re: NKLA down 11% today to $51/share

and now dropping like a rock
y’all need to bail on this turd

I think this is a good time to see the floor of this stock. An SEC investigation and hit pieces coming out left and right will scare everyone out that isn’t in for the long haul. If they get good news back like you said there is definitely money to be made on the rebound.

I’m sure there are all manner of answers to that question but the fact that it is a question is all I need to see to avoid this. There’s just too many opportunities elsewhere to even consider this risk.

if it was a long downtrend fine, take some dice rolls.
but not right now

Sold this AM and got out up $1.00 per share over what I bought at

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Trevor is basically the opposite of Elon.

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Trevor says the stock is under valued and it loses. Elon tells everyone TSLA is overvalued at $770 a share and it straight lines to $1750 a share.

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I don’t particularly think either of them react appropriately, but I agree that they’re the opposite in many ways, which I think are even more important:

1. Elon graduated from Penn with a dual major in Physics and Economic and was set to begin his PhD at Stanford in applied physics. One has to be quite intelligent to attend those universities (2 of the best in the world), graduate with those majors, and just get accepted into those programs (especially his PhD). Plus he has the educational background that is useful from both the business side (economics) and the science side (physics) when it comes to running a startup tech company.

Milton attended undergrad Utah Valley University (then Utah Valley State College), which appears to be a pretty mediocre university (88% acceptance rate; 32% graduation rate; ranked 634th in Forbes national rankings) but attended dropping out to pursue a career in sales and marketing (which could be anything). Not that someone with the background can’t be successful, but it’s not really the background that one would expect, even compared to few super successful college dropouts who usually dropped out of too universities because they were starting that super successful company (e.g., Zuckerberg).

2. Elon was already a super successful tech entrepreneur, a cofounder of multiple companies that were either bought hundreds of millions (Zip2) or billions (x.com which after merging with cofinity became PayPal) of dollars. He also founded SpaceX before he joined Tesla.

Milton’s entrepreneurial background appears to be an alarm sales company that he alleges resulted in an exit payment of $300,000 (his partner says it was much less), an online classified ad business that failed, and an alternative energy vehicle business that was sued for allegedly failing to meets its obligations.

3. Elon has actually been a “visionary” multiple times (connecting business to the internet, online payments, private space flight), and Tesla (although he wasn’t a founder) was founded nearly two decades ago, well before elective vehicles became a viable alternative in any sense.

Milton doesn’t appear to have any new ideas and is trying to copy the success of Tesla and other EV companies/products. Not that a company can’t become successful building off of others; however, he started it right when Tesla was really becoming popular (particularly in the stock market), but as I said earlier, the most blatant ripoff, was the name of the company itself. Maybe I’m overstating the implications of ripping off the name, but it’s a huge red flag to me.

Regardless, some of his history seems to have been fairly unknown until the Hindenburg report, which is another red flag to me. He’s not some young prodigy (Zuckerberg, Gates, etc.) who started building that company realty and who isn’t old enough to have a history to judge; he’s not an Elon who had an impressive educational background already confounded a number of successful companies; or a Bezos who also had an impressive educational background and worked on Wall St. Instead he is nearly 20 years removed from dropping out of a mediocre university, and yet most of those years before Nikola were not very well know at all, at least until this report.

And as for this report. What I find particularly damaging about it is that the allegations themselves aren’t based on very complex financial scheme that is hard to determine whether it’s fraud (like Enron) or just a perfectly legal but complex method of accounting (like the GE “report” of their accounting last year seemed bad but maybe it wasn’t). In fact, the allegations themselves are not that outrageous and may not even be outright illegal (other than maybe misleading investors, although that’s still serious) in and of themselves. Instead they’re just allegations that it’s poorly run (especially the nepotism’s of putting his unqualified brother in charge of an important part of company) and trying to hide it (the truck not actually running, pretending outsourced products were produced in-house). It looks like a company that MAY WANT to do what it’s planned to do, but it is not capable of doing it so it’s trying to fake it.

I guess it may be a lot like Theranos, although maybe not to the levels of outright fraud and misrepresentation yet. But maybe a report like this earlier would have prevented Theranos from reaching those levels.

Maybe I’m spending way too much on this, especially since I wasn’t planning to make a long or short play on the stock and still plan to stay far away from it, but this one really fascinates me:

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Trevor has claimed that Nikola has an off-the-grid headquarters with 3.5 megawatts of solar on its roof, a large installation. In an April 2019 pitch, for example, at the 10:03 mark, he states:

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I mean the report provides the aerial photos of the headquarters dated well after the April 2019 comments about having the solar panels, but just out of curiosity, I looked it up on the satellite view on Google maps. Sure enough, from some date in 2020, there is the headquarters and unless it has white and gray (or grey) colored or clear solar panels (which don’t seem to exist) that would make them impossible to see, they don’t appear to have solar panels at all.

Why even lie about that? Not only is it unnecessary, but it’s quite foolish since it would be easily verifiable if they didn’t have them (or at least installed them shortly thereafter).

Personally, unnecessary and foolish lies make me more convinced something or someone is just a pathological liar and/or fraud than lying to cover ones own self (that are at least “understandable” although no less forgivable). In other words, if you lie about things for no good reason, despite being easily proven false, then you’re probably going to lie when there are at least real incentives to do it.

And when someone is called out for lying and promises a point by point rebuttal, then says he can’t provide any rebuttal points for “legal” reasons, then I’m going to assume the lack of a rebuttal is because the lies are likely true.

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It’s Theranos for dummies.

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I just saw that they actually did post a few rebuttals, and I think they managed to make it worse, at least in regards to some of the allegations.

Nikola Sets the Record Straight on False and Misleading Short Seller Report

This one in particular about the truck coasting down the highway is quite some mental and semantic gymnastics:

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Nikola never stated its truck was driving under its own propulsion in the video, although the truck was designed to do just that (as described in previous point). The truck was showcased and filmed by a third party for a commercial. Nikola described this third-party video on the Company’s social media as “In Motion.”

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Not only are they admitting it’s true, even though they do use “in motion” in the YouTube video from the Nikola account they describe it as “1,000 HP, zero emission Nikola One semi-truck in motion.” So when you present a 1,000 HP truck “in motion,” they clearly aren’t presenting it as “a truck using 0 HP because it’s coasting down a hill.”

And the most telling part of this is that they didn’t even provide a half-hearted “well we apologize for those who misinterpreted the commercial, and we’ll be more precise and clear with our representation moving forward.” Instead they just leave it as “the accuracy allegation was misleading because you all should have known better; it’s your fault for not knowing better; and there is nothing we would have done differently or will do differently in the future.”

And some of the rebuttals for the allegations being misleading (e.g., hydrogen technology) are because:

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Nikola continues to believe that its planned hydrogen station network, and the production and distribution of hydrogen, will provide key competitive advantages that drive sustained profitability and shareholder value over the long term.

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Well since the company says it believes in its plan, it must be true. And some of the rebuttals are just links to its own press releases (like the press release on the deposit) as if “we’re being accused of lying but don’t we said this on Twitter and in a press release so we must not be lying.”

I mean if that’s the best “rebuttal,” that they could put together over the last 4 days, then imagine what their best is when it comes to creating some really complex and revolutionary technology.

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Otherwise this company appears to have been run by chimps.

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I just saw a video from a few months ago of a bunch of edit clips from Milton’s presentation at one of those showcase events. I think most of it was meant to poke fun of his gaffes, but I can chalk those up to nerves. And beside I just saw the Microsoft Windows 1995 presentation/celebration video going around, and it’s clear that Gates, Ballmer, etc. didn’t build a revolutionary company because they were charismatic speakers and salesman (at least 25 years ago).

But the thing that stood out to me, when highlight his hydrogen technologies, was that he called hydrogen “the most abundant element in the atmosphere.” It doesn’t take a atmospheric science or chemistry major to know that this is not even close to true (it is the most abundant element in the universe though, but that’s a major distinction unless he’s tapping into the universe’s potential), and that’s not a gaffe that someone selling hydrogen technology should make.

I think the one thing with Tesla is that at the end of the day, their battery tech is best in class.

So something I was thinking of that could be another angle to this. What if Hindenburg held a large short position in NKLA prior to the GM announcement and put this hit piece out so that they could get out of their position with minimal loss or even a profit? The stock hit $54 at it's peak after the news. The price action the last few days seems a bit weird to me for a company that has these types of allegations thrown at it. Trevor Milton buying 41,000 shares certainly isn't enough to prop up the price but some short covering would hold it up.

Another thought which I'm not even sure can happen is GM accumulating shares at this price? If they did their due diligence and know that the allegations are bullshite then they know the price is going higher from here and they would own more of the company.

Just seems like there is always more to it than what meets the eye. Another thought is why doesn't the media or the SEC do a deep dive into a company like Hindenburg or shithead activist investor Bill Ackman? These guys clearly try and manipulate the market to their advantage.