I had a two-day email exchange with a guy I used to work with who now runs a $600M hedge fund and shorted $TSLA at $600. He’s now kicking himself as $TSLA approaches $700. Amazingly:

1/ He’s a value investor who doesn’t own growth stocks, but thinks he can short growth stocks.

2/ He’s never driven a $TSLA, nor even taken a test drive.
3/ He hasn’t interviewed any $TSLA owners.
4/ He hasn’t talked to Audi/MB/Porsche/VW dealers about why $TSLA is gaining so much share.
5/ He hasn’t built a 5-year model forecasting EPS/CFs so he can estimate TSLA value.

6/ For “analysis,” he relies on simple backward-looking valuation exercises similar to what $TSLAQ puts out, such as what $TSLA is worth vs legacy auto mfrs (even though $AAPL, $AMZN, $GOOG, Rivian are the likely competitors), 2020 YoY market share changes, and 2020 P/E ratios.

7/ I told him I couldn’t help him until he did 3 things:
i) Divide 20% by 3% (6.7x) to compute likely $TSLA vol growth over next 5 yrs (+46% CGR).
ii) Test drive a new Model Y and interview 3 Y owners.
iii) Figure out why TSLA TAM will triple over next 24 mos (Y, China, CyTrck).