegian coast, and the northwest Alaskan coast.