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.
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.
4/16
According to this BI article, there is a $25B difference between the value of the portfolio $BRK declared in its 13F and its 10-Q ($220B vs $245B). In actuality, they declared $245.5B in their 10-Q and $229B in their 13F, a difference of $16.5B.
The BI article also mentions a $6B investment into 5 big Japanese trading companies made over a 12 month period, which was made public in early August, and which supposedly explains part of the disparity between the 13F and 10-Q.
Indeed, there is also a disparity of $5B between $BRK's Q2 13F and 10-Q. In other recent quarters, the differences were:
Q2'20: $202.5B vs $207.5B = $5B
Q1'20: $175.5B vs $180.5B = $5B
Q4'19: $242B vs $248B = $6B
So the current $16.5B difference is not normal.
7/16
The BI article also mentions this has happened once before in Q2'15, when $BRK reported $110.5B in equity holdings in its 10-Q vs $107B in its 13F, a difference of $3.5B, only to file an amendment 3 weeks later, worth $2.5B.
8/16
Assuming that $5-6B of the current $16.5B disparity is due to the investment in the Japanese trading giants, what can the other $11B be attributed to? Could $BRK's currently confidential new investment be $TSLA?
9/16
Another important piece of information is the size of this position, and implications it has on 13D/13G filings. Companies have to disclose an acquisition of a 5%+ stake in a company within 10 days to the SEC. So unless $BRK was also allowed to keep this confidential...
10/16
this means the $11B must be less than 5% of the company in which it was invested. That means the company's market cap must be >$220B, which really limits the options. There are only 25 such companies listed on US exchanges:
There are only 15 other $220B+ companies listed on the NYSE and NASDAQ.
12/16
None of this proves anything, but when combined with the ~50M $TSLA shares that went missing in Q3, there are some strong signs showing $BRK's mystery new investment could be $TSLA.
13/16
If it is $TSLA, this $11B would amount to ~25M shares at the stock price at the end of Q3 ($429), and would go a long way towards explaining the ~50M missing $TSLA shares. 50M shares can't be explained away by retails, small institutions, and delta hedging, but...
14/16
25M can, especially with 25M shares worth of buying pressure pushing up the stock price as much as it did in Q3, because a rising stock price requires a lot of shares to be bought for delta hedging purposes, as I've explained in my blog previously:
So did $BRK acquire a large stake in $TSLA? There's no proof, but it seems very plausible. We should find out for sure what $BRK's mystery new acquisition is over the next few weeks or months.
16/16
Tweet thread compiled into blog post for people who prefer that format:
$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:
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.