Investing

[chasfh]

19 hours ago, Screwball said:

Here's how it works, from experience I talked about above (big companies).

They whack 113 people across the company.  You get a "separation agreement" of about 20 pages.  Spells out your buyout, insurance coverage, for how long, then the alternatives. And whatever severance they decide to give you.

Then the bold and small print. By law, they must include a breakdown of who were eliminated, who stayed, and their ages.  It wasn't even close - all the old people were gone.  Imagine that!

Bold print tells us we can't sue the company for age discrimination, or waive this offer. It was so obvious they wanted to rid themselves of us old people. I was one of 6 in my discipline, and the youngest at 59.  I read another where 4 got whacked and the youngest was 62. It was obvious.

Interesting, this. I was laid off twice while in my 40s, and each time, they laid off a corresponding employee under 40. I learned from a mole inside one of the companies that they did that so I would not sue for age discrimination, and they could point to the young people laid off as proof of that.

[Screwball]

1 hour ago, chasfh said:

Interesting, this. I was laid off twice while in my 40s, and each time, they laid off a corresponding employee under 40. I learned from a mole inside one of the companies that they did that so I would not sue for age discrimination, and they could point to the young people laid off as proof of that.

The age discrimination lines were in bold black letters right on the front page where you couldn't miss them. In other paperwork it gave all the job classifications (all mid level salary people), the ages who were laid off, and the ages of those who stayed. It wasn't even close.

I was shocked they did such a thing to give us that much evidence, but I was told by the lawyer is was required by law, which shocked me too.

A few years later I ran into a guy who I worked with there.  By then he was gone too, along with everyone else I asked about.  All gone.  The guy who was the liaison between our facility and the Mothership, the same guy who walked me out - was gone too.

Any job that could be replaced with a foreign partner was sent there (China, India), and if they needed a body locally, it was a H1B holder and foreigner.

Funny though, I could have gave one good fuck about their rule about who I could go to work for.  Within 6 months I was working for a much smaller place designing machines and equipment for...the same damn company.  Just a different division of that company.  So they were kind of paying me after all.

[gehringer_2]

1 hour ago, Screwball said:

Funny though, I could have gave one good fuck about their rule about who I could go to work for.

I think non-competes depend more on the illusion that they are enforceable than the degree to which they are.

Edited November 6, 2022 by gehringer_2

[Deleterious]

Read an article on Yahoo today that said there are about 30 LNG tankers idling off the coast of Europe. They are full and are just waiting for the price of natural gas to rise so they can come into port and sell.

[Screwball]

49 minutes ago, Deleterious said:

Read an article on Yahoo today that said there are about 30 LNG tankers idling off the coast of Europe. They are full and are just waiting for the price of natural gas to rise so they can come into port and sell.

LNG tankers idle off Europe’s coast as traders wait for gas price rise - FT

[Crazy Cat Gentleman]

AAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

 

[gehringer_2]

4 minutes ago, Crazy Cat Gentleman said:

AAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

 

Like many capitalists, Musks wants desperately to believe that employees are fungible and that expertise is just a commodity that can be purchased at need. And the latter is certainly true sometims. But in others you will end up paying many times over to regenerate what you casually tossed away.

Edited November 7, 2022 by gehringer_2

[Screwball]

Should we call our broker in the morning and short the piss out of this?

[Deleterious]

That is pretty crazy.

 

[chasfh]

12 hours ago, Crazy Cat Gentleman said:

AAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

 

 

Not written for this kind of situation, but still apt:

 

 

Edited November 7, 2022 by chasfh

[Deleterious]

Tesla earns 8 times more profit per car than Toyota

Quote

Tesla earned eight times as much profit per vehicle as Toyota Motor in the July-September quarter despite being outsold more than 7 to 1, a Nikkei analysis shows, putting the American electric-vehicle maker ahead in quarterly net profit for the first time since going public in 2010.

Tesla reported a US$3.29 billion net profit in that quarter. Toyota earned ¥434.2 billion – the equivalent of US$3.15 billion based on the average exchange rate for the period of ¥138 to the dollar.

Toyota did take a one-time charge/loss due to shutting down their operations in Russia.

Quote

Still, Tesla has become one of the most profitable automakers in the world. Though its net profit fell short of Mercedes-Benz’s in July-September, it outearned both BMW and Volkswagen. Its net profit margin came to 15% for the quarter.

Tesla’s success stems largely from the profitability of each of its cars. The Toyota group sold 2.62 million vehicles in the quarter, 7.6 times as many as Tesla’s 344,000. But its net profit per vehicle came to around US$1,200 – just one-eighth of Tesla’s US$9,570. Tesla is believed to lead the industry in terms of net profit per vehicle sold, even ahead of players like Mercedes-Benz.

 

[Deleterious]

Facebook Parent Meta to Cut 11,000 Staff

In other news.  Rivian is set to report earnings after the bell today.

[Tigeraholic1]

7 hours ago, Deleterious said:

Facebook Parent Meta to Cut 11,000 Staff

In other news.  Rivian is set to report earnings after the bell today.

 

 

[gehringer_2]

On 11/8/2022 at 10:48 AM, Deleterious said:

Tesla earns 8 times more profit per car than Toyota

Toyota did take a one-time charge/loss due to shutting down their operations in Russia.

 

that's a double edged fact looking at the stock analysis. Down 50% in a year, Telsa's PE is still sitting at 60, and at those profit margins they have little prospect of being able to increase the profit per vehicle from where it is to somehow grow enough additional revenue to justify that valuation as their PE evolves to that of a mature operation company.

It's conceivable they can maintain a huge percentage of the EV market in the face of all the entries currently flooding the market make up the revenue on volume,  but I'm not betting on it.

Edited November 9, 2022 by gehringer_2

[Screwball]

You mention P/E ratio.  I haven't looked at that in years.  Go to Finviz and spin up a query for P/E by market cap, or whatever other criteria suits you. Those numbers are off the charts. P/Es have been way out of whack since they started flooding the market with money to make Wall Street rich.

I don't doubt TSLA might be a good short (depending on timing of course (which is why we have charts)) because they are out to get him.  The big auto companies want to eliminate competition, IMO, and he's one of them.

I remember the days when things like P/E mattered much more than it does now. This ain't grampa's market. Which is why I stick with bonds (but a position in energy because...) and shake my head at what all this has become.

[Screwball]

12 hours ago, Deleterious said:

Facebook Parent Meta to Cut 11,000 Staff

I wish I could find the Tweet, but is was along the lines of; this is one way to do it

We were just talking about exacty this. It's all about the bottom line.

[gehringer_2]

4 minutes ago, Screwball said:

I remember the days when things like P/E mattered much more than it does now.

Any set of technologies matures eventually. When things in a new market segment start out, there are no reference points for potential growth, profits are open to going to the moon, and operating ratios and price ratios go out the window because price appreciation is everything. Add the kind of monetary policy pumping up equities and you get to where we've been where 'unsustainable' things just keep sustaining. But everything that changes one way eventually changes the other. Tesla got 'new tech' valuations in the beginning, but EV's are rapidly becoming 'ordinary industrial operations' so we'll see how long Elon can keep investors from starting to believe Tesla is no different than Ford or GM, and/or whether the FED can help themselves from turning the taps back on!

[Deleterious]

Ford and GM are both down over 40% the past year.  It isn't just Tesla feeling the pain on Wall Street.  

[Deleterious]

3 hours ago, Screwball said:

You mention P/E ratio.  I haven't looked at that in years.  Go to Finviz and spin up a query for P/E by market cap, or whatever other criteria suits you. Those numbers are off the charts. P/Es have been way out of whack since they started flooding the market with money to make Wall Street rich.

I don't doubt TSLA might be a good short (depending on timing of course (which is why we have charts)) because they are out to get him.  The big auto companies want to eliminate competition, IMO, and he's one of them.

I remember the days when things like P/E mattered much more than it does now. This ain't grampa's market. Which is why I stick with bonds (but a position in energy because...) and shake my head at what all this has become.

You know we are all old when we start talking P/E ratios.  

[Deleterious]

Amazon Becomes World’s First Public Company to Lose $1 Trillion in Market Value

The article said Microsoft was right there with them losing about $889,000,000.  

Meanwhile, Apple is only down 8% the past year.  Like I said before, Tim Cook is the best CEO around.

[Deleterious]

Encouraging inflation numbers. 7.7% vs 7.9% expected.

[gehringer_2]

38 minutes ago, Deleterious said:

Encouraging inflation numbers. 7.7% vs 7.9% expected.

LOL - odds just jumped that the Fed is going to overshoot on interest rates. But before people get their panties in too much of a twist, I'd remember that while the Fed raising rates in previous cases has triggered recession, since they started this time at such a low level, rates are still not high in absolute terms compared to those that triggered previous recessions, and that does make a difference. It's not really the change in rates that makes a new investment worth it to borrow or not, it's the absolute rate compared to the investment's ROI. These rates are clobbering housing because you are disqualifiying buyers in direct proportion to rates, but there are still a lot of profitable investments to be made when corporate bond are yielding in the 5-6% range.

[gehringer_2]

Almost not news, but FTX files for bankruptcy today

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/11/sam-bankman-frieds-cryptocurrency-exchange-ftx-files-for-bankruptcy.html

[oblong]

I thought putting patches on the umpires would help. 

[gehringer_2]

Interesting point in Musk's note to his employees this morning. He told them Twitter was a SW and server company, thus his coders will be king.

Serious question, does anyone think that is true? That strikes me like FoMoCo saying they are a machine tool company and their CNC and robotics workers are the core of the company. Sure they are important, but they are certainly not the core objective. I would say similarly that the SW and servers are simply the tools that Twitter uses and the business they are in is real time information content aggregation and moderation. Nobody buys advertising  from Twitter or pays a membership from them to get SW in return, any more than anyone pays Ford to put a robotics welder in their garage.

Not for the 1st time it makes me question whether he actually understands what he bought.

Didn't Demming say something along the lines that not understanding what your business actually is one of the big mistakes any management can make?

Edited November 16, 2022 by gehringer_2