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2025 Investment Thread

Tech is ridiculously priced. Nonsense industries are ridiculously priced. Tesla is absurdly priced. The american consumer is mentally ill.
 
Reasonable Statement Regarding Tesla
The owners don’t often talk about the downside.

Tesla Model S: $100K Liability in Disguise

• Sticker price: ~$100K with options
• Warranty ends: 4 years basic, 8 years battery
• Proprietary tires: $400–$500 each, often worn by 20K miles
• Touchscreen repair: ~$2,000
• Suspension fixes: $3K+
• Battery replacement: $15K–$20K
• Resale after 3 years: ~$50K
• Loan payoff after 3 years: ~$70K
• Underwater by: ~$20K


Cool today, costly tomorrow.
High maintenance, low resale, zero flexibility.
It’s not an investment—it’s a tech-branded time bomb.

Yeah mentally ill or just in denial…..

PaulR
 
I should qualify, the mentally ill part isn't so much about Tesla, but more about a cultural addiction to spending, same as how any addiction is a mental illness.

Except for an addiction to motorbikes, that one is fine..
 
PaulR said:
Reasonable Statement Regarding Tesla
The owners don’t often talk about the downside.



• Resale after 3 years: ~$50K



Cool today, costly tomorrow.
High maintenance, low resale, zero flexibility.
It’s not an investment—it’s a tech-branded time bomb.

Yeah mentally ill or just in denial…..

PaulR
Click to expand...
Helping my friend sell her 2018 Honda Fit LX with 36k miles on it.

MSRP back then was a little under $18k which is what some folks are asking for today.

She'll get at least $13k I suspect.
 
Tech PE’s ain’t near as high as dot com days but ten years ago AAPL had a PE of 10, looking like a no brainer.
Even AMZN is at just 32. Back in the day it was negatives for a long time then high hundreds.

My concern is the influence of the incompetent corrupter.
 
My concern is mass structuring businesses to accommodate unsustainable spending. It's a house of cards.
 
Impending doom has been a constant forecast for the past 15 years. It will happen at some point but you don’t want to be sitting on the sidelines 5 years too early.
 
byke said:
My concern is mass structuring businesses to accommodate unsustainable spending. It's a house of cards.
Click to expand...

See that's the thing, though. For every Oracle, which is taking on heavy debt to built out data center capacity that may not be needed, you have a Meta, which is growing Y/Y EPS at 40% and yet has a forward PE of like 24:1, which is insanely low. And for every Robinhood with its 70:1 forward PE, you have a Schwab with 27% revenue growth and a 17:1 forward PE.

Another funny thing I observed, Meta and Google have both struck very large deals with Oracle and Coreweave for AI compute capacity. They are essentially building out AI compute they are sure they will need, in-house, and then subcontracting speculative capacity to the B players. If the business model dries up, Meta/Goog will have simply accelerated 5 years of infra spend and can pull the plug, maybe take a small write off, and continue sucking up their $200B in profit per year. Oracle and Coreweave get stuck with the debt and the idle infra.
 
byke said:
I should qualify, the mentally ill part isn't so much about Tesla, but more about a cultural addiction to spending, same as how any addiction is a mental illness.

Except for an addiction to motorbikes, that one is fine..
Click to expand...


Tesla is the king of the up sale

Folks would trade in a Prius and buy a $100K "Signature Series"- the chance to pay extra to have you Tesla before regular folk.


Musk has not really done well for his brand. Fuck that guy.
 
mercurial said:
See that's the thing, though. For every Oracle, which is taking on heavy debt to built out data center capacity that may not be needed, you have a Meta, which is growing Y/Y EPS at 40% and yet has a forward PE of like 24:1, which is insanely low. And for every Robinhood with its 70:1 forward PE, you have a Schwab with 27% revenue growth and a 17:1 forward PE.

Another funny thing I observed, Meta and Google have both struck very large deals with Oracle and Coreweave for AI compute capacity. They are essentially building out AI compute they are sure they will need, in-house, and then subcontracting speculative capacity to the B players. If the business model dries up, Meta/Goog will have simply accelerated 5 years of infra spend and can pull the plug, maybe take a small write off, and continue sucking up their $200B in profit per year. Oracle and Coreweave get stuck with the debt and the idle infra.
Click to expand...
You know how it snowballs though. Losing those weaker versions translates to lost jobs, combined with high household debt and it spreads to the big dogs, combined with zero chance of gov't taking on debt in the form of a bailout and those big ones shed big weight. I'm not saying the sky is falling, but is a fiscal reckoning is due. It's amazing how we've come back after 2008 with less fiscal responsibility.

And AI is at the very front end of really effing up consumer energy costs, especially where energy is cheap, which means it's likely happening in low income areas, which that burden is going to blow up for them over the next ten years as AI explodes. The load on the low earners is getting rough. You should have heard some of the comments from the pro-doge crowd, there was a lot of, "burn it all down" sentiment from the people that have little/nothing to lose. The bay and tech is a terribly inaccurate representation of the state of personal finance across the country.
 
unemployment in California, the official numbers are 5.5%. Its the highest in the nation. Cost of living here can be absurd. I know a lot of people who have been out of the job market for extended periods of time and they arnt even part of the statistics anymore.

I guess im a ber.
 
PaulR said:
Reasonable Statement Regarding Tesla
The owners don’t often talk about the downside.

Tesla Model S: $100K Liability in Disguise

• Sticker price: ~$100K with options
• Warranty ends: 4 years basic, 8 years battery
• Proprietary tires: $400–$500 each, often worn by 20K miles
• Touchscreen repair: ~$2,000
• Suspension fixes: $3K+
• Battery replacement: $15K–$20K
• Resale after 3 years: ~$50K
• Loan payoff after 3 years: ~$70K
• Underwater by: ~$20K


Cool today, costly tomorrow.
High maintenance, low resale, zero flexibility.
It’s not an investment—it’s a tech-branded time bomb.

Yeah mentally ill or just in denial…..

PaulR
Click to expand...

Ok, first of all...

- One should not be purchasing a $100,000 vehicle unless they can afford it. The model 3 and model Y are significantly cheaper. If the only way one can buy one is to finance it, they can't afford it.

- Yeah, the tires aren't cheap. But cars in that price range don't have cheap tires. I have a model Y and got 25,000 miles on mine, which sucks. But I have a friend who got 50,000, so your mileage may vary. They are not exactly proprietary tires, and you don't HAVE to replace them with EV tires with the foam inside.

- The warranty is on par, or better, than other manufacturer warranties.

- My experience, after almost 3 1/2 years, has been the opposite of high maintenance. Granted, I have fairly low mileage of 29,000, but all I have done in the time is to replace the tires. That's it. No routine oil changes, etc.

- I have solar and do my charging off peak on the EV plan, so my fuel costs are much lower. I've saved $661 so far this year on charging verse paying for gasoline. That savings alone probably cancels out the increase spent on tires.

- Vehicles aren't investments and shouldn't be looked at that way. Vehicles are depreciating assets. Tesla is not unique in this regard.

- The con that you didn't mention is higher insurance premiums.

- Still love the Tesla. I probably won't go back to an ICE vehicle.
 
Sister in law bought the Kia EV6 over the Tesla and has seen all the same benefits as described above.

My wife might consider a non Tesla EV in the unlikely event she gets tired of her ICE CX5.
 
My dislike of Elon long predates his recent political foray.
But I can see why you would assume otherwise.

My dislike is not political hate, it is firsthand experience with how he treats people and his underlings (redundant statement as ALL people are his underlings)
 
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Charging in the Shadows: A Safety Concern for EV Drivers

A woman commuting regularly between Sacramento and the Bay Area in her Tesla Model S faces a recurring and unsettling challenge: charging her vehicle late at night in poorly lit, isolated locations. Many EV chargers along this corridor are tucked behind buildings, in obscure parking lots, or in areas where nighttime activity can feel unpredictable or unsafe. These placements—often chosen for convenience or cost—ignore the real-world safety concerns of drivers, especially women traveling alone.

At 1 or 2 a.m., she often finds herself surrounded by loiterers, “creepers,” or individuals whose behavior feels threatening. There’s no security presence, no lighting, and no clear line of sight to nearby businesses. If she feels unsafe and wants to leave, she must physically exit her vehicle to unplug the charger—an action that exposes her further.

This isn’t just inconvenient. It’s a systemic failure to consider safety in EV infrastructure planning. The promise of clean transportation shouldn’t come with the risk of personal harm. We need to ask: Who designs these spaces? Who benefits from their placement? And who is left vulnerable?

As my friend describes it: It just feels unsafe. She often finds herself pushing her charge capacity to the limit, just to reach a more favorable location—anywhere but the chargers placed in these described settings.

Just a real situation that often isn’t mentioned regarding EV chargers and safety.

PaulR
 
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