DarkandStormy

Basically nothing, barring some SEC indictments or whatnot...which would just add to Elon's cult craze, imo. There is plenty of allegations out there of fraud if you listen to Marty Tripp (whistleblower) or others who have come forward. None have the cache of Musk, so they don't land. Elon is this generation's great showman/salesman. He landed a rocket back in earth, so people listen to anything he says. He claimed Tesla would be producing 1m cars in 2020 (back in '16/'17). They might hit 500k. He promised a coast-to-coast fully autonomous trip in '17/'18...they might release some level 2 autonomous driving system this winter (he claimed it'd be level 5 last year). People don't care. Musk's greatest trick is constantly finding new carrots to dangle, and his followers don't care that his track record is spotty on those fanciest of carrots. The bulls truly believe this full self driving tech will make each Tesla car worth $100k or more. The first reviews of his Boring Company's "Loop" in Las Vegas are out this week and it's a disaster...no one cares. Which goes to Gramarye's point - Tesla (well, Musk) is able to sell hype like no other. He said at "Battery Day" in 2015 (?? '16?) that they'd be producing a car with a 600+ mile range by 2020. Didn't happen. Didn't matter. Do the bulls care about Tesla's tanking market share in Europe (one of their claims is Tesla will maintain 15+% EV market share as the share of EVs as overall car sales grows)? No. It's just unrelenting hype, facts be damned. As long as Elon Musk is Tesla's CEO, I see nothing that will cause the stock to "tank." There are some who believe Tesla is actually engaging in accounting fraud. They've "pulled forward" a lot of regulatory credits. They routinely don't pay their manufacturers on time in order to impact their financials at EOQ. There are even some more people way out there who allege Tesla is a front for the drug cartel, if you can believe that.

Tesla is back to record highs (~$2500 pre-split) on news this week it will be included in the S&P 500. It's up some 23% since EOD Monday when the news broke. It will make up ~1% of the S&P 500...which means every S&P 500 index fund now has to weight-adjust their mutual fund/ETF. TSLA will join on December 21st. The valuation on Tesla is absolutely bonkers. It's worth almost half a trillion dollars....or, at the moment, almost $400k per every car they've ever sold. It's trading near a 1,000 P/E ratio (insanity). Let's compare this stock chart to a more infamous one: Seeing the similarities? Either Tesla is poised to have an Enron-like fall...or we really are witnessing one of the greatest stock breakouts of the last five years.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/16/cars/boring-company-vegas-elon-musk/index.html

Pfizer is a huge multinational with a much bigger float. It acts more like a bond. Big pharma just doesn't really make quick moves - Moderna is a bit more nimble and has only been traded since late 2018.

Pfizer didn't even set a YTD high on the vaccine news and now is down on the Moderna announcement.

https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/politics/2020/11/16/ohio-fbi-agents-search-home-puco-chairman-sam-randazzo/6308657002/

Ohio's House districts didn't change once over the last decade - a 12 R / 4D split every election. R's get 75% of the seats while getting ~52-54% of the vote. Same old story. They also built on their super majorities in the state legislature, so I have little hope for the new Ohio Redistricting Commission based on the parameters that were set up.

Still don't understand why the Big Ten didn't start up a week or two earlier to have a bye week for these occasions. A nightmare scenario is playing out - if the Buckeyes can't play Indiana the following week (covid shutdown) and both teams win out...Indiana will have won the Big Ten East Division by virtue of having won more games.

Came across this proposed redistricting map of Illinois (they're likely to lose one seat after the final census count). 1 and 4 are around R+40. The rest are somewhere between D+12 and D+30. It's....beautiful lol Pass this map and I bet you see the GOP suddenly come out against partisan gerrymandering.

Sure - I'm pretty terrible so maybe I'll have to have my wife sub in lol

So they...ran it at 1/6 of the proposed speed? Yawn.

PFE has significantly underperformed just a basic S&P 500 all year - and especially so since the end of March. 1 = PFE 2 = VTSAX (total market) 3 = S&P 500 fund 4% isn't making that difference up.

Pfizer was probably a bad investment, just looking at ROI. Pending a big 2x move or something.

^Not a single soul on that Penn State sideline was arguing for the clock to be reset to 0:01 because they all know how to count to 2. My only thought was if the 0:02 was actually 2.9 seconds, and Fields went down in 2.8 seconds, thereby not quite getting to zero. The defense is not championship caliber, yet. I'm tired of the Borland/Werner LB combo (they've been playing forever, it seems). The secondary is all new and Wade got exposed a bit. It's also weird not having a Bosa or Chase Young on the D Line to disrupt things 1 on 1 (or 1 on 2/3). So the defense is lacking, imo, but they've got several weeks here coming up to shore things up. It's also a bit weird on offense not having a dominant #1 RB, like a Dobbins (or even Mike Weber) or Elliott or Hyde. Teague doesn't change direction well at all, but he can pound it a bit. Would like to see more of Sermon, but they seem content to have a little bit of lightning and thunder roles, which is fine. There's also very little WR depth right now. It's basically Olave and Wilson on the field every play, and they're just sprinkling in some young guys on the 3-4 WR sets. But I do like the two TE looks - those are some big guys creating mismatches on LBs. Weird that the offense is mostly a 2 WR, 2 TE set at its core for the moment. Anyway, the only thing stopping this team is covid. The rest of the conference is just really bad.

Tesla has never "sold out" of anything, just taken puny $100 deposits to jack up their reservation numbers - the $100 barrier is the same that GM used, though. Some of the auto magazines have estimated there to be no more than 5,000 of the First Editions.

Litecoin is down 80% since the end of 2017.

https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/politics/state/2020/10/29/two-indicted-along-householder-ready-cop-pleas-hb-6-scandal/6067620002/

Yeah, this isn't really Hyperloop at all - just Musk selling snake oil. If Las Vegas was interested in mass transit, they wouldn't have awarded Musk this contract.

Welp.

Here is CNN's projected electoral college votes / House of Reps changes based on 2020 census projections.

Can't believe the NFL didn't build in any buffer weeks for this very thing.

LeBron is just so good. -'07: team of scrubs, age 23, going against an all-time Spurs team (probably better than any Jordan faced in the Finals). can't hold this against him. -'11: probably can hold this against him? he wasn't great in the Finals. don't know the full story there, but Wade and Bosh also weren't that great and the Mavs played complete team ball. -'12: W -'13: W -'14: The "Heatles" thing had lost steam, that team just looked tired. And an all-time Spurs team was coming for revenge after blowing Game 6 the prior year. LeBron actually played pretty well, but not spectacular. -'15: got to the Finals after losing Love in the 1st round, and lost Kyrie early in the Finals series. Went completely off - averaged 35.8 points, 13.3 rebounds, and 8.8 assists. His team was just bad without Kyrie and Love. -'16: an all-time W. -'17: Warriors have to go get the #2 player in the world to come back and beat the Cavs. -'18: Repeat -'19: new team, injuries, etc. -'20: 3 Ws away from championship #4 Basically the only argument left in the MJ vs LeBron GOAT discussion is the Finals records, but I think LeBron faced far tougher teams than Jordan ever did (notably, Golden State four times - twice as a cheat code, basically - and the Spurs three times...that's 7 better opponents than Jordan ever went up against). I think Pippen is probably a better teammate than LeBron ever had (of LeBron's best teammates...I guess it's Wade, Bosh, Kyrie, and Davis? Any of those guys top 50 all-time players?), and Jordan never took a depleted team to the Finals like LeBron did (imagine MJ trying to get to a Game 6 without Pippen and Rodman, for example). LeBron's teams also crater once he leaves (see: Cavs, or Heat until this season). That's a bit of a byproduct of today's NBA, but the Bulls were back in the playoffs without Michael when he retired the first time. If LeBron wins it, he'll be 4-6 in the Finals, and really only '11 would I hold against him in the loss column. LeBron is now #1 all-time in NBA history in playoff scoring, steals, FTs made, minutes played, FGs made, and is 3rd in assists. He's going to end his career, in all likelihood, #1 in points all-time (regular season) and #3 assists. It's also pretty likely he ends up in the top 25 in rebounds as well, if he averages ~8 rebounds a game for just four more seasons. He's never put it together consistently enough in the Finals (talking about more than just one repeat) - a lot of that is due to the opponents and some injuries to key players - but if he can hold it together in LA instead of things flaming out ~3-4 years into peak contention like all his other previous stops...well, the # of rings could keep climbing.

Not much to add to the discussion (there is disagreement among surveys and scholars about what % of millionaires or "the top 1%" is first generation wealth) but just underlining the points here to show that irony is dead.

So a few things: 1) Good job posting links. That might be a first. 2) I think the question here is what constitutes "self made." If my parents pay for my college education, give me a $100k grant (or even interest free loan), and then I become a millionaire...am I self made? What if paid back that loan? Did I really "earn it all on my own?" What if I inherit $200k from my parents and then I become a millionaire? Am I 80% self-made? Surely not given my starting point is so much greater than someone at $0. So I think there is some inherent flaws in the wording of the questions and how people interpret it. 2) The graph I cited comes from scholarly work, not random surveys. Full details with analysis is here - http://www.piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/AlvaredoGarbintiPiketty2017.pdf I will assume at this point we'll agree to disagree. I'll trust the scholars and you'll trust the random surveys.

The poll question spelled out what a wealth tax is. Just because it didn't give you the results you wanted or were expecting doesn't mean you should insult people's intelligence. Unless you're an elitist, I guess.