Investing

[CMRivdogs]

25 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

 

yeah  - I'm waiting for the announcement that both the postal service and DOD will by buying Tesla exclusively going forward.

I'm not sure how they're doing nationwide but I've seen a few police departments around here using them. 

[Deleterious]

Fleet vehicles seem like the perfect application for EV's.

[pfife]

I recall DeJoy blocked EVs to the USPS a few years ago but that was before Elon was his boss. 

[Tigeraholic1]

25 minutes ago, Deleterious said:

Fleet vehicles seem like the perfect application for EV's.

In my area Amazon has gone almost exclusively to EV vans. The key is understanding range capabilities. Delivery routes are perfect for projecting range. 

[oblong]

I had to help prepare a bid that included EV for the post office last year. 

[Screwball]

On the TSLA trade stuff. I was curious so I got into some chart porn. From a trading standpoint, Del was right above when he said you should have pulled the rip cord a while back.

Below chart going back to June 2024. Obvious support/resistance at $271.51 (back on 7/11/24). Late October to early November you can see a gap around that same level. Not noticeable unless you take a closer peek.  273.54 to 275.62. Not a big gap, but a gap.

Stock hit a high of $488.54 on 12/18/24, and has went down since. That is obvious by the daily candles.

If I wanted to trade TSLA I would wait until that gap fills (all gaps fill).

ADDING: I'm expecting the price to close that gap. If and when that happens, that would be the time to buy.

 

Edited February 12 by Screwball

[Deleterious]

Investing in Tesla gives you an extra rush that other stocks don't.  With those boring stocks you don't have to worry about their CEO tanking the stocks price in under 280 characters. 

[Screwball]

I also forgot, less than 3 percent of TSLA's float is short.

[Screwball]

5 minutes ago, Deleterious said:

Investing in Tesla gives you an extra rush that other stocks don't.  With those boring stocks you don't have to worry about their CEO tanking the stocks price in under 280 characters. 

My favorite stock of all time was POT. Potash company from Canada.

[1776]

As expected…

WSJ

Consumer prices rose more briskly than expected in January, extending a recent pattern of price increases at the start of the year that likely derails the prospect for Federal Reserve rate cuts so long as the economy remains solid.

The Labor Department on Wednesday reported that consumer prices in January rose 3% from a year earlier. That marked a pickup from December, when prices rose 2.9% from a year earlier.
 

[Deleterious]

Podcast episode about the history of TSMC.  These guys research the heck out of their topic.  2 1/2 hour long episode and I am 1 hour in and we are just getting to the part where Chang starts TSMC.

Tons if early computer day stuff with IBM, Texas Instrument, etc.  I didn't know RCA had a chip division back in the day.  

https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/tsmc-remastered

There is a second episode that has an interview with Morris Chang, the founder.  I think they said it is his first English interview in 17 years.  

[Deleterious]

Didn't someone joke about this the other day?

US Department of State plans to spend $400m on Tesla armoured vehicles

[Deleterious]

 

[1776]

39 minutes ago, Deleterious said:

Didn't someone joke about this the other day?

US Department of State plans to spend $400m on Tesla armoured vehicles

Well, the truck already looks the part.

[Screwball]

I sure wish I would have bought some INTC stock last week. Chart porn incoming...

This is a 1 year INTC chart by day. Been ugly since last March, until last week. Huge gap (red arrow) and then the rocket shot for the last 4 trading days. Depending on how you measure it, up to 27%, around 25% if you use closing price.

Looking back a little further, here is a 3 year weekly chart which puts things into better perspective if you are into chart porn. This has to do with INTC and Taiwan Semiconductor, ticker TSM, which, over the same time period, their chart looks uneventful. 

For a pure trader I would let some run, but take some off the table at this point. That gap may fill at 28ish, that would be a 50% rip. Pull the rip cord and thank the market whore for this one and move on.

[Deleterious]

Some good info about Intel here.  That would be pretty big news for them if it turns  out true.

https://semiwiki.com/semiconductor-services/techinsights/352972-iedm-2025-tsmc-2nm-process-disclosure-how-does-it-measure-up/

Quote

Performance

Similar to the power analysis above, at Samsung 14nm/TSMC 16nm the Apple A9 processor had identical performance on the 2 processes. Normalizing both processes to 1 and applying the announced node to node performance improvements from both companies it is possible to compare performance per node. It has also been possible to use an Intel 10SF versus AMD processors on TSMC 7nm process, to add Intel to the analysis and forward calculate based on Intel performance by node announcements.

We have been able to check our extrapolations at 3 nodes for Samsung and TSMC since the 16/14nm nodes as well as Intel at 2 nodes and those checks have confirmed our extrapolations are tracking correctly.

Based on this analysis it is our belief that Intel 18A has the highest performance for a 2nm class process with TSMC in second place and Samsung in third place.

Our performance index values are in the full article available with free registration on the TechInsights platform here.

 

[gehringer_2]

26 minutes ago, Screwball said:

I sure wish I would have bought some INTC stock last week. Chart porn incoming...

This is a 1 year INTC chart by day. Been ugly since last March, until last week. Huge gap (red arrow) and then the rocket shot for the last 4 trading days. Depending on how you measure it, up to 27%, around 25% if you use closing price.

Looking back a little further, here is a 3 year weekly chart which puts things into better perspective if you are into chart porn. This has to do with INTC and Taiwan Semiconductor, ticker TSM, which, over the same time period, their chart looks uneventful. 

For a pure trader I would let some run, but take some off the table at this point. That gap may fill at 28ish, that would be a 50% rip. Pull the rip cord and thank the market whore for this one and move on.

intel is in kind of a holding pattern. They've pored a lot of money in to building out foundry capacity that could be worth a ton if they execute well, or else will leave them in the toilet if they don't. And Trump saying he was unhappy with the terms of the CHIPS act the other day could be a downer. I expected more of a dip for all the foundries after that -- but nope.

EDIT: as Del's post indicates, it's basically down to tea-leaf reading trying to guess if any of the players is going to end up significantly ahead or behind their competitors at the next fab gen. I think some analysts have been more sceptical about Intel just because they are having to make the biggest internal tech jump to catch up.

Edited February 14 by gehringer_2

[Screwball]

I remember back in the day when INTC was a leader and set the tone for the industry. Now, I don't think that's the case. In this deal, I think INTC outsoures to TSM now. But I don't follow this enough to know what this does/might do to INTC bottom line.

[Screwball]

At the same time, from that article Del posted, which was over my head quite quickly. Giggle. I don't follow that stuff, but I skimmed through it. But it did say this;

Quote

Conclusion

TSMC has disclosed a 2nm process likely to be the densest available 2nm class process. It also appears to be the most power efficient at least when compared to Samsung. In terms of performance, we believe Intel 18A is the leader. The early yield reports appear promising, but the reports of $30,000/wafer pricing do not in our opinion represent acceptable value for the process and may present an opportunity for Intel and Samsung to capture market share . TSMC 2nm should be in production in the second half of this year.

I wonder if this is part of what made INTC stock jump?

Edited February 14 by Screwball

[Deleterious]

16 minutes ago, Screwball said:

I remember back in the day when INTC was a leader and set the tone for the industry. Now, I don't think that's the case. In this deal, I think INTC outsoures to TSM now. But I don't follow this enough to know what this does/might do to INTC bottom line.

Their chips they design are still pretty good.  Where they drop the ball is the manufacturing process.  The current generation of chips is 3nm and Intel struggles to make them.  They contracted TSMC to build them instead, or a good amount of them that they require.

There are rumors Intel might spin off their foundry business.  So they would be just like AMD or Nvidia then.  They would only design and sell chips while letting a 3rd party manufacture them.

There is another rumor that the US government will try to strong arm TSMC into becoming a partner with Intel in their foundry business.  Basically telling TSMC if you want to keep doing business in the US you need to help Intel get their crap together so the US has one company that can actually build these things.

Those plus the performance rumor and the cost rumor that you just posted probably all are contributing to the price rising.

[gehringer_2]

32 minutes ago, Deleterious said:

Their chips they design are still pretty good. 

This is true on the CPU side, but they really dropped the ball on the GPU side. Sort of ironic that Intel IRIS probably once had 90% of the laptop basic video market but they never leveraged that expertise into the high performance end where AI has landed.

I don't know enough to evaluate much of what I read about this either. One question is whether the ARM CPUs will eventually displace x86 since it is a more 'modern' design. The counter is the argument that CPU architecture doesn't really matter, only fab scale, and that the Apple M series only looks better now because they got to smaller scale fab faster than Intel and if Intel closes that gap, they will be producing X86 just as energy efficient and otherwise powerful as M series. That's the arg FWIW. I can't evaluate it one way or the other. It reminds me a bit of the arguments about micro-kernel operating systems, which sounded good on paper, but in the real world Linux pretty much blew up in the end (meaning it proved it didn't matter).

Edited February 14 by gehringer_2

[Screwball]

25 minutes ago, Deleterious said:

Their chips they design are still pretty good.  Where they drop the ball is the manufacturing process.  The current generation of chips is 3nm and Intel struggles to make them.  They contracted TSMC to build them instead, or a good amount of them that they require.

There are rumors Intel might spin off their foundry business.  So they would be just like AMD or Nvidia then.  They would only design and sell chips while letting a 3rd party manufacture them.

There is another rumor that the US government will try to strong arm TSMC into becoming a partner with Intel in their foundry business.  Basically telling TSMC if you want to keep doing business in the US you need to help Intel get their crap together so the US has one company that can actually build these things.

Those plus the performance rumor and the cost rumor that you just posted probably all are contributing to the price rising.

Good stuff, and thanks. Like I said, I don't follow this industry that close, but now that I think about it, Intel was/is going to build some chip plants in New Albany, Ohio. Doing a little research, they are still building and expected to open by 2027 or face penalties. Broke ground in 22.

Real estate exploded down around there as this started. My oldest lives about 10 minutes away.

I have also read, and I'm not sure if this is the right kind of process, but some take a whole bunch of water. I don't know where they are getting that down there, or if they don't need it.

Edited February 14 by Screwball

[Screwball]

Adding; Next time I talk to the #1 son I will ask him about the plants. He's into that stuff as it's kind of his trade.

I was just there last Sunday to watch one of my grand daughters play in a basketball tournament. True story; Ohio State football coach Ryan Day walked right in front of us. I could have said hello. That was pretty wild.

We are not Ohio State fans FTR.

[Deleterious]

32 minutes ago, Screwball said:

Good stuff, and thanks. Like I said, I don't follow this industry that close, but now that I think about it, Intel was/is going to build some chip plants in New Albany, Ohio. Looking a little they are still going on and expected to open by 2027 or face penalties. Broke ground in 22.

Real estate explode down around there as this started. My oldest lives about 10 minutes away. I would have sold the house and ran.

I have also read, and I'm not sure if this is the right kind of process, but some take a whole bunch of water. I don't know where they are getting that down there, or don't need it.

I wondered about the water as well since a plant is being built in Arizona.  I guess it does take a lot but the water is not consumed in the manufacturing process.  Someone described it like a swimming pool.  Takes a ton of water to fill it initially then almost nothing to maintain it.  

[Screwball]

I did a little searching and found a couple of interesting articles.  First one is from Nov 23 on the water issues;

New Albany’s search for water for Intel goes far beyond Granville

Then this one from Sept of 24;

Intel’s New Albany facility will be spun off into new company under restructuring plan

From the first article, water does seem to be a problem. I don't know what is going on now, but I have a request for information from puppy #1.