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Elon Musk Calls Boss of Tesla Troll Who's Heavily Invested In Oil Industry (electrek.co)
Okian Warrior shares a report from Electrek, written by Fred Lambert: One of Tesla's biggest anonymous trolls/shorts has been doxxed as an investment manager heavily invested in the oil industry. He has now deleted his Twitter account, which he used to promote his blog posts about Tesla and attack anyone saying anything that could be perceived as positive on Tesla, after Tesla CEO Elon Musk reportedly called his boss to complain about his behavior.
We are talking about "Montana Skeptic" who has been using Seeking Alpha, a financial blog aggregator, and Twitter to push the bear case on Tesla for the past 3 years. Hiding behind his anonymous persona on social media, Montana Skeptic went beyond just pushing the bear case. He also used the platforms to send insults and attacks to Tesla bulls, bloggers, YouTubers, and reporters discussing anything that he saw as potentially being positive for Tesla, including [this author] on numerous occasions to the point where I had to block him. But now that his real identity has been revealed to be Larry Fossi, a managing director at Rahr Enterprise, which is reportedly heavily invested in oil, we learn that his motivations could have originated from other reasons.
We are talking about "Montana Skeptic" who has been using Seeking Alpha, a financial blog aggregator, and Twitter to push the bear case on Tesla for the past 3 years. Hiding behind his anonymous persona on social media, Montana Skeptic went beyond just pushing the bear case. He also used the platforms to send insults and attacks to Tesla bulls, bloggers, YouTubers, and reporters discussing anything that he saw as potentially being positive for Tesla, including [this author] on numerous occasions to the point where I had to block him. But now that his real identity has been revealed to be Larry Fossi, a managing director at Rahr Enterprise, which is reportedly heavily invested in oil, we learn that his motivations could have originated from other reasons.
Always examine the hidden agenda.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
most people are... musk is remarkably human.
It really is an amazing car. . . I feel like a requirement to short the stock is one of the following:
1) You have never test driven a Model 3
2) You are a shill for some competing industry/company
Yes, I am sure there is some kind of "rational" intrinsic valuation argument out there for shorting the stock, but, at the end of the day, Tesla makes cash from selling cars, not stock. . . and their latest car is amazing. They will sell as many as they can make at the current price point. If they manage to get the price down (which tends to happen at high volume), no army of Montana Skeptic shills will be able to save the oil industry from having to write-off huge portions of their fixed assets. . . Buckle-up and get ready for a crazy ride. . .
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
There is a significant difference between expressing one's opinion and trolling someone off of Twitter and endless ad hominem attacks on anyone who dares to disagree.
ad hominem attacks on anyone who dares to disagree.
Like calling someone a pedo?
It's clear in this world of misinformation and "fake news" that proof does nothing. That the only way to get an anonymous agent to stop spreading lies is to lift the veil of anonymity.
If someone wishes to criticize, they can either do so carefully and anonymously with cold hard facts. Or they can express their unsupported opinions openly and publicly. There is no middle ground.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Interesting. But it is ok for somebody to lie and cheat in an effort to destroy your company, but it is bad to tell has boss AND the SEC about said individual's action?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Uh no. He was purposely trying to manipulate the stock market by libel. Hopefully, SEC goes after him.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Gotta disagree with that point; If you're going to comment, you gotta commit!
Not being able to delete or edit a post is a great incentive to think about what you're about to put up on the internet for all the world to see, and how it will reflect on you/your internet persona for years and years to come. :)
=Smidge=
Actually, I found it quite informative. You don't speak for anyone, AC. You aren't even speaking for yourself.
No, he expressed annoyance that some entitled arsehole turned up and got in the experts way with his impractical pointless gadget.
Then he pointed out what we were all thinking, namely that the whole submarine thing was just a publicity stunt.
Elon was unhappy because he is unused to being subjected to straight talk.
More likely, having not spoken to a sound attorney, he's blowing smoke. If the SEC does get involved, there may be a lot of smoke, the scent of pants on fire, and lots of subsequent litigation.
Nut cases have a habit of digging in deeper, when they should be looking for cover. Obsessed, they carry on even as noose gets tighter.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
And Musk will pay for that stupid outburst. That's accountability. Hiding behind an anonymous account, not revealing the conflict that arises from your business interests when attacking another company, that is the opposite of accountability.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
He's a troll because he hid both his identity and the fundamental conflict of his own position. Maybe he has some decent criticism of Musk and Tesla (though from what I can tell, a big proportion was pure BS), but abusing anonymity and not disclosing his own business interests pretty much makes him a textbook troll. That, and the SEC may have some interest in his activities.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Thank you. This is one of the worst headlines I have ever seen on slashdot. It's a new low.
I think he got so angry about being called out because the stupid submarine idea was so obviously just a PR stunt.
Also, there is a certain don't-give-a-fuck type of Englishman that is just not impressed by money, and is quite happy to call a spade a spade.
The "scaleup" is entirely artificial, not market-driven. EVs are selling because California has mandated that a certain percentage of each automakers' sales are zero emissions vehicles. The target is about 2.5% for 2018, ramping up to 8% in 2025. There's no market basis for this; it's just CARB setting an arbitrary number. Every automaker has to either comply, or buy enough credits to comply from an automaker which exceeds their quota, or be banned from selling cars in California. Since about a dozen states automatically adopt CARB's guidelines, this would result in the automaker being banned from selling cars to about 1/3 of the U.S. by population.
So every automaker, whether they believe in EVs or not, is busy producing EVs to comply. And if the market doesn't want enough EVs to meet the target, they run sales and incentives to make the market want enough (that's the scaleup you're seeing). Musk set up Tesla to take advantage of this, because he realized an automaker which produced only EVs would always exceed the quota, and thus could sell extra credits and make a profit, even if the vehicles were sold at-cost. Basically the system is rigged to force ICE sales to subsidize EV sales to hit an arbitrary production quota. That becomes harder to force as the percentage of ICE sales becomes smaller (profit margin on each ICE car has to be shifted to provide a bigger subsidy for EVs).
I don't short stocks because I think shorting is stupid. The most you can gain is the price of the stock at the time you shorted it; while the amount you can lose is infinite. It's the opposite risk/reward scenario of buying a stock. But it's quite obviously the Tesla fans who are buying into a fantasy here with Tesla's current valuation. Yes Tesla might eventually be worth that much. But they're still two orders of magnitude in production away from reaching that level. (Tesla is valued about the same as GM, and GM produces about 8000 cars per day vs Tesla's current production of about 6000 per month. Production being key here since you later cite investment in production as justification for lack of profit - clearly Tesla still needs a lot more investment in production if it wants to justify its stock valuation.) A *lot* can happen before Tesla's production capacity reaches that of GM's, so you're taking an enormous risk betting that it's going to be Tesla which finishes up on top of the EV race (or if EVs even represent the finish line, since it's CARB setting the goalposts, not the market)..
Amazon is a great example. Amazon pre-dated the dot-com bubble. They were one of hundreds of dot com companies which were overhyped and overvalued. The people who bought into Amazon (IPO in 1997) weren't prescient that Amazon was going to come out on top. They just got stupid lucky betting on Amazon instead of the hundreds of other companies which crashed and burned when the dot com bubble burst. For every "faithful" Amazon investor who was "smart" and picked a winner, there were hundreds of "faithful" investors who were just as "smart" and picked