Grant

SEC Form 4s have two main fields which let us track insider ownership and trades: "Securities Acquired (A) or Disposed Of (D)" (I'll call this "delta"), and "Amount of Securities Beneficially Owned Following Reported Transaction(s)" (I'll call this "amount"). Suppose we have a sequence of Form 4s from a particular insider (all direct ownership of the same class of common stock, no funny stuff). Should we expect the amount - delta = amount of the previous Form 4? I've sometimes seen this not be the case. I'm generally only looking at Form 4s in detail when examining potential scams; is this evidence of undisclosed insider trading? Or are there some exemptions or other factors involved? One company I'm looking at seems to disclose insider selling in S-8s, while their purchases are disclosed in Form 4s. This results in lots of insider buying activity being visible on websites which aggregate data from Form 4s, without any of the heavy selling shown. However even accounting for this S-8 disclosed selling, some of their Form 4s don't add up. Thanks for any help.

Suppose you're a small fund generating a lot of alpha. What happens? You attract more investor money. Because you invested your original capital the best you could, this additional money must be invested in less promising ways - i.e. the law of diminishing returns. As long as you generate alpha, you continue to attract more money which lowers your alpha. This is why big hedge funds with unlimited resources have trouble beating ETFs. Just because it's hard for them doesn't mean it should be hard for you. This said, I usually advise people to stick to ETFs except where they have specialized knowledge the market is unlikely to price in. That's kind of the big muscle movement of capitalism, isn't it? Excess returns get pushed toward the average by the allocation of capital. Should apply to industries, markets, and investment styles and/or funds. I agree with OP that the average investment dollar must underperform the index materially after taxes and costs are included. I see no reason it should apply to individual investors, because individual investors don't run funds and don't usually attract more capital when they generate alpha. Also, market knowledge isn't homogeneous, so there's no reason adding additional investors to the market must obey the law of diminishing returns.

Trains, trucks and ships can use standardized shipping containers so loading and unloading isn't necessary. Though yes I'm sure there's still some switching costs involved, making rail more attractive for longer trips.

Suppose you're a small fund generating a lot of alpha. What happens? You attract more investor money. Because you invested your original capital the best you could, this additional money must be invested in less promising ways - i.e. the law of diminishing returns. As long as you generate alpha, you continue to attract more money which lowers your alpha. This is why big hedge funds with unlimited resources have trouble beating ETFs. Just because it's hard for them doesn't mean it should be hard for you. This said, I usually advise people to stick to ETFs except where they have specialized knowledge the market is unlikely to price in.

I'm not familiar with the costs in these industries, but they cannot beat rail at energy efficiency. Platooning only results in about a 20% reduction in drag (http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/241442-mit-study-driverless-truck-platoons-will-save-fuel-money-especially-tailgate). Rail is more efficient mostly because of the coefficient of rolling resistance of the best pneumatic tires on tarmac is about 2.3x that of rail. A fully-loaded semi uses about half its power overcoming drag, and about half overcoming rolling resistance.

To be clear I'm not saying all of Musk's moonshots are impossible, but the ones I'm somewhat qualified to judge look impossible to me. This makes me doubt Musk's veracity and wary of the ones I'm not qualified to judge. I believe he cannot achieve SAE level 4 automation on AP2 hardware, the hyperloop isn't going to be viable for at least a decade (probably longer), and the Tesla Semi will not meet its price and/or performance specs if it's made within the next three years. I'm fairly sure Musk is a much better engineer than I am. Being proven right or wrong won't change my opinion here. However fame and fortune can do strange things to people. If he gets to level 4 automation with AP2 hardware, I'll become more bullish on AI. I just got done importing all of Waymo's disengagement reports into a spreadsheet, and to me it looks like their once-rapid progress is slowing. Of course there's a lot the reports don't tell us, such as the ratio of street to highway miles, or how many disengagements would've actually resulted in contact. Note that Tesla did zero full self-driving testing on CA's public roads in 2017! If I'm wrong about the semi it'll be because I underestimated the drop in lithium-ion battery costs. I've modeled the semi's energy usage in steady-state conditions, which is fairly easy to do given the specs released by Musk and some data from the U.S. Supertrucks program. I'm pretty sure I did not screw this up as others have corroborated my results. If I'm wrong about the hyperloop, I'll be really impressed by the engineers who managed to create an entirely new form of transportation in such a short period of time. I suppose this would make me doubt my relative abilities too. Many Tesla investors say they know Musk's goals aren't achievable within the timelines he gives, and that he sets them to motivate himself and his team. This is fine, but he's also making these statements to investors and customers. Is he going to refund every AP2 owner who bought the full self-driving package? Or upgrade their hardware? What if lidar and/or side/rear-facing radar is needed? How expensive will that be? What if the stock drops for whatever reason and investors decide to sue for materially misleading statements? Edit: On the subject of intellectual honesty, I do try to be a rationalist. I may value it too highly for this crazy market we're in. I totally missed bitcoin's rise because I judged it to be a poor currency (too volatile, with no means or even incentive to stabilize itself). I didn't get in on any of the scamcoins which leaped up in value either. Oh well; at least my RIOT puts are doing well!

As I said, it's that many of Musk's projects (e.g. level 5 autonomy with AP2 hardware and the hyperloop, at least within the next decade or so) are doomed to failure because of the lack of rigor and analysis to his claims. Status games on largely pseudonymous forums serve no purpose. What's important is whether or not he's accurately judging the viability of his current moonshot projects. The available evidence on the projects I'm qualified to judge indicates to me he's either not, or he's lying about it. It's an important question because much of the value of TSLA to investors comes from the faith they have in Musk to pull off these moonshots. I'm sure he's quite capable of doing better, but this is irrelevant to the viability of current projects.

This is how me (I'm a computer engineer with some mechanical experience) and my engineering friends view him as well. I haven't actually seen much engineering done by him, but going off the hyperloop whitepaper he's either not an engineer or a terrible one. There's little to no mention of thermal expansion coefficients, mass of the capsules, seals, most failure modes, acceleration loading, recharging times, etc. All done for less cost per mile than a roller-coaster! Yes it's a neat idea, but not original besides the use of air bearings instead of magnets. That anyone would fund a hyperloop company based on the whitepaper is completely insane, and a testament to the ridiculous fervor surrounding Musk. He says he was fired from PayPal because he wanted them to switch from Unix to Windows. In 2000 this was nuts - Windows was not nearly as mature as a server platform as Unix or Linux. Moving to it would have been a bad decision. Then there are all his self-driving promises, with only a forward-facing radar and cameras... He seems to be backing off these claims now, which is good. I'd actually love to know what the dynamic range is on the AP2 cameras; anyone know where to get junkyard Tesla parts? From the available evidence it looks to me like Musk is good at motivating engineers to take bold risks and work on exciting projects. Sometimes he hits home runs (SpaceX), but his lack of in-depth, applied technical knowledge means he often mistakes what is possible for what is not. He may be a genius and fully capable of great feats of engineering, but if so he does not seem to focus his talents long enough to really analyze the viability of his goals. Disclosure: I'm probably going to short Tesla if it hits $400.

There's a lot of cryptocurrency analysis out there, and very little of it is informed by actual monetary economics. This wordpress post is no exception. Gresham’s Law applies to two currencies with differing intrinsic values given the same value by law. e.g., if silver dollar coins and dollar bills are both valued at $1, the silver coins will be hoarded and the bills will be spent. This can't be the case with bitcoin, which is valued by supply and demand. Traditional currency is state-mandated, but cryptos are not. For them to succeed they must be adopted voluntarily; i.e. there must be good reasons for individuals to prefer bitcoin as money over the status quo. Bitcoin will fail to become money because individuals prefer their money to have stable value. Savers, creditors and workers may like it's potential to appreciate, but borrowers and employers do not. Its fixed supply means that changes in demand will cause changes in value. Moreover, bitcoin users, developers and enthusiasts are incented to keep it this way, as they want their investments in bitcoin to keep appreciating. Money shouldn't be a good investment; that's what actual investments are for. Some people point to the many recessions caused by monetary instability, and use these to claim bitcoin will fail. I disagree with these assessments, because bitcoin won't be adopted on the basis of economy-wide stability. It will or won't be adopted based on the choices of individuals, and each individual has practically zero effect on the stability of an entire economy. There's the potential for market failure here if individual incentives aren't aligned with what is best for the economy; fortunately I believe they are, and individuals will continue rejecting bitcoin as money due to its instability, high transaction cost and other issues. This said there are some neat cryptos out there, but IMO bitcoin's (great) value is how it advanced the science, not in bitcoins themselves.