Slashdot Mirror
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.
1) Montana Skeptic has (via intermediaries) presented two entirely different scenarios for why he left Twitter. One was that he was just leaving to spend more time focused on his investments, and it had nothing to do with outside pressure. The other is that Musk called his boss and his boss made him quit. Given his penchant for spinning conspiracy theories... take whichever one you want with a grain of salt.
2) There's a heavy dose of irony, in that just a few days ago Montana Skeptic was part of the troll attacks against Pulitzer-prize winning auto journalist Dan Neil (mad that he wrote a glowing review of the Model 3 in the Wall Street Journal) which ultimately led to Dan deleting his twitter account. He wrote a gloating post after they succeeded, which is kind of funny in light of recent events.
3) Fun Fact: Fossi (aka Montana Skeptic)'s employer is Stewart Rahl - a guy often described as Trump's only true friend, inflappably loyal. His office is in Trump Tower, two floors below Trump's.
"Lock and load, Brides of Christ!"
Be aware that Montana Skeptic - famous for spinning conspiracy theories about Tesla and Musk that turn out not to be true - has given two conflicting explanations for why he deleted his Twitter account. In one of them, it had nothing to do with Musk, and in the other, it's all evil Elon's fault.
"Lock and load, Brides of Christ!"
Mmmhmm.
There are plenty of legitimate complaints. Personally I really dislike all of the electronic crap that they've built in to the Model 3. Electrically-opening doors because that was the solution to avoid damaging the weatherstripping by lowering the window a centimeter prior to actuating the door mechanism? Stupid. Removing basically the entire traditional behind-steeringwheel dash cluster and removing basically all non-touchscreen driver controls? Really stupid. Designing and building a seemingly successful car whose use of petroleum products is at-most limited to lubricants and possibly cabin refrigeration gases? Not so stupid.
I really wish that Tesla had considered the Model 3 as an S with most of the unnecessary electronics removed, rather than going exactly the opposite in removing the traditional controls. I won't buy a car that requires me to take my eyes off of the road to operate a touchscreen in order to use basic features.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Tesla has been hit with a torrent of fake news recently, trying to drive the stock down.
Most obviously and recently was the following:
1) Someone (not Tesla) posted that 23% of Tesla reservations have been cancelled.
2) Based on #1, an analyst downgraded the stock from "hold" to "underperform".
3) Tesla stock plummeted
4) Tesla notices #1 above and responded:
Dunno where this bs is coming from. Who knows about the future, but last week we had over 2000 S/X and 5000 Model 3 *new* net orders. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 20, 2018
(Note: Tesla makes about 6,000 cars/month, so an increase of 7000 cars puts them even further behind on reservations. And as noted in the link below, they have not started showing them in stores yet, so Tesla has yet to tap the "drive before they buy" potential pool of customers.)
Word on the street is that shorts are running scared, doing everything they can to drive down the stock price. Including insider sabotage, misleading financial spin, and online harassment such as the OP.
This is basically the last-ditch effort of Tesla bears to drive the stock down. Once the next two quarters financials are in, there will be no case for shorting Tesla stock whatsoever.
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!
The Model 3's approach is to put all of the most common functions on the steering wheel controls. The next most common functions - and most common things to see - are on the far left of the screen, right beside the wheel, so right next to your right hand, or right along the bottom rim. Note that it's a 16:9 15" screen (aka 33cm width) with 11 square buttons across. Meaning that each button is 3x3cm. These are not small controls by any stretch, and they're immediately adjacent to a rim, acting as a guideline.
(Note: to anyone who's never driven a car with a central speedometer: you're predominantly looking "down" either way. The only difference is that with a central speedometer - not even that Model 3's is all that central - you're also looking somewhat to the right. The advantage is that it's never blocked by the steering wheel or your hands, and that the dash can be lowered in front of the driver).
As for the specific case of air conditioning: it's a control larger than a credit card, right next to your right hand, so if you can't see that and hit in your peripheral vision, something's wrong with you.
As I've written elsewhere, there’s actually some very good reasons for the way the air vents are. First off, the big one: you have to be able to reach any controls in the car as a driver. So if your controls for your air vents are on the air vents, that means that they must be within reach of a comfortable driving position. Which means that the dash has to be so far forward that you can reach them. By having electronic controls for the vents, they can move the dash back and down, which improves ingress/egress and forward visibility.
Having electronically controlled vents means that they can make the outflow for the vent much larger. The larger the outflow, the quieter the airflow for a given flow volume, and the higher the peak flow volume you can achieve.
Electronically controlled vents means that vents can be autoadjusted to driver profiles. So whatever the current driver likes can be automatically set when said driver sits down. And there’s the potential for other features in the future — for example, someone pointed out to Musk (the idea seemed well received, so we may see it ~6 months from now) that when one turns on the air conditioning remotely, the vents should autoaim at the seats to cool them down.
Lastly, you have the fact that you can adjust multiple vents at the same time, with the vent-ganging functionality.
"Lock and load, Brides of Christ!"
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.
Someone else made a valid point about disclosing biases, so here is mine: I own Tesla stock, and I'm "long" on it.
I originally wanted to do some study of the stock market, and I purchased the stock to make the study "valuable" to me.
That turned out to be a lucky choice because Tesla is the hurricane eye of controversial stock market reporting. It's the perfect test case for deciding whether stock market news reports, statistics, and opinions have any informational value.
In any event, be aware that I own some shares and have an interest in seeing Tesla succeed.
The fantastically written headline actually says Elon Musk calls himself a Troll that is heavily invested in the Oil Industry
English, it's not just for Christmas!
You forgot something: an argument to support your point.
Let me guess: it goes something like "look at how many cars they made in the past year vs. their valuation"?
Great, except that's not how you evaluate a company's value. A company's value is based on where they're going, relative to the risk in them getting there and the timeframes involved. In the case of Tesla, they're in the middle of a scaleup that no "competitors" are even close to matching. We're talking an order of magnitude difference in production rates. Other automakers have big longer term plans, but in the next couple years, Tesla stands alone. So at the very least one should be evaluating relative to that timeframe, accounting for the risk.
What Tesla is working towards in the next couple years isn't the hundred-thousand-ish cars per year of last year. It's the half million to 1-million ish, depending on how their schedule and capital flows go with Model Y timing and how much "Tesla Time Distortion Factor" you account for. Plus Semis. Plus a grid battery market growing at an order of magnitude per year. Plus a solar roofing product market, only just now going to its very first paying customers, that could become massive. They're simultaneously attacking multiple markets each in the hundreds of billions to trillions of dollars.
Now, if you're a Tesla bear, obviously you think they'll never get there. And that's fine, that's your view - you don't need to reiterate your talking points as to why you think they won't, we've heard them all a million times, just like you've heard our opposing ones. You surely likewise understand that bulls believe it's likely that they will get there. But regardless of whether one thinks they will or won't get there, they should have an appropriate sense of what the values of these markets are, in the case that Tesla does get there. They're massive. Which is why bulls feel that, even accounting for the risk, Tesla is well valued or undervalued.
It's the same situation with Amazon. Stupid Amazon bears looked at past revenues relative to spending. Smart Amazon bears looked at future revenue potential, but just didn't believe they'd get there. Amazon bulls looked at future revenue potential, and did believe they'd get there. Amazon got there, the bulls profited, and both the stupid and smart bears lost. But at least the smart bears had a plausible argument.
"Lock and load, Brides of Christ!"
This guy, Montana Skeptic was out in full force trying to down Tesla stock and bolster Oil stocks. He is a manager of a hedge fund. Isn't that manipulating the market? SEC?
Back in 2009/2010 I followed daily why the barrel price would change. I would just use google new searching for oil, barrel price, etc. The articles written for the price change most often than not would have a bs feel like they may not tell the whole story. Once instance the price went fast at the beginning of the day because the oil supplies at the refineries had dropped, then turned right around and dropped below the start of the day due to the fact that the refineries were producing heating oil to be ready for the coming winter, a normal part of the business. About a week later the price went up again because it was report the supply last week dropped, without mentioning the logical reason why. Another instance the price of the barrel was regularly going up because the supplies were decreasing in December. The stated reason was likely because of demand. I finally found an article pointing out there used (not sure if still the case) be inventory tax on oil at the end of December. My better understanding of the market, I see the investors with a clue like how they can predictably make money from oil. That is why some don't like Tesla
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.
Yea his boss has reminded him of how many SEC violations he made over 3 years, and he left a papertrail on the internet with his Twitter account. Deleting it wont help because Twitter archives peoples accounts for a period of time afterwards for legal backtracking. Larry is about to get screwed and his company is about have the shiznit load of fines for violating insider trading rules. Larry might even cop some jail time for being an idiot for that long.
So, if I'm parsing that headline correctly:
Elon Musk called the boss of Tesla a "troll who's heavily invested in the oil industry".
Cool story.
Let me just look up who the boss of Tesla is... ...oh
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
What? That isn't what a troll is. A troll is a personally intentionally trying to get an emotional reaction by posting something. It has nothing to do with "not disclosing business interests". Good lord.
Don't laugh, but Congress and the Executive branch are explicitly exempt from the insider trading rules. There's a law stating just that.