Slashdot Mirror

Thank you for posting that. I was wondering where the mislead was, since all the recent expert analysis seemed reasonable and rational.

In case anyone hasn't been following the Tesla saga (most people, I imagine), public sentiment about the company is completely and totally driven by a sense of profit for the customers of the people writing the sentiment. If a fund's customers would profit by the stock tanking, then they try to bring that about by writing misleading predictions of doom and gloom.

The Tesla target price is all over the map - from from a low of 180 to a high of 500.

Tesla used to be the most shorted stock in history, and still has significant short interest. Roughly $11 b is betting that the stock will tank, and this results in enormous incentive to bring that about.

Last summer it was "Tesla will need another round of financing, we're certain", then Tesla paid its debt obligation in cash from profits.

Last month it was "Musk violated the SEC agreement", by tweeting information that was available in the published documents.

Today it's "interest has dried up". Wait a half a year and see if the trend is correct.

It's completely insane that the value of the company stock is based not on analysis and solid numbers, but on the perception of numbers. The stock doesn't go up or down based on whether they make a profit - it goes up or down based on whether it meets or exceeds *expectations* of profit.

Ugh!

It's literally impossible to get good stock information about Tesla at this point, and this will probably be true going forward for several years.

Thank you for posting that. I was wondering where the mislead was, since all the recent expert analysis seemed reasonable and rational.

In case anyone hasn't been following the Tesla saga (most people, I imagine), public sentiment about the company is completely and totally driven by a sense of profit for the customers of the people writing the sentiment. If a fund's customers would profit by the stock tanking, then they try to bring that about by writing misleading predictions of doom and gloom.

The Tesla target price is all over the map - from from a low of 180 to a high of 500.

Tesla used to be the most shorted stock in history, and still has significant short interest. Roughly $11 b is betting that the stock will tank, and this results in enormous incentive to bring that about.

Last summer it was "Tesla will need another round of financing, we're certain", then Tesla paid its debt obligation in cash from profits.

Last month it was "Musk violated the SEC agreement", by tweeting information that was available in the published documents.

Today it's "interest has dried up". Wait a half a year and see if the trend is correct.

It's completely insane that the value of the company stock is based not on analysis and solid numbers, but on the perception of numbers. The stock doesn't go up or down based on whether they make a profit - it goes up or down based on whether it meets or exceeds *expectations* of profit.

Ugh!

It's literally impossible to get good stock information about Tesla at this point, and this will probably be true going forward for several years.

Take a look at their financials, 2017 was a golden year for them. Every quarter their gross profits have been going up.

https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/...

Every quarter their gross profit increases by a nice healthy amount. Maybe they are cutting costs in places they shouldn't be and causing the fires?

The only quarter they had a problem with as Q2 of 2018, where they made a big payout of 2.2 billion. Their filing shows this really odd though, not sure why it came out the way it did.

"You should check the GOOG chart on NASDAQ."

Yes, but what will be the long-term results?

Its due to falling sales.

They are making a whole lot of money:
https://www.nasdaq.com/earning...

while sales are doing OK
http://gmauthority.com/blog/gm...

So it's probably not sales.

Why is their long term debt so high?

Because they're stupid.

And isn't that a bad thing?

Very bad, unless they can keep the ROI ahead of the interest.

What are their gross and net profits?

https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/...
Or check out that cash flow, quarterly: https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/...

They're spending bigly.

Why is their long term debt so high?

Because they're stupid.

And isn't that a bad thing?

Very bad, unless they can keep the ROI ahead of the interest.

What are their gross and net profits?

https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/...
Or check out that cash flow, quarterly: https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/...

They're spending bigly.

I'm just looking this up and having trouble with Tesla's PE ratio. Ameritrade isn't showing it at all (or I'm looking in the wrong place) Nasdaq has it listed as predicted negative then positive? https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/... Ford's is 9?

Many of the shareholders right now are likely hoping for a short term gain (months, or quarters, or maybe a year) rather than a truly long term return (many years of appreciation and dividends). The loss of liquidity and transparency by going private is likely to send these shareholders running to the hills with $420/share in their pocket.

I doubt Musk has lined up financing to buy back every single share except his ~20% at $420 on reasonable terms. If many shareholders elect to take the $420, I imagine the terms on the increased level of money required will be pretty onerous. Perhaps if only 10% of the shareholders bail, that tranche of investment might be on reasonable terms similar to the current yield on Tesla bonds. However, if Musk needs to reach deep into the financing pool to buy out 50% of the shareholders, that's likely to cost (perhaps by big dilution for everyone, perhaps just by horrendous debt terms).

Funds that invest in publicly traded stocks only will of course have to bail. (Institutions held over 60% of the shares as of March, the largest institutional shareholder seems to be T Rowe Price with a bit over 9% of the stock and the second is Fidelity with just a bit less.)

I suspect this is more a thinly veiled attempt to flush out the shorts rather than a serious attempt to really go private in the end.

It'd be $2,292,340 for 2017 annual revenue.

Iâ(TM)m not saying Tesla cant make it as acompany but they have some challenges. The difference between ford and tesla is ford had $156B in revenue in 2017 and $7.6B in net income (see https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/...) while tesla had $12B in revenue and -$2B net income (see https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/...) and their cash burn appears to be accelerating. Just comparing debt load between the two is not apples to apples.

Iâ(TM)m not saying Tesla cant make it as acompany but they have some challenges. The difference between ford and tesla is ford had $156B in revenue in 2017 and $7.6B in net income (see https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/...) while tesla had $12B in revenue and -$2B net income (see https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/...) and their cash burn appears to be accelerating. Just comparing debt load between the two is not apples to apples.

I saw the same "report" that you saw, and it was nothing but a rumor. Then Elon Musk responded saying it was false, but didn't release any actual numbers. So I guess you can believe whatever you want to believe. As for the "huge debt load", it's nothing compared to Ford, but somehow I don't see people raging on Ford all the time.

TSLA has over 11B in long and short term debt. FMC has 3.1B

You should compare TSLA and FMC finacials.

https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/...
https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/...

I saw the same "report" that you saw, and it was nothing but a rumor. Then Elon Musk responded saying it was false, but didn't release any actual numbers. So I guess you can believe whatever you want to believe. As for the "huge debt load", it's nothing compared to Ford, but somehow I don't see people raging on Ford all the time.

TSLA has over 11B in long and short term debt. FMC has 3.1B

You should compare TSLA and FMC finacials.

https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/...
https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/...

I suppose we can expect more muskisdelusionalandoutofcash postings.

In the last Tesla thread I pointed out that, as an stockholder, what I am looking for is NOT Elon Musk's cute personality or science fantasy. Nor do I care to whig out at every little story of production problems. What I am looking for is:

Technological leadership.

Market presence.

Production leadership.

Most of all: backorders and strong forecast. None of the rest matters unless you have someone willing to buy it. Tesla has that in spades.

So Tesla is delivering. Skepticism is healthy but not to the extent that the Tesla naysayers on /. take it.

There are a lot of people sending out fake news about Tesla nowadays, but there's an interesting bit of information.

Normally, in the two weeks ahead of a financial report the stock will mirror the report outcome. If the report is good, the stock will rise a little just before the announcement. If the report is bad, the stock will drop a little.

Tesla will be making their Q2 announcement on Wednesday (after the market closes), and it's dropped by 10% in that time.

In any other stock that would indicate bad news, but for Tesla? It could indicate a last-ditch effort for the bears to drive the stock down before a "good news" report. People are changing Tesla from "hold" to "sell", and saying that they're certain Tesla will need another round of financing.

(Musk claims that they will not need another round, and that Tesla will be profitable in Q3 and Q4 of this year.)

Tesla short interest is 34m shares right now, and with 170m shares outstanding, that's about 20% of Tesla is being shorted right now. 25% is held by Musk, so that's about 1/4 of public shares are held short.

There are three key periods coming up for Tesla: the Q2 report (Wednesday), and Q3 and Q4 of this year.

Over 50% of Tesla shares are held by 5 entities: Musk, Fidelity, Baillie Gifford, and so on. If the institutions dig their heels into the sand and refuse to sell, and if the other public shareholders also refuse to sell, there will be a short run and the stock price will skyrocket. There's nowhere that the short sellers can go to settle.

If no one is selling the stock, or there are many buyers, including panic buyers, caused by other short sellers attempting to close out their positions as they lose more and more money, you may be in a position to incur serious losses.

The institutions know this. Many of the public shareholders know this.

If the stock jumps up and Tesla seems reasonably solvent, it's estimated the short sellers will be out several tens of billions of dollars.

Expect a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth...

(I own shares in Tesla and want to see them succeed.)

With a declining PE, I'd disagree...
https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/...

It's a tough problem but I suspect one that is solvable with $10B USD,.leaving them a fair amount of net profit for whatever they want.

https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/....

The government outspends any company hundreds to one in this area

That's 100% false.

https://www.statista.com/topic...:

Oil (and gas) companies are among the largest corporations worldwide. Among the top ten companies worldwide based on revenue, six are in the oil industry. In 2016, Anglo-Dutch giant Royal Dutch Shell reported almost 234 billion U.S. dollars of revenue. Thus, Shell was the third-largest company worldwide based on revenue in 2015. ExxonMobil from Irving, Texas generated a revenue reporting some 219 billion U.S. dollars in 2016. However, ExxonMobil claims the highest market value within this industry, as well as having the second-highest market value of all companies worldwide in 2015.

https://www.nationalpriorities...:
In fiscal year 2015, the federal budget is $3.8 trillion.

So, no, the fossil fuel industry is probably larger than the entire US budget, making your statement 100% false.

Your statistics did not address the expenditures for climate change research in any way. They are a meaningless comparison between the gross revenue of oil companies and the total US federal budget.

Try reading the income statement for Exxon Mobile and learn the difference between gross revenue and net income. https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/...

In 2015 Exxon Mobile gave about 8 million dollars to public policy and policy research groups of all kinds
http://cdn.exxonmobil.com/~/me...

The US government 2014 budget for climate change expenditures was over $21B
https://obamawhitehouse.archiv...

I did check the numbers. The surge in short interest, up to ~39M, started at the end of February, mainly picking up in March. It was relatively constant (27-29m) before that.

Your premise is false.

The main point is: you are an ass.

Sorry that your cries of doom and gloom didn't pan out. Better luck next time.

I usually ignore ACs, but in your case, you're special (in the short-bus meaning of the word)...

Here is the same data for the last 4 quarters, with the most recent being March 31, 2018. This is for TESLA stock - meaning, everything that TESLA owns, and operates. This would include Solar City, etc. You cannot legally report only part of your corporate income or expenses - you have to report EVERYTHING that your company receives and spends.

Looking at the data, you'll see that for Q1 2018 (which ended 2 months ago, rather the FY2017 data I used above which ended 5 - not 8 - months ago), taking gross profit and subtracting sales, general and admin they had a $230MM loss. Looking at each quarter for the last 4 quarters, you'll see the same thing - losses. And you'll also notice that each quarter their interest expenses increase as they borrow more money to cover losses. So just the COGS is negative, and then their committed interest payments push it further into loss. They could completely cut all R&D engineering and capital expenses - cut it to $0 - and still lose billions each year.

Now, for special people, this may look all well and good! You're told that happy things are all that TSLA is about, and that it will make a profit. Yet it never does, and the facts are that it loses money on every vehicle sold BEFORE you account for things like R&D, capital expenses, and interest costs. The losses are quite high, too, being billions of dollars a year. Yet somehow it's going to turn around in the next 2 months (July)? Really? Someone likes fairy tales!

They cannot become profitable by selling more with the same model that they have. They would need to redo their entire organization, and slash quite a bit of COGS expenditures, in order to turn a profit.

Here are the financials from Q4 2017. They have a $2.2 billion gross profit, but they spent $2.5 billion on sales, general, and admin. That is a $300MM loss BEFORE we even talk about R&D or interest expenses. Cost of goods sold - the cost to make and sell the product - is a net loss. That's before R&D, NRE, interest, and other operational expenses.

Raw data is published like this: https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/... And there are sites that will consolidate and present it for irregular users and for news stories. I am not a trader so I only look at the news stories covering shorting of Tesla. I was only trying to see if my 1000$ deposit is gone or if there is some hope someday some car might materialize.

There's only a limited number of these logical constructs. IMO they're (cryptos) are very similar to non-voting, non-dividend-paying shares of a company. Not much you can really do other than trade them (Google's class-c's are over a grand a piece now). There's the ledger to which all transactions propagate, like a secure Usenet. Kinda limits its use as a true currency when some rando on the left coast gets his ledger updated when I make a transaction on the other side of the country.

I am not an accountant, I know nothing about the internal workings of Amazon other than what I can read in public media, and I probably do not know what I am talking about. But, I can do some arithmetic.

1 - The summary states that the Amazon warehouse worker makes $24,300.

2 - Amazon is famous for foregoing profits during its first 15-20 years in favor of expansion of services.

3 - There is financial information at the following links:
Amazon revenues: https://www.statista.com/stati...
Amazon income: https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/...
Amazon employees: https://www.statista.com/stati...
Amazon profits: https://www.theverge.com/2016/...

Based on these numbers, Amazon's performance in 2017 was:
Revenue = $178b
Gross profit after cost of revenue = $66b
Income after operating expenses = $4b
Net income after taxes et al = $3b
Employment = 566,000

For prior years:
2016: $2.4b net on $136b revenue, 341,000 employees
2015: $0.6b net on $107b revenue, 231,000 employees

You can see the trend - Amazon is only recently profitable as employees expand with general revenue and profit.

I have no idea how many of the employees are warehouse or fulfillment center employees. I have seen reports that would place the number between 130k and 200k.
For the sake of this analysis, assume that other low skilled employees are included, and we will go with 200,000 bottom wage employees.

Assume that Amazon had a fit of good will toward its workers and payed them a liveable non-stressful wage.
If in 2017 the $24k current wage was upped to $34k, that is an extra $10k/person/annum x 200k workers = $2 billion extra in wages.
That is 2/3's of profit, so Amazon could have afforded it (at the expense of shareholder return).

In 2016, assume a pro rata fewer number of low wage employees, 341k/566k x 200k = 120k.
Then, $10k x 120k workers = $1.2 billion = 1/2 of profit, so it was affordable.
In 2015, estimate low wage workers at 231k/566k x 200k = 82k.
Then, $10k x 82k workers = $0.82 billion = 1/3 greater than profit, so it was not fully affordable.

Going back farther, there was less profit to fund higher wages.

I am not arguing for or against Amazon, nor for or against minimum wages or workers rights or any other sociopolitical point of view. Being in a human services profession, I tend to side with the workers, and it pains me to hear of such situations. However, I also buy from Amazon, and call me a hypocrite if you will, but so do you.

Emotional or political or social points of view aside, it can be seen that Amazon's push to expand did not permit unfettered generous wages during periods of unprofitability.
Of course, the counter argument must be made that the higher paid employees, which are greater than half the workforce, could have had reduced wages and bonuses for a more equitable pay scale.

Now that Amazon is coming into the black, the righteous thing to do would be to raise wages. Even better, given how long they operated in the red, and were famously proud to do so, they could do so for another year or two and turn their profits into stock or cash bonuses for the low paid employees, to thank them for their sacrifice during the formative years.

http://fortune.com/2018/04/07/...

https://www.wsj.com/articles/t...

https://itep.org/is-the-trump-...

https://www.msn.com/en-us/vide...

https://www.nationalreview.com...

https://www.nasdaq.com/video/t...

There yah go. Because you're a fucking idiot doesn't mean reality gives a fuck about what you think, it just means you're a fucking idiot.

Um I own a European stock. It's GSK out of Britain. It pays dividends quarterly. https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/...

This is somewhat incorrect

And they either never read a Tesla financial statement or they are just ignorant.

Please don't stay ignorant.

Some years there was a slight profit if you remove R&D, but 2017 was horrible. $600 million lost even if you don't count R&D as an expense.

The fact is, that Tesla lost LESS than what the markets had been expecting for some time.

Cite? This graph shows earnings per share consistently more negative than forecasts for at least the past year. As a cross-check, TSLA dropped nearly 9% the day after its earnings call.

Alphabet's shareprice: $1171
Alphabet's earnings per share: $27.85 (2016 totals)

http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/g...

It doesn't matter how much you're growing if your spare price is 40+ times your revenue. Some companies are valued only according to what the market thinks the share price will be - nothing at all to do with its fundamental financial data.

I mean Uber is valued at something, even though it makes less than no money.

I think they're just trying to soften us up for this abomination:

http://www.nasdaq.com/article/...

He's been buying options and selling stock for a while. Yes, he divested a bit at the end of 2017, but he did that at the end of both 2015 and 2016. I expect this kind of BS from The Register, but Motley Fool used to be a reliable source.

You completely misunderstood everything in my post, but hey.

I'm not saying the US subsidizes in terms of sending drug companies cash (perhaps we do, but it wasn't my point). When we pay $x for a drug, and the rest of the world pays $x/10, we are subsidizing the rest of the world.

Looking at Pfizer, they spend $3 billion per year in advertising (source https://www.statista.com/stati...), with revenue of $52 billion. That's not trivial, nor is it a "very large cost per pill". It is about 5% of revenue. Meanwhile they spend almost $8 billion in R&D (source: http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/p...).

Fully 50% of their revenue is from the US (source: https://www.statista.com/stati...). And we pay more for drugs (source: https://www.bloomberg.com/grap...). So looking at the financials, let's say that Pfizer takes a 25% reduction in revenue (if the drug prices in the US cut in half). There goes the R&D budget, the advertising budget, and more.

So to keep the R&D going we'd have to raise drug prices everywhere, or subsidize R&D.

Bitcoin has essentially nothing in common with stocks. Stocks are ownership in a real world corporation that, ideally, pays regular dividends to share holders.

What about non-voting, non-dividend paying shares? Google class C's are non-dividend-paying and non-voting and are going for over a thousand bucks a pop. I suppose with a stock, if you sell it at a loss, you can write it off on your taxes. I doubt you can do that with bitcoin. Just need a Congresscritter to update the law and that will change (if they haven't already - if someone in the donor class starts getting involved with bitcoin, that should change).

Trades by C level execs should all be listed in the public SEC filings. Presumably that is how this became news in the first place.

Every company loses money on 'every unit sold' until the point that they've paid back the R & D. That is true for literally every product ever made. When the R&D is especially capital-intensive (like a new car or rocket) then it takes longer. Pretty much every time this happens some moron looks at the shareholder report and says "Company X is losing $Y on every unit!!! They should stop making units!!!".

Musk said 2 years ago Tesla would be cash flow positive and not need another capital raise. It's been several raises later and yet another one is just around the corner. BTW, the Chief Accounting Officer at Tesla just dumped a block of shares: http://secfilings.nasdaq.com/f... You sure you want to be one left holding the bag?

Most CEOs get paid mostly in stocks as the capital gains is less than their income tax would be. I would think they owned more than that.

Exactly. The raw data is here. In sum:

John Gamble (CFO) sold 6,500 out of 48,578 shares (~13%) for a total of ~$950k. Total comp in 2016 (source here) was ~$3.1 million, including ~$1.2 million in stock.
Rodolfo Ploder (President) sold 1,179 out of 44,827 shares (~2.5%) for a total of $170k. Total comp in 2016 was ~$2.8 million, including $785k in stock.
Joseph Loughran (President) sold 4,000 out of 42,723 shares (~9%) for a total of ~$485k. Couldn't find his total comp, but reasonable to believe it's in the same range and Nasdaq shows him receiving at least $1 million in stock this year at a glance.

So they all sold well less than a year's worth of stock given their compensation packages. And they all made much larger sales earlier this year. Gamble's transaction in particular is a fraction of the ~48,000 shares he sold in May to the tune of $6.5 million. Ploder sold 8k shares in February for ~$1 million, and Loughran sold 7k shares in February for ~$900k.

Given all that, the early August trades don't strike me as a smoking gun at all.

Mod parent up.

Amazon gross revenue, 2016: $135.99 billion.

Walmart gross revenue, 2016: $485.87 billion.

Mod parent up.

Amazon gross revenue, 2016: $135.99 billion.

Walmart gross revenue, 2016: $485.87 billion.

What do you mean still exist? Logitech is still the biggest keyboard and mouse company worldwide, they dominate in several categories from business to gaming, and the company itself has never been more profitable than in recent years:
http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/l...

Microsoft is definitely doing less. Look at a summary of their last four annual statements.
MSFT Income Statement

No, you're wrong.

Amazon is a public company, with stock traded on NASDAQ. Ownership is over 63% institutional. Jeff Bezos is the Chariman, President, CEO, and a large stockholder, but by no means "owns" Amazon.

The Washington Post is a privately held company, which Jeff Bezos purchased through a holding company (Nash Holdings, LLC) for $250 million in 2013. Yes, he indirectly "owns" The Washington Post.

Your descriptions of writing off of losses from WP to cover gains from Amazon is grossly inaccurate and ignorant of how business structures and taxes work in the United States.

No. Twitter made $100m profit last year, which is over $100m more than 4chan and 8chan combined. So they are unlikely to swap their profitable business model for one which loses money, even with porn ads and malvertising.

Unless I'm misreading, Twitter made an operating loss of $367m last year.

We need carbon based fuel in the now.

Don't know about you, but gas is under $2/gallon where I'm at. Natural gas is holding steady over the last 5 years. Hard to justify any desperate we-need-it-right-now measure.

Let's produce it here. Make jobs here.

The Keystone pipeline takes oil from Alberta, Canada and moves it to Port Arthur for sale and shipment. Apart from building the thing, how would this make jobs here?

Global warming is a far more pressing problem. We don't need more oil, we need less. Any money put to this pipeline would pay far greater dividends in renewable energy sources. Wind, solar, tidal, hydroelectric. Oil was great in its day, but just like coal - it's rapidly becoming unnecessary.

Twitter has much more serious problems then this right now. Like remaining profitable in the face of censoring users, and revenue, engagement and ad revenue following through the floor.

Funny that twitters decline started around the time they decided to start censoring users, and deciding who gets to see what. And since facebook is doing the same thing, as well as being complicit in open censorship in western democracies(France, Germany, etc). This is likely going to be the least of their problems. It looks like politicians(and gov bodies) will be behind the technical and social curve as usual.

Twitter's IPO price was $26 a share. After the initial climb following the IPO, it's been more or less downhill since then.

Since they didn't do any stock splits, the price of a single share is directly proportional to the entire company's valuation. So if the price of a single share is going down, that means the company's valuation is going down. Every investor should care about that.

Sigh....how to write a Linux virus in 5 easy steps using the same tricks malware uses, BTW wanna guess what kernel hosts the OS that has surpassed Windows in infections and has for over 5 years? That's right sparky LINUX.

So your vaunted "source" means absolutely nothing, its classic security by obscurity. wanna guess how much of your average Linux distro is actually vetted, as reported a couple years back by a scan of github access by a security firm? Less than 2%, that is all, the other 98% hadn't been touched by anybody but the authors who could have put any malware they wanted into it and you wouldn't know anymore than if you were on windows or OSX.

BTW I'll be happy to smack you with some citations if you'd like, from the KDELook bug that was hosted on all the major KDE repos for over a year to the Quake 3 malware that was hosted on all of the major repos for a year and a half, just ask. Thanks to Android we now have undeniable proof that Linux security is nothing but security by obscurity, and that if a malware vendor wants to own Linux? It gets pwned just as hard.

AMD staying afloat in the face of Intel's market share is a pretty amazing feat. It hasn't been easy being the distant second while keeping up the pressure on the #1 player but AMD has kept going for decades. I expect AMD to continue to be the distant second competitor, but being second doesn't mean you are a failure...

Intel in the previous century needed AMD for Intel's own survival for several reasons:

In the 80s and 90s when Intel was considered a small player in computation, many contracts called for a second supplier of CPUs in case Intel failed or failed to deliver. AMD was that company, which is why it was a near-perfect clone of Intel chips until the 386. AMD kept its license to make x86-compatible, independently-developed chips for a couple of reasons, which evolved over time.

Later, when Intel's dominance in the home computer market made it a natural monopoly, Intel used AMD's existence to argue against US-Justice Department litigation.

Even later, AMD's better technical decisions, IMO, gave it a performance lead at the same time Intel made a serious tech blunder with the Pentium-4. AMD became a better processor than an Intel. So Intel mobilized their hugeness and designed chips which outperformed AMD both in performance and efficiency, in the Core series.

AMD became a player in the graphics chip side through acquisition. Intel tried to develop GPUs but proved to be inept at it. Now, Intel is contemplating using AMD GPUs integrated into their desktop offerings. http://www.pcworld.com/article...
https://www.extremetech.com/co...
http://www.nasdaq.com/article/...

Intel's relationship with AMD is existential.

Reuters points out that the aggressive new biofuel standards will create a dilemma for an incoming Trump administration, given that his campaign courted both the gas and corn industries.

There's no dilemma. Corn prices already dropped because the subsidies dried up. He can reverse the the standards as easily as Obama set them.

It helps if you understand how to read financial statements instead of just repeating the statements of others who have an ax to grind.

The per vehicle loss that is often mentioned takes total expenditures minus total revenues and divides by cars sold. While this seems reasonable it does not take into account that much of the expenditures are being invested in growth.

This is sort of like telling your kid to quit their part-time job because the cost of raising them (feeding, housing, educating, etc.) is too high and your family is losing money on every hour they work. The fact of the matter is that they make money at their part-time independent of the cost of raising them. Kids having a part-time job means they may no longer need an allowance and will help prepare them for a full-time job.

The fact of the matter is that Tesla earns a healthy margin on every car they sell, but that margin is not sufficient to cover the investments they are making in building factories need to accelerate growth of the company. If Tesla really lost money on every car sold no institutional investor would include Tesla in their portfolios becasue Tesla would have no path profitibaily. Institutional investors know how to read financial statements and are very intersted in Tesla's potential. http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/t...

People either are never taught or choose to ignore the idea that you should never borrow to pay for a depreciating asset unless that asset helps you be more productive than you would be without it by a margin greater than the financing cost.

A car helps you be productive because it helps you get to and from work. And if it's your first job during or out of high school, or sometimes even out of college, you lack wealth to acquire it without financing, and you lack experience to make your labor attractive to legitimate work-from-home opportunities. For many, the bus isn't an acceptable substitute because bus drives have nights and Sundays off. Bosses have threatened to lay employees off unless the employee agrees to fill in a night or Sunday shift.

And if you do have wealth, you probably have good enough credit to buy a car at an interest rate lower than the inverse P/E ratio of the company that makes it. This means your money can be productive. For example, Ford Motor Company (NYSE: F) has a price to earnings ratio in the neighborhood of 6.6 (source), for an expected APY of 100 / 6.6 = 15%. So if you can finance a Ford vehicle for less than 15% APR, then you can buy a car, put everything but the down payment into a long position in F, sell a few shares every year to make the car payments, and still come out ahead because your dividends will exceed the interest.