Car Dealers Are Terrified of Tesla’s Plan to Eliminate Oil Changes

[BlueStreak]

83. Why should I? This thread is about dealerships.

But because you think this is important, here are the details. I am not shorting. I purchased puts a couple of weeks ago as part of a straddle that is heavily biased on the downside. The dealership spat had nothing to do with that decision. The dealership thing is a non-event. Musk may just be using that to try to get more free publicity. Nothing wrong with that. It is smart.

I bought the puts after I became convinced that European S-series orders are practically non-existent other than a couple of countries that have huge government incentives for EVs. Germany has done a couple hundred cars total. Most other countries a lot less than that. They are cutting prices in Europe to try to get some orders. There is still hope for China, and we shall see about that. But it is evident that the US backlog has dropped from 12 weeks to about 4 weeks now, which suggests the S series has basically run its course. And there is a pretty long wait for another model that will appeal to a wider swath of the marketplace.

I expect the stock to be up and down, but mostly down over the next 6 months. My puts are for January 2015. At this point, I intend to hold those options at least through the next quarterly report. I expect the numbers from 50,000 feet to look about the same as other recent quarters. But when people dig deeper they will see a significant change in the momentum that should take the stock down below 200 before the end of the year. If that happens, even I could afford an S car.