Investing in Tesla and the EV market.

Thrugelmir

Ciprico said:

I bought into L&G Battery Value-Chain UCITS ETF   (batg)  to get some hopefully tempered exposure to the EV market. Their holdings contain a few car manufacturers - but also companies who mine the materials that go into batteries...

A lot of ETF's get padded out with fillers as there's not actually sufficient stocks available in the sector to provide sufficient coverage of the specific sector. 

Was reading the other day that Ford appears in one of the main holdings in a US version of an EV ETF. Such is the shortage of large scale manufacturers yet. 

AnotherJoe

To get back to the OPs question, its very difficult to make a bet on EVs via a fund or similar, because there arent many pure EV companies outside China and of the ones there are, most will fail and the legacy car mf's are generally pension companies that also happen to make cars and some of those will be going under in the next five years. This is not really any different to the mobile phone market where there have been hundreds of companies, most now gone,  and only

two that make money out of them directly and a handful that makes money as parts suppliers (eg screens, batteries etc). It would have been easy 10 years ago to see that smartphones were the future and think that all the new entrants or maybe the big boys like Nokia and Microsoft would  undercut and bully out the clear leader so dump Apple. That didnt happen.  Yes, Apple has "only" 20% the smartphone market. Its also generally has about 80-90% the smartphone market profits.

I believe Tesla is where Apple was ten years ago, though its price probably get ahead of itself but its a mugs game trying to guess what the current low point will be, my mugs bet is that was a month or two ago. I would say, put some money on Tesla and the rest on an alternative energy fund which will likely encompass some battery suppliers as well, plus all that electricity to charge EVs wont be comping from fossil fuels much longer, it will come from wind and solar.

Someone upthread said that the CEO of Tesla (now "technoking " LOL) was prosecuted for price manipulation. What  they didnt say was the price at which he proposed to take Tesla private and was prosecuted for was aprox 10% of what the current share price is, so I'll go with  a CEO like that any day ! (and he's also tweeted that he thought Tesla share price was too high as well, so be prepared for a wild ride)

Tesla is also much more than a car company so valuing it as such is the same mistake as valuing Apple as a mobile phone company and using the same metrics as say Nokia or Ericsson or Motorola (remember them?) had back in 2008.

 

Malthusian

Someone upthread said that the CEO of Tesla (now "technoking " LOL) was prosecuted for price manipulation. What  they didnt say was the price at which he proposed to take Tesla private and was prosecuted for was aprox 10% of what the current share price is, so I'll go with  a CEO like that any day !

Run that past me again. It's fine to commit securities fraud and Tweet about a non-existent takeover proposal involving imaginary "funding secured" to boost the share price, as long as the Etoro crowd later boosts your share price beyond the point you pumped it to?

"No harm, no foul" is not a defence to securities fraud, especially not with the benefit of nearly three years of hindsight. If you're saying that everyone who bought shares at the pumped price is now sitting on a massive profit, that's not necessarily the case because there's no guarantee that everyone who bought shares in Tesla in 2018 - including those who bought them trying to get a quick profit from Musk's non-existent takeover bid - would actually be able to sell them at the current price. Many may already have dumped them at a loss when the SEC filed its suit and/or when it became clear that the takeover wasn't going to happen.