Tim Esteben's Posts | Commonstock

$5.6MFollowers

@tim_esteben08/16/2023

Tesla price cuts puts pressure on NIO

Tesla is making further price cuts in China, reducing models S and X by $7,400 - $8,500

Tesla slashed the price of the existing inventory of its Model S and Model X cars in China, looking to boost sales amid rising competition in one of its key markets.

The Model X is on sale for 836,900 Chinese yuan ($114,677) down from 898,900 yuan, Tesla said in a post of Chinese microblogging service Weibo.

And the Model S is being sold for 754,900 versus the previous price of 808,900 yuan.

NIO cars start at around $46,100 for the NIO ET5 electric sedan.

The NIO EC6 price is another moderately-priced model starting at $52,400.

Other NIO car prices stretch into the upper $60,000 range for the base model. When well-equipped, the electric NIO models can sell for over $70,000.

Rico

@heyrico08/16/2023

I wonder how collecting data from Chinese Tesla's work...ie free reign like in the US or are they unable to add it to their autonomous data aggregation

+ 3 comments

Tim Esteben

$5.6MFollowers

@tim_esteben08/04/2023

Airbnb had a solid Q2

Experiences booked +11%
Gross Booking Value +15%
Revenue +18%
EBITDA +15%
Free Cash Flow +15%
EPS up a whopping 75% (interest income on float went from $20M to $191M).
Supply inventory +19%.
The daily rate increased, too.
They even bought back $2.5B shares the past 12 months.

@sammeciar has been writing about $ABNB experiences for a while— and he's been adding to shares this year:

Nathan Worden

@nathanworden08/04/2023

Seems like pretty good numbers, I saw @drrachelstocks bought puts. Would love to hear the reason 😃

+ 4 comments

Tim Esteben

$5.6MFollowers

@tim_esteben08/03/2023

Has cloud growth bottomed?

After falling for seven quarters – these growth rates have stabilized.

Any thoughts @stackinvesting?

finance.us20.list-manage.com

Signs We've Touched the Bottom by @ttunguz

I’m watching public company earnings to identify early trends in the software market to inform startups’ plans for 2023. Yesterday, Microsoft & Google announced earnings. Amazon, Cloudflare, & Mongo announce soon. At last, we see a change in slope in the annual growth rates of the cloud services. Both Google & Microsoft announced growth rates in GCP & Azure that held steady from one quarter to the next. There are two forces in tension : overall cost reduction efforts by companies & the desire to invest in AI.

Tim Esteben

@tim_esteben08/03/2023

We've finally seen a change in slope in the annual growth rates of the cloud services. Both Google & Microsoft announced growth rates in GCP & Azure that held steady from one quarter to the next.

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Tim Esteben

$5.6MFollowers

@tim_esteben07/28/2023

List of Shitcos

1) Snapchat $SNAP — Last year they reported earnings and guided up big. Then a month later they guided down and it absolutely crushed their stock. Snapchat is a dying brand. The world doesn't need Snapchat. $SNAP will go down in history as the app that had a chance to get acquired by Mark Zuckerberg

2) Meme stocks — $AMC $GME $BBBY There was a moment when the thesis made sense at the beginning of the Gamestock saga, but that was well before you heard about them. Once animal spirits took over, these became completely unpredictable. Very risky.

3) Airlines — $DAL $AAL $UAL $SAVE $ALK Airlines are just bad businesses.

4) Carvana — $CVNA They have a few years to figure out a viable business model. They don't have one right now. They just avoided bankruptcy through a debt restructuring deal. They tout their "adjusted EBITA" metric. They do a bunch of Houdini and jazz-hands bs. Also in regards to corporate governance, dual class shareholders does not make for a good fiduciary setup. The investor who put $100 million dollars was

5) Cruiselines — $RCL $NCLH $CCL High fixed costs, Volatile demand.

What am I missing?

Joshua Simka

@tomato08/04/2023

How about $FUBO?

cc @pessen, @pedromtavares, @strib, @eweiner

+ 3 comments

Tim Esteben

$5.6MFollowers

@tim_esteben07/19/2023

Meta released Llama 2, a new open-source Large Language Model

And it's now available for commercial use.

Llama 2 was trained on 40% more tokens (vs. LLaMA 1), its parameter size goes up to 70K (from 65K), and it has 4K tokens for context length (2x).

Llama 2 still lags in parameter size vs. its competitors from OpenAI and Google

Llama 2 outperforms all other open-source LLMs in AI benchmarks

Microsoft is Meta's “preferred partner,” in a clear challenge to OpenAI, which received $10B+ in funding from Microsoft.

Llama 2 is looking to consolidate itself as the leader in open source and challenges OpenAI's GPT-3.5-turbo.

It is hard to see how open-source startups like Mosaic or Stability can compete with Meta's infinite war chest for open-source LLMs.

Meta is willing to dump money on open-source LLMs as its core business model is ads, not selling services.

If Llama 2 really is comparable to GPT-3.5-turbo, will we see mass migration, given GPT's higher price?

$META $MSFT

Reena Chrystal

@reena_chrystal07/19/2023

My perception is that GPT-3.5-turbo is the most popular LLM for startups, given its speed and price advantage over GPT-4.

Llama 2 could be even cheaper, depending on server costs.

+ 3 comments

Tim Esteben

$5.6MFollowers

@tim_esteben07/18/2023

The phrase that reveals if the content you're reading was written by an AI

AI is being used to write a lot of SEO garbage in the financial content space. The phrase that gives it away (in my opinion) is:

"It's important to..."

As in:

This is Google Bard and ChatGPT's way of giving a disclaimer. But it doesn't mean anything. It's just what you're supposed to say.

"Its important to weigh the risks and rewards"

"It's important to do your own research"

It's important to understand both the potential and the challenges"

Joey Hirendernath

@joeyhirendernath07/19/2023

AI generated content definitely shows repetitive language patterns

A few other phrases I’ve seen are

“It is essential to remember”

“To summarise”

“you may also consider”

Additionally the content lacks a tone and a personal touch…

Add a comment…

Tim Esteben

$5.6MFollowers

@tim_esteben07/07/2023

Digital Ocean Invests in AI

DigitalOcean is acquiring Paperspace for $111 million to expand its AI offerings
Digital Ocean provides cloud infrastructure
Paperspace is a desktop virtualization solution that helps people develop, train, and deploy AI applications.

Paperspace provides fast and powerful cloud computing infrastructure that is ideal for AI workloads. AI requires a lot of computing power, and Paperspace's GPUs are up to the task. DigitalOcean is acquiring Paperspace to gain access to this infrastructure and to offer better tools for AI to its customers.

This is DigitalOcean's second major acquisition in under a year.

$DOCN

Chip Lunderburg

@chip_lunderburg07/07/2023

This seems like a great fit. The two firms have shared values on customer success/ nurturing businesses from the ground up.

I think the acquisition will make it easier for customers to test, develop, & deploy AI apps. Personally bullish $DOCN

+ 2 comments

Tim Esteben

$5.6MFollowers

@tim_esteben06/12/2023

$NVDA: Institutions vs. Retail

Over the last three months institutions have been buying up $NVDA:

^Data courtesy of @mapsignals (worth a follow by the way)

However, Commonstock users have been selling Nvidia over the last three months. They are the second most sold by net dollar value.

Over the last three months, Nvidia is up 69%. So it's safe to say the institutions have won this one.

But what matters even more is what happens in the next three months. Since retail has already started to rotate out of NVDA, while the institutions are still holding.

Will the little guys come out the ultimate victor? Or will Nvidia crush another earnings and keep mooning towards $500?

MAPsignals

@mapsignals06/12/2023

Many were surprised by the beat and raise by $NVDA - I believe it was a record by some accounts.

I believe analysts are still behind the ball on this technology and are going to be raising estimates on the next crop of winners.

+ 7 comments

Tim Esteben

$5.6MFollowers

@tim_esteben06/09/2023

This is Day 1 of Apple gaining headset market share on Meta

$META has a head start with the Oculus and Quest 2, but Apple's market share will increase.

Here is how Meta will try and fend off $AAPL:

Meta announced the launch of the Quest 3 headset on June 1.
It will cost just under $500, and be available in the fall.
The Quest 3 will have both VR and MR capabilities.
The Quest 2 has also received a $100 price cut, with the entry-level variant available at $299 starting June 4.

Together with its newly discounted predecessor, the Quest 3 is expected to help Meta maintain market dominance for now.

Tim Esteben

$5.6MFollowers

@tim_esteben06/08/2023

Coinbase roundup

“Meeting with Gary Gensler was frankly a pretty icy reception, I would say. We came in hat in hand and said, 'Hey, Chair Gensler, you've asked people to come in and register. Respectfully, we're here to register. What would you like us to do? What process would you like us to go through?' And his response was, 'Talk to your lawyer. I'm not here to advise you,’”

— Brian Armstrong, Coinbase CEO.

Coinbase has no plans of delisting any tokens or shutting down its staking service

"No delisting. We're going to continue to operate business as usual, and those assets are going to continue to trade until the court makes a determination.” - Axios

“We're not going to wind down our staking service. Again, as these court cases play out, it's really business as usual.” - Coindesk

The case has the potential to go to the Supreme Court, or at least a Court of Appeals, given the large war chests Binance and Coinbase have to appeal any potential losses.

Potential scenarios, in order of likelihood:

Settlement + fine, few changes to crypto in the U.S.: that is the most likely scenario, as we imagine that the government doesn't want to drive these platforms out of the U.S. completely, and therefore is open to a deal.

Platforms lose their cases and leave the U.S.

Platforms mostly win their cases, and new pro-crypto rules are implemented.

Platforms get shut down entirely.

$COIN

Tim Esteben

@tim_esteben06/08/2023

Link to Bloomberg interview with Brian Armstrong:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6J-S4JNLYXc&ab_channel=BloombergTelevision

+ 4 comments