1/18

$TSLA's S&P 500 inclusion is finally here, and it's shaping up to be a truly unprecedented inclusion. I outlined a few of the reasons why $TSLA's inclusion is so special in this blog post a few months ago:

teslainvestor.blogspot.com/2020/07/teslas…
2/18

The actual announcement has made it clear that the committee is also aware of the unique nature of this inclusion, because I've never heard of an inclusion quite like $TSLA's for two reasons.
3/18

Reason #1: There are five weeks between the announcement and when the actual inclusion takes place (Dec 21st). This time usually ranges from a few days to about 10 days at most in cases like $FB's, but I have never seen such a long period between announcement and inclusion.
4/18

Reason #2: The possibility of the inclusion being split in two. I have also not heard of this happening ever before. The main reason as to why this could make sense is because most of the buying index funds do is usually concentrated in the days surrounding the...
5/18

actual inclusion, even though index funds are free to accumulate the shares they need anytime from announcement until a few weeks after the inclusion. By splitting the inclusion into two, perhaps the committee will be able to split this concentrated buying into two as well.
6/18

Some interesting context to this S&P inclusion is the information coming out of the 13Fs. We already knew Baillie Gifford sold off a fair amount of its $TSLA stake during Q3, but it now turns out that Baillie wasn't the only institutional investor who did so.
7/18

Although Baillie was the biggest seller far and away, many institutional investors significantly reduced their positions during Q3. So where did these shares go? That's what's so curious about the 13Fs. It gives no clear answer to where the shares ended up.
8/18

I was fully expecting to see a (new) institutional investor that amassed a massive stake in $TSLA during Q3, and effectively scooped up Baillie's (and others') shares. However, unless this investor missed the official deadline for filing its 13F, that is not the case.
9/18

My spreadsheet, in which I keep track of TSLA's biggest holders, went from 23% of shares being unaccounted for in the hands of smaller institutionals, retails, etc. to 33% being unaccounted for. More details on this spreadsheet in this blog:

teslainvestor.blogspot.com/2020/08/tsla-h…
10/18

So where did these shares go? Some might've wound up in the hands of Citadel for delta hedging purposes, and it's possible smaller institutionals hold more shares, but these won't add up to 100M shares. I think there was likely somebody big buying leading up to the split.
11/18

In my opinion, the three most likely theories are:

1) There is a new big institutional holder of TSLA shares, but he somehow hasn't filed 13F yet.

2) There were a large number of unaccounted for, naked shorts, that covered their positions leading up to the stock split.
12/18

Although I've been skeptical of the naked shorts theory, because all other evidence is imo quite weak, I think this gives more credibility to it, because these 100M shares that went missing must've ended up somewhere.
13/18

3) A large number of index funds speculated on the S&P 500 inclusion in Q3, before any official announcement happened.

Index funds don't file 13Fs, but NPORT-Ps. These have different deadlines, and are usually not filed until much later.
14/18

Although in my S&P 500 blog I showed a prospectus of an index fund stating it could not buy ahead of an official announcement, I have since seen a prospectus of a different S&P 500 fund that can buy ahead of an announcement, thereby speculating on future inclusions.
15/18

You might think that, if theory #3 is true, this means the S&P inclusion will be lackluster for the stock, but keep in mind that a minimum of 130M+ shares will have to be bought by index funds at any price, and some of the 100M shares that went missing in Q3 will have...
16/18

ended up in the hands of market makers for delta hedging purposes.

Moreover, even if index funds have already accumulated half of the shares they will need, it led to a rally from ~$1,350 to $2,700, a 100% increase. A similar rally today would boost the stock to $800+.
17/18

All in all, the next 5-6 weeks should be very interesting to watch for people who own $TSLA. I think $600 is quite likely, especially if the company continues to execute on Q4 deliveries, MiC MY, Berlin, and Austin. But time will tell.
18/18

I've also compiled this tweet thread into a small blog post, for people who prefer that format:

teslainvestor.blogspot.com/2020/11/tslas-…

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More from @FrankPeelen

18 Nov
1/16

Thread on Berkshire Hathaway and Tesla.

Yesterday, I pointed out in this quoted thread that, based on data I gathered from 13F filings, a large number of TSLA shares seem to have gone missing during Q3, to the tune of 100M shares.
2/16

I made a small mistake, so the number is actually a little over 50M shares, but nonetheless this is a large number of shares that can't be explained away by retail buying, delta hedging, and smaller institutional investors increasing their stakes.
3/16

@s17_scott and Thekiwi on TMC pointed out to me that $BRK omitted one company from its 13F, and instead disclosed this newly acquired stake separately in a confidential filing, because it was worried that making the position public would move the market too much.
Read 16 tweets
23 Sep
1/6

My Battery Day Thoughts:

I continue to be thoroughly impressed by the Tesla team. Drew and the other engineers are rock stars. Super smart and motivated. I much prefer a hardcore technical presentation like this over the recent Cadillac and Lucid PR fests.
2/6

Today, Tesla already has a large lead in batteries, powertrain, software, engineering, manufacturing, etc. Battery Day made it clear that Tesla has some of the smartest people in the world working hard on continuously improving every piece of the entire battery supply chain.
3/6

The pace of innovation and numbers presented today seem absolutely absurd. These advancements will over the next years likely do the same for Tesla's batteries as Starship will do for SpaceX's rockets. It will make all competitors secondary, if not obsolete.
Read 6 tweets
10 Sep
1/5

I'm the total opposite. The Lucid 'unveil' was just an hour and a half promotional video and fake Q&A with questions to make itself look better. Very similar to the Cadillac EV 'unveil' from a while back.
2/5

Personally, I can't stand a company that presents itself like this. It comes across as fake, dishonest, and like they want to be seen as perfect. An unproven startup is not perfect. A more humble attitude would be more suitable for a company in Lucid's position in my opinion
3/5

Honesty is extremely important to me in all relationships, including one with a company. Honesty is not the vibe I'm getting from Lucid. This type of presentation works like anti-advertising on me, and makes me avoid the company and product until I see evidence of excellence
Read 5 tweets
28 Aug
1/6

I'd be curious to know where they got that number. I believe that $55M should be in the ballpark of the cost of a single Falcon 9 launch, not a per seat price when 4-7 passengers on a flight. Starship will be at least an order of magnitude cheaper.
2/6

The big takeaway for me is that SpaceX is interested into getting into space tourism. If they do, I don't see how will be able to compete with SpaceX on price. @elonmusk 's goal is to eventually offer tickets to Mars for the price of a house after all.
3/6

Even if offers a 'simpler experience', Starship is designed to compete with airline tickets in Earth-to-Earth flights, so I'm skeptical that a comparatively tiny company like can compete with SpaceX on price.
Read 6 tweets
23 Aug
1/8

Delta hedging can be self-fueling yes. The "Mechanisms" blog post does a good job of explaining it. But in essence:

Buying pressure -> SP rise -> market makers need to buy more to delta hedge -> further SP rise -> and on and on.

It all depends on how many sellers show up.
2/8

The thing is that everybody, both analysts and actual shareholders, have wildly different price targets for . I myself wouldn't divest much at a SP of <$10,000.

Large institutions might not be that price inelastic, but fact remains that it's easy to make a case for...
3/8

sky high TSLA price targets, such as ARK's. Therefore, most investors may be unwilling to sell, even if the stock price goes up 50% in 2 weeks on no news, if their price target is much higher than the new stock price.
Read 8 tweets
22 Aug
1/7

The $TSLA community has been of the opinion that managers of funds benchmarked to the S&P 500 would all jump at the opportunity to front-run the inclusion.
2/7

The woman from this CNBC clip shows that many fund managers may understand TSLA so poorly that they believe the current valuation is nuts, and so they might prefer to not buy TSLA until after their performance is actually benchmarked to it, so as to not risk buying too high.
3/7

TSLA's options market and delta hedging mechanisms are as strong as ever. The table in this link shows that the delta hedging requirements for market makers increased by nearly 30M shares (20% of float) since the stock split announcement.

tsla-oi.s3.amazonaws.com/index.html
Read 8 tweets

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