Lots Of Tesla Questions, FOMO, Bitcoin ATH, Trade Alerts (Buying and Trimming), Etc
Here’s the transcript from today’s Live Q&A Chat. Note a few of the minor trade alerts below in BOLD.
Check out this clip of my appearance on Fox Business last week with my good friend Charles Payne talking about inflation, Nvidia and our new book, The Ultimate Tesla Book. You can also just watch the Tesla part here.
Q. Can you tell we missed you?
A. Ha, that’s very nice! Yes, it does appear I have my work cut out for me answering questions in the chat room today after having been gone last week to NYC.
Q. Are you still only “cautious” and not “bearish” right now? With Bitcoin hitting a new all-time high early Tuesday morning, and everyone around me talking about crypto again with overconfident attitudes like 2020-2021, it seems like we are due for a correction soon.
A. It’s so hard to game when a market as strong as this turns but yes, a correction is overdue and we added some more hedges in the hedge fund today and we trimmed a little bit of our Robinhood Markets (HOOD) stock too.
Q. Which stocks are you currently pounding the table on?
A. I’m not quite “pounding the table” on any names right now. I do think Tesla (TSLA) is a good buy here for a patient investor and that Apple (AAPL) is a good buy if you don’t own enough.
Q. Tesla (TSLA), Google (GOOG), and Apple (AAPL) all tanking today (again). Would love some comment from the team on this. Thanks.
A. Individual stocks can get in fashion and then out of fashion. We are up 10x on our TSLA, 57x on our GOOG and 845x on our AAPL since we first sent out Trade Alerts on each 5, 19 and 21 years ago respectively. It’s hard, nay — impossible – to game every up and down over the years. We bought more AAPL in the hedge fund today on this week’s continued weakness.
Q. Both Apple (AAPL) and Google (GOOG) are near your recommended buy levels, given current information, would you buy these here or perhaps wait for better prices?
A. I can think of worse ideas.
Q. Apple (AAPL) out of favor. I can’t imagine that Apple does not have an AI strategy. I would be surprised. Additionally, when they implement AI on their latest iPhones and iPads, I can see a huge device refresh where people start buying the latest offerings. What do you think?
A. I bought some AAPL for the hedge fund today. I think AAPL’s got more data about everybody on an iPhone than anybody but Google with their Android users. Apple is certainly working on its AI offerings, but much like how they let Google and Amazon roll out “Hey Google” and “Alexa” before Apple got serious about their Siri voice interactivity, I think Apple is letting Microsoft and Amazon and Google fight over the current batch of Nvidia’s best compute chips and will then roll out some great AI features individualized for each of its billions of people in the Apple ecosystem.
Q. Google (GOOG) a bit like Tesla (TSLA)…pretty much all bad news? (buying opportunity). Nothing fundamentally wrong, just a missed opportunity and buggy phone.
A. I agree.
Q. Now that Tesla (TSLA) superchargers are being adopted by other manufacturers as the charging standard, what’s your price target to buy TSLA now?
A. We accounted for this in our Ultimate Tesla Model from our Ultimate Tesla Book. Target for 2040 is about $10,000 per share. Seriously.
Q. Tesla (TSLA) September call options?
A. We did buy a few TSLA calls, dated out to May with $200 strikes today in the hedge fund. But just a few. Would buy more TSLA common at $165 or so.
Q. Tesla (TSLA): EV supplies and demands are the key here. There seems to be a price war as Chinese OEMs and Tesla are reducing prices. It is bad news for any OEM sectors if China starts to flood the market with an oversupply of products. From what I read lately, there are over 300 brands of Chinese EV OEMs. And these OEMs are just starting to build new factories in Europe, Thailand, S. Americas, and maybe Mexico. If they enter the US market, the question would be is Tesla even safe in its own market?
A. The Republican-Democrat Regime will probably not allow Chinese EVs into our market for decades at least. The BYD competition for Tesla is real, but I expect Tesla’s going to crack Full Self Driving/Robotaxis years before BYD or any other competitor can. Also, Tesla’s upcoming Model 2 could sell for near $20,000 each or so and that would definitely help Tesla sell many more cars in coming years.
Q. Tesla (TSLA) margins are shrinking, FSD doesn’t work, Optimus competition, EV slow down, Musk has issues himself, etc. It’s not looking great to me. BUT. I am almost always wrong.
A. I had a long talk about Tesla with one of the best hedge fund managers. He was like, “EV sales are really slowing and Tesla’s stock has been terrible.” I said, “I think everybody on Wall Street knows and agrees that EV sales are really slowing and Tesla’s stock has been terrible.”
He called me back the next day and said he had put some TSLA exposure on and said one of the smartest things I’ve heard about investing in many years: “In stocks, you can have good news or good prices but never both at the same time.”
That is, if/when Tesla sales accelerate again and/or they roll out FSD and/or start selling Dojo AI services and/or announce that they’re accepting orders for the Optimus robot and/or there’s other GOOD news about Tesla, the stock will not be as attractive/undervalued as it is right now while there’s pretty much ONLY BAD news around Tesla.
Q. Elon Musk’s eye has been way off the ball for quite some time and it’s all caught up w/ him and the company. Imagine, if for example, instead of wasting his time and resources on Twitter he would’ve put all his focus on bringing a 25k car to market – the fact that we’re nowhere near seeing that vehicle on the road is a CEO crime.
A. I too wish that Elon would focus a lot more of his energy and time on Tesla instead of tweeting partisan anger. But calling it a “CEO crime” to not have a $25k EV car on the road in 2024 seems a little extreme.
Q. Time to back up the truck on Tesla (TSLA)?
A. Maybe not back up the truck time, but I can sure think of worse ideas than buying some TSLA right now and forgetting about it for ten years.
Q. Can Robinhood Markets (HOOD) get back to the IPO price this year?
A. Oooh, that’s a big ask. It came public at $38 and it’s less than half that right now. Maybe in a couple of years though would be more likely.
Q. NVIDIA (NVDA): I have big-time FOMO (fear of missing out), it just keeps going. What to do?!
A. Oh man, I don’t want you to chase a stock that’s gone up so much like this one has but to get rid of “Fear Of Missing Out”, you have to do one of two things: 1) Buy a tiny bit of the stock to get your toe in the water and then be patient and hope it comes down some so that you can buy a little more at lower prices or 2) Go study transcendentalism from a guru and remove emotions from your investing thoughts. Seriously though, remember that emotions are the enemy of a successful investor.
Q. I saw your note on Intel (INTC) yesterday. I see a lot of chip stocks have been soaring and INTC has been mostly range-bound. When is this stock going to get going?
A. Intel needs to deliver some growth in the CPU and other core businesses and announce NVIDIA (NVDA) or Apple (AAPL) as new customers at the foundry business to get this stock juicing.
Q. Similar question for Rocket Lab (RKLB). Happy to be patient on this one but it’s been a slow mover. When do you see this stock gaining traction?
A. I expect that if we see some more cool space/lunar/NASA landings that Rocket Lab could get hot again. If/when Starlink ever files to go public that would probably really get this stock juiced.
Q. Rocket Lab (RKLB) seems to be a great business and future but why won’t its stock launch?
A. Bryce and I are meeting Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck tomorrow over Zoom. I won’t quite ask this question, but I will let you all know what I learn.
Q. Crowdstrike (CRWD) up big after earnings. That was a nice opportunistic add the other day.
A. Thanks, the stock’s faded all day today, but still up nicely on the day and even nicer since we snuck in and bought some a couple of weeks ago.
Q. I saw your note on AutoDesk (ADSK). If you didn’t buy post-earnings, would you be supportive of buying a tranche now?
A. I can think of worse ideas.
Q. I sold all my Intuitive Machines (LUNR) at the peak. Worth buying back here under $5?
A. Nice job! I might consider a nibble but not aggressively until/unless it gets close to $4.
Q. You still steady as we go on Tencent (TCEHY)?
A. Yes, pretty much. We’ll write up the latest analysis in a Latest Positions post later this week.
Q. With AI hype all over the place, I feel Baidu (BIDU) and Alibaba (BABA) have been left behind due to China Macro issues. As an example, I read Ernie Baidu’s AI bot accounts for 5% of Baidu’s AI revenue already. Given that these are strong companies, but are very out of favor, would this be something you would consider?
A. I don’t think China’s AI industry will ever rival the US but we do own iShares China Large-Cap ETF (FXI) call options to give us some exposure to China which is quite out of favor amongst investors right now.
Q. DallasNews (DALN) earnings will be out tomorrow pre-market. How big a position do you currently hold?
A. We’ve been continually trimming a few shares here and there. We have cut our position quite a bit by now and will slowly continue selling it. Still has an 16%+ dividend yield after all.
Q. Looking at fresh additions in the AI dumpster… thoughts on Gitlab Inc (GTLB), Zscaler (ZS) & Snowflake (SNOW) after their reports?
A. I like the SNOW but didn’t buy it back (yet?). I don’t like ZS and I don’t know GTLB well enough to judge without doing more work on it.
Q. Any thoughts on Shopify (SHOP) as a possible TradingWithCody Revolutionary stock as we have seen the explosive growth of Amazon (AMZN) and other enablers of 3rd party businesses?
A. Yea, I like SHOP and owned it last year but gave up on it too early. It’s a good company and has executed for years and has millions of loyal customers who are locked into the Shopify platform.
Q. Any thoughts on Rivian (RIVN) at this level?
A. It’s sure pricing in some bad news but they still need to raise more money and scale their factories quickly to get to cash flow positive.
Q. I would expect Cody is trimming some iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT).
A. We did indeed trim some IBIT/Bitcoin in the hedge fund on Tuesday when bitcoin broke the $69,000 level. We also added back some of our bitcoin miner hedges today, including buying some puts on Cleanspark (CLSK), Iris Energy (IREN), and Cipher Mining (CIFR). I didn’t do anything with my bitcoin holdings personally though.
Q. How far are you going out on the miner puts? Just out of the money?
A. It’s going to take some work on my part because I’m using in-the-money puts dated out a week or two and I’m not going to be aggressive about it, but I’ll just buy a few puts when the miners spike and trim when they tank.
Q. What would be your next trim level on bitcoin (BTC)/iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT)? It’s been a great run so far!
A. We trimmed some IBIT yesterday as noted earlier. I’d trim more around $75,000 I suppose.
Q. Ethereum (ETH) has had a bit of run—just curious if your thoughts on ETH have changed at all.
A. I can think of worse cryptos than Ethereum.
Q. Speaking of SKTLs, I never went through the process to get my tokens…Still can?
A. Oh gosh no. We gave away about $1500 of SKTL tokens to anyone who registered almost two years ago now. But you had to do it before the airdrop we did almost two years ago.
Q. I was looking to short Carvana (CVNA). The market cap is 2 1/2 times more than AutoNation (AN). Why would anyone own it after looking at the last report? I see where JMP has a $80 target price. How with no growth and $6.77 billion in debt?
A. Not to mention the shady management at Carvana too. I have no position in CVNA right now. I was wrong on that stock for the last year and a half after having been right that it would crash in the year before that.
Q. Congratulations on your new book. Please make it an audio book also.
A. You know it’s not a bad idea, having me read the book and publish it as an audio book. I’ll see if we can find the time. BTW here is a link to the PDF on TradingWithCody.com and if you want to buy a hard copy, here it is on Amazon.
That’s a wrap, thank you all! I leave you all with a picture that Bryce took of me in front of the Apple Store in midtown NYC last week. He did a good job of making it look like my hand is holding that giant Vision Pro image on the front of the store.
