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huh, some dude IPO'd himself.
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Mar 28, 2013 20:40
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That is a hilarious story. quote:Soon after the split, Merrill received a $100,000 life insurance policy as a new benefit at his customer-service job. Shareholders quickly decided that in the event of Merrill’s death, the policy should be distributed among them. It opened up the possibility that, in financial terms, Merrill might be a more valuable asset if he were liquidated. Investors who had no personal connection to Merrill might be tempted to vote for him to jump off a bridge. When I saw the vasectomy vote I was like, why couldn't they vote on an insurance policy and a super high risk job for him- may as well cash out.
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Mar 28, 2013 20:59
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Arkane posted:So let's talk about TSLA/Tesla Motors real quick. Based on what you're saying...why dont you just sink some cash into TSLA common and sit on it? I'd feel much more confident in it as a potential mid-long term play than trying to work the options.
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Mar 29, 2013 02:07
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R.A. Dickey posted:Based on what you're saying...why dont you just sink some cash into TSLA common and sit on it? I'd feel much more confident in it as a potential mid-long term play than trying to work the options. This. You're talking about 5-10 year outlook, then buying 1-2 year out calls. Options are all about timing. You can be right, but have the timing off and lose everything.
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Mar 29, 2013 08:02
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I'm hesitant about Tesla for one fundamental reason: lithium ion batteries. For the same reason laptop and cell phone battery life sucks rear end after a few years, the range on their cars will become shorter and shorter until it's completely impractical. At that point it will cost the owner $15k+ for new batteries, and probably a significant amount to dispose of the old ones properly. I think in a few years we'll hear significantly more about this. Battery technology simply doesn't improve. It's based off of very fundamental chemistry that doesn't leave room for creativity. The improvements in power for computers/phones are in the processor, monitor, software, etc, not in the battery itself. There's probably a lot of room for improvement in that regard for cars and tesla, but it's a problem that will never go away without a change in battery technology.
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Mar 29, 2013 14:31
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scavok posted:I'm hesitant about Tesla for one fundamental reason: lithium ion batteries. Built in obsolescence will drive sales of new units. This is probably a plus. Why do you think you get a new laptop every 3 years? I am hesitant because I don't think they have a competitive advantage or net income? (Not sure on that one) Tesla buyers are like Iphone buyers, they will have to have the latest version. Buyers of $100k cars don't care about resale. They normally corporate lease them and replace them yearly for the tax savings and ability to screw the passive investors out of profits. The stock probably has priced in that they will sell a million cars a year or something though, heh.
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Mar 29, 2013 16:18
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My beef with Tesla is that their cars are a terrible model for affordable, sustainable cars. Thing is, Tesla never set out to be the new green car. Their initial philosophy was "let's see what can be done with electric vehicles and prove they can be great cars. In so doing (and with really rich customers), as a bonus we might help improve electric vehicle technology so that other car companies can make the everyman's EV (and possibly buy technology/parts from us  )." It was never originally their goal to become The Most Sustainable Car Company. Because they were trying to further technology through making "top-end" products, I'm really not sure why they went public.Tesla's cars are designed to be powerful and sexy and show off what EVs can do. They are NOT efficient power users. Depending on your local electricity supply, last time I checked, they generally produce more GHGs than even a lovely gasoline car. Because everyone equates EVs with the sustainability movement, this is kind of dangerous - people are going to hear that Tesla's cars are actually bad for the environment and then think "oh looks like the greenies had it wrong again." scavok posted:Battery technology simply doesn't improve. It's based off of very fundamental chemistry that doesn't leave room for creativity. The improvements in power for computers/phones are in the processor, monitor, software, etc, not in the battery itself. There's probably a lot of room for improvement in that regard for cars and tesla, but it's a problem that will never go away without a change in battery technology. As an electrochemical researcher, I certify that this is false.* Lithium ion batteries perform way better and are way cheaper than they were 20 years ago. Battery chemistry does not change. But that only means you are stuck with the same reactants and the same open circuit voltage. The open circuit voltage is only the voltage when you are not using it; when you actually run current from a battery, the voltage drops to "pay" for the reaction to proceed, and so you lose power. There is tons and tons of research going on in improving batteries that does not involve changing their chemistry; it mostly focuses on trying to reduce how much voltage you lose when you run the battery, and there are many ways to do this. Some other research focuses on reducing cost of ancillary materials (cell housing, etc.) and manufacturing. *Edit: Don't mean to come down harshly on you - I understand why you think that, and you're right that disruptive new battery chemistries are unlikely (though a few people do research that). It's just very wrong that batteries can't be improved. alnilam fucked around with this message at 16:49 on Mar 29, 2013 |
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Mar 29, 2013 16:43
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Not sure if you did much research but, as far as I'm aware, their stated plan has never been to produce only top-end products, but "to enter at the high end of the market, where customers are prepared to pay a premium, and then drive down market as fast as possible to higher unit volume and lower prices with each successive model". There's some words about efficiency you might be interested to read also but you'll have to adjust the well-to-station efficiency for the Tesla to get a "real" number for the electricity produced in your area. Maybe you read about or calculated or analysed their future plans and energy efficiency differently though, and I would be interested in hearing more detail.
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Mar 29, 2013 17:51
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alnilam posted:As an electrochemical researcher, I certify that this is false.* Lithium ion batteries perform way better and are way cheaper than they were 20 years ago. I like being wrong on some things, I hope it does continue to improve. I'm still apprehensive on Tesla for this reason though. They might be able to pull it off given their customers are in the market for impractical $100k sports cars, and writing the car off after a few years or getting batteries replaced isn't that significant. I'm not sure how well this will be able to scale down to larger vehicle markets though, and the high end sports car market they're limited to is extremely competitive for it's size.
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Mar 29, 2013 18:18
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jawbroken posted:Not sure if you did much research but, as far as I'm aware, their stated plan has never been to produce only top-end products, but "to enter at the high end of the market, where customers are prepared to pay a premium, and then drive down market as fast as possible to higher unit volume and lower prices with each successive model". I stand corrected, maybe? I'm thinking to a while ago when it was launched, I thought I remembered them talking about positioning themselves as a high-end car maker to fund their own research into making EVs better overall. I guess what I missed was that they themselves planned to reap that research (I thought they were going to sell/license it to other companies, and let themselves remain a high-end-only company). My mistake. jawbroken posted:There's some words about efficiency you might be interested to read also but you'll have to adjust the well-to-station efficiency for the Tesla to get a "real" number for the electricity produced in your area. Maybe you read about or calculated or analysed their future plans and energy efficiency differently though, and I would be interested in hearing more detail. Maybe efficiency was a bad word to use, on my part. As you might expect, they picked some favorable numbers for those numbers. And their own use of the word "efficiency" in that page is nearly as vague as mine was. There are many ways to define efficiency of a power plant, for example, or efficiency of refining/transport of petroleum fuels, or vehicle efficiency. A lot of the differences come down to, how are you defining your "ideal" case (the denominator of your efficiency value)? Is it the heating-value of the fuel? (If so, which measure of it?) The fuel's exergy content? I guess what I meant more, though, was that Tesla's main goal right now is to make an awesome EV that rich people will want to drive. Anxiety over reduced range and power is a big barrier to adoption of EVs, so Tesla was like, let's engineer the hell out of this, drat the expense, we need to show that EVs can have good range and power and be awesome. This is an admirable goal, and I am generally glad Tesla set out to do it. They did it in part by making a really really nice car body and drive train, but they also did it by using lots and lots of batteries. Hence the cost. Also, more batteries = less energy-efficient, because they're heavy. They make up for this in part by having really really good everything else (which also brings more cost). It's not a practical way to solve the problem in the long run. And it's pretty non-cost-efficient. But that's all beside the point that yes, by some measures Tesla's cars are pretty energy-efficient. They're not cost-efficient. They're not GHG-efficient, at present electrical grid mixes. I generally admire Tesla Motors - I do! I'm talking bad on them a lot, but in general I think they're doing cool stuff. But I don't see them making a big impact in the market for quite a while. And on a less economic note, it worries me to think the public will see them as a model for sustainability, because right now they're not. They're not even trying to be yet. It's their end goal, but it's not the real aim of the Roadster.
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Mar 29, 2013 18:33
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alnilam posted:As you might expect, they picked some favorable numbers for those numbers. And their own use of the word "efficiency" in that page is nearly as vague as mine was. There are many ways to define efficiency of a power plant, for example, or efficiency of refining/transport of petroleum fuels, or vehicle efficiency. A lot of the differences come down to, how are you defining your "ideal" case (the denominator of your efficiency value)? Is it the heating-value of the fuel? (If so, which measure of it?) The fuel's exergy content? I don't think their definition is vague at all. Well-to-wheel efficiency is very clear and obviously the correct overall measure, taking into account refining, transport, etc. As I said, you'll have to adjust well-to-station efficiency depending on your electricity source, though.
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Mar 29, 2013 18:59
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jawbroken posted:I don't think their definition is vague at all. Well-to-wheel efficiency is very clear and obviously the correct overall measure, taking into account refining, transport, etc. As I said, you'll have to adjust well-to-station efficiency depending on your electricity source, though. Well-to-wheels is the correct way to do it, yes. What I meant was that at every individual step along the way (for example, when you calculate the efficiency of the vehicle, or the efficiency of the power plant from which your electricity came), you make a number of assumptions and choices in order to come out with a value of "efficiency." Some of those choices, you can pick one that ends up looking favorable for you. And some of the calculations have very different forms depending on whether you're talking about electricity or about combustible fuels. Also, a 52% fuel-to-electricity rate is pretty optimistic, as is assuming all-natural-gas electricity. Also, why do they express their vehicle mileage in Wh/km, and all the other ones in mpg? I'm really not sure, but the numbers do not compare directly. If you put them in the same units, it's still favorable for Tesla, so I don't know why they did this. Another example of how tenuous comparing efficiencies can be. If you convert them to the same basis, using HHV_gasoline = 47 MJ/kg (which converts to 13 kWh/kg)... Hybrid: 55 mpg = 31 km/kg = 418 Wh/km Commuter car: 451 Wh/km Sports car: 1,150 Wh/km Worth mentioning that Tesla lists all the other vehicles' mileage in distance-per-energy (mpg), in which higher numbers are better; the Tesla number is in energy-per-distance, where lower numbers are better. Again, don't know why, cause their number comes out favorable when you put it into an actually comparable form. alnilam fucked around with this message at 19:45 on Mar 29, 2013 |
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Mar 29, 2013 19:40
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Tesla's outlook has improved every year since they entered the market. Sure they're not going to crush the combustion engine market this year but I see no reason why they wont slowly and surely get better. Tesla has the will, the money and the research behind them, eventually their momentum will be significant. It's just a matter of time while they continue laying the ground work they need to take off.
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Mar 29, 2013 20:23
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cowofwar posted:Tesla's outlook has improved every year since they entered the market. Sure they're not going to crush the combustion engine market this year but I see no reason why they wont slowly and surely get better. Tesla has the will, the money and the research behind them, eventually their momentum will be significant. It's just a matter of time while they continue laying the ground work they need to take off. In the end it is all about the dealerships.
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Mar 29, 2013 20:43
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evilwaldo posted:In the end it is all about the dealerships.
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Mar 29, 2013 22:21
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cowofwar posted:Yeah, and just like charge stations they are gradually increasing in number. But how fast? The entrenched infrastructure is a wide moat for the established automakers. Tesla may have to subsidize an infrastructure buildout at some time in the future.
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Mar 29, 2013 23:37
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evilwaldo posted:But how fast? The entrenched infrastructure is a wide moat for the established automakers. Tesla may have to subsidize an infrastructure buildout at some time in the future. Not only do the major automakers already have dealerships all over the place, but there's no guarantee that they won't quickly catch up in the electric car race once/if it becomes a viable business.
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Mar 30, 2013 15:16
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More stock screener creation questions: In order to program a screener, I'm referencing a list of stocks, then pulling parameters for them from Yahoo Finance .CSVs using urls such as this: http://finance.yahoo.com/d/quotes.csv?s=CTGX+GOOG&f=c1l1. Yahoo seems to have a 200-stock-per query limit. Is there a better way to pull real-time data for a large list of stocks than looping through the stock list in 200-stock increments? Seems like it would take a while this way. Querying 200 stocks at once doesn't seem to take much longer than 1 stock at a time, but each query adds substantially to the download time. Where do you recommend pulling data to create a master stock list of ticker symbols? I'm currently using the NYSE Index, and pulled the S&P500 stocks from Wikipedia, but would like to look at other stocks as well. Dominoes fucked around with this message at 16:14 on Mar 30, 2013 |
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Mar 30, 2013 15:40
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Dominoes posted:More stock screener creation questions:
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Mar 30, 2013 20:10
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nebby posted:If you're using yahoo to program a screener you intend to use for live trading, I think you're gonna have a bad time. Yahoo data is best used for stock screens for idea generation, not really for day trading. In my own screens I hit yahoo for each stock individually to get historical price data and it takes about 5 minutes.
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Mar 30, 2013 21:08
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Dominoes posted:What do you recommend instead? For live trading? Your brokers data or a separate feed are the only things that you can really count on. For back testing and ideas you can use whatever.
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Mar 30, 2013 22:11
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Dominoes posted:What do you recommend instead? This seems like something that's only going to be available on your Bloomberg or Reuters esque services. I'd be interested to hear if I'm wrong though.
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Mar 31, 2013 01:16
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LLCoolJD posted:Not only do the major automakers already have dealerships all over the place, but there's no guarantee that they won't quickly catch up in the electric car race once/if it becomes a viable business. They're well on their way. While Tesla is making electric sports cars for the very rich, other car companies have come a long way towards making EVs for early adopters who are "kind of rich but not crazy rich." Tesla has lots of good IP, but many people don't realize how much Li-ion battery research has also come out of Nissan, GM, Toyota, etc. And a lot of the latter is a little more practical, because their aim is to create affordable EVs now. Again, Tesla is developing some good high-end EV tech that I think will trickle down to more common cars in the end (possibly from Tesla itself) in the same way that advances in supercomputing eventually benefit regular computers, but don't act like established automakers don't already have their hand in electric vehicles. (Not that you were; it was a rhetorical)
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Mar 31, 2013 03:58
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There are plenty of people working on batteries and they have some pretty cool stuff. Batteries have been stuck where they are presently for quite awhile and are starting to be a road block to better efficiency so I expect things to start moving in the next couple years.
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Mar 31, 2013 08:32
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Dominoes posted:What do you recommend instead? You're going to have to pay for reliable live data - there's plenty of options, but I suggest something like eSignal or Qcharts which is pretty decent for just starting out in terms of data and charting. You can pipe live data to Excel or a custom application. There's probably cheaper options but I only have some familiarity with eSignal on the consumer/retail side of things.
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Mar 31, 2013 18:45
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cowofwar posted:Yeah, and just like charge stations they are gradually increasing in number. I have noticed in Nashville that charge stations are popping up everywhere. Might be something to think about investing in under the same principal of "don't buy the airline, buy the businesses that service the airline"
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Mar 31, 2013 21:19
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Magugu posted:I have noticed in Nashville that charge stations are popping up everywhere. Might be something to think about investing in under the same principal of "don't buy the airline, buy the businesses that service the airline" Are they subsidized at all by the car companies/govt? How much do they charge?
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Apr 1, 2013 00:18
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Baddog posted:Are they subsidized at all by the car companies/govt? How much do they charge? To be honest i don't know about subsidization. However i do not believe that they are. You buy a card that you purchase points for, plug up your car and go shopping and eat, etc. Stations use different amounts of points, depending on location. From my understanding business owners actually purchase the stations for there property and the company handles all of the transactions and pays the business owner. The company i'm specifically referring to is called ChargePoint. Edit: There are tax breaks for property owners to install public use charge points on there property's. not sure of specifics on it, just did a quick Google search. Magugu fucked around with this message at 01:17 on Apr 1, 2013 |
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Apr 1, 2013 01:14
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Tesla up 15% in pre-market announcing higher car sales and profitability in Q1. Wish I had decided it was a great long-term and bought more options last week  I did buy the April Calls though so it's party time, but just on a smaller scale. scavok posted:I'm hesitant about Tesla for one fundamental reason: lithium ion batteries. For the same reason laptop and cell phone battery life sucks rear end after a few years, the range on their cars will become shorter and shorter until it's completely impractical. At that point it will cost the owner $15k+ for new batteries, and probably a significant amount to dispose of the old ones properly. I think in a few years we'll hear significantly more about this. Point taken, but Tesla offers an option where the battery will be replaced after 8 years for a nominal fee up front (at which point the company expects your battery to be at 70% capacity). cowofwar posted:Yeah, and just like charge stations they are gradually increasing in number. evilwaldo posted:But how fast? The entrenched infrastructure is a wide moat for the established automakers. Tesla may have to subsidize an infrastructure buildout at some time in the future. They are doing this. They are called Superchargers, and they are free for life for Tesla owners. There's only a handful right now (California and the East coast), but they are planning a nationwide network and networks in Europe. R.A. Dickey posted:Based on what you're saying...why dont you just sink some cash into TSLA common and sit on it? I'd feel much more confident in it as a potential mid-long term play than trying to work the options. If I'm buying Jan '14 35 calls at $6 a pop (well they were $6 when the stock was at $38.00), that is basically buying the stock at $41 with a shadow stop limit of $29. Ditto that for Jan '15 calls at $8. It allows me to own much more of the stock without having to sink in nearly as much money. Riskier, sure, I'm paying a premium, sure, but I'm also not a 60 year old nearing retirement so I think options are the better play if I think a company is set for serious near-term growth. Personally speaking, I'm also coming from a background of binary trading (much of my income derived from Intrade in past years; they just folded up shop), so I'm also much more comfortable with options as they come closest to replicating that. Basically my bet here has a limited loss, with a potentially extremely high return and I am happy with that.
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Apr 1, 2013 14:29
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Baddog posted:Are they subsidized at all by the car companies/govt? How much do they charge? Yes and yes. 30% federal tax credit to install charging infrastructure, and Nashville, (Nissan leaf USA headquarters), is subsidizing a $10K per unit DC quick charger. There are companies, like Chargepoint, that are trying to monetize electric charging. They have a good business plan as they operate like paypal, they take a cut of the fee the owner of the equipment charges for payment processing. I have paid $2 to charge twice, but the alternative was a $12 parking space rental. The market doesn't really know what to charge yet. Most chargers are still free in Indiana. The main problem with the charging infrastructure is that there are 3 different plugs and no one is going to budge. It is beta max vs vhs with Tesla super plug as the elitist we will build our own standard on the side. Most of the equipment manufactures have built in connections for whatever standard the owners want to implement though so converting them to the winner won't be a problem. I charge at home 99% of the time. It would be nice to be able to drive on longer trips but I just keep a spare ICE powered car around for that. That would be the only reason I would want pay chargers available.
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Apr 1, 2013 15:06
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Well, it looks like AAPL has failed to break through the 50dma again, and the volume was accelerating as the stock dropped.. so now I'll be waiting to see where the bulls make a stand, hopefully in the 425-430 range. Then we will see if the bleeding has at least stopped.
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Apr 1, 2013 15:17
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Arkane posted:Tesla up 15% in pre-market announcing higher car sales and profitability in Q1. Wish I had decided it was a great long-term and bought more options last week You and me both  Actually, this was my first real big win in options - had a few mediocre gains before, but nothing quite as exciting as a 150% gain. 
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Apr 1, 2013 17:25
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Turkeybone posted:Well, it looks like AAPL has failed to break through the 50dma again, and the volume was accelerating as the stock dropped.. so now I'll be waiting to see where the bulls make a stand, hopefully in the 425-430 range. Then we will see if the bleeding has at least stopped. I finally broke and sold at $460. It is entirely a technical/momentum stock and I have no patience with that poo poo. As far as I see it, any play on Apple is now a bet on earnings later this month. If they confirm the low expectations, poo poo will go south real quick and we will be in an either lower technical channel for the next quarter.
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Apr 1, 2013 17:54
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Some people sure are getting rich on the FNMA and FMCC roller-coaster. I've never bought OTC stocks and it looks too much like the wild west for me.
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Apr 2, 2013 23:33
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Shmoogy posted:For live trading? Your brokers data or a separate feed are the only things that you can really count on. For back testing and ideas you can use whatever. R.A. Dickey posted:This seems like something that's only going to be available on your Bloomberg or Reuters esque services. I'd be interested to hear if I'm wrong though. mik posted:You're going to have to pay for reliable live data - there's plenty of options, but I suggest something like eSignal or Qcharts which is pretty decent for just starting out in terms of data and charting. You can pipe live data to Excel or a custom application. There's probably cheaper options but I only have some familiarity with eSignal on the consumer/retail side of things. Thanks. I'm almost finished with the base of my program. Pulling the real-time data from Yahoo is actually pretty quick, given that I can pull in 200-stock increments, as capped by Yahoo. This is the first computer program I've made, but I'm surprised that the data crunching itself takes a while - several times longer than the download. Is this normal, or does it sound like a glitch that this wouldn't be almost instantaneous on a modern computer? The historical data from yahoo takes a long time due to having to download each stock's data separately. Unless I find a way around this, I'll have to use another API. I'm going to try TradeKing (my broker - which incidentally appears to have one of the more robust APIs) next, once I find a working Oauth module. Have any of y'all worked with this API before? I'll pay for the data if I really have to.
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Apr 3, 2013 01:47
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Dominoes posted:this wouldn't be almost instantaneous on a modern computer? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_O_notation The way to fix this is to make sure you're not doing anything N * N * N or more times (where N is anything your program is happening to do work on, for example N could be the number of stocks, the number of historical data points, etc). As soon as you get to O(N^3) or worse you're gonna start running into slowness.
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Apr 3, 2013 04:50
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Well, I just sent a longshot rambling email to a friend of a professor who runs a hedge fund. This should be fun -- can I use this thread as a reference?
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Apr 3, 2013 17:53
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Turkeybone posted:Well, I just sent a longshot rambling email to a friend of a professor who runs a hedge fund. This should be fun -- can I use this thread as a reference? What do you mean as a reference? You should not present anything found in here as suggestion that you know what you're doing. If anything, the inverse.
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Apr 3, 2013 17:56
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Strengths: 5-star poster in CoolTrades.com forums (post count appx. 3k) Good luck though really!
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Apr 3, 2013 18:11
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Turkeybone posted:Well, I just sent a longshot rambling email to a friend of a professor who runs a hedge fund. This should be fun -- can I use this thread as a reference? Cool good luck. You're one of the better posters in this thread Haha holist poo poo  :bitcoins:
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Apr 3, 2013 20:43
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