Comment by SecretDreams
1 day ago
Investors are buying into the fallacy that musk can continue to work as a hype man, rather than some visionary or innovator. They like that he can make stock numbers go up, seemingly against all odds and reason.
Whether this trend continues or not indefinitely will largely determine if incestors start looking for the door.
It's a valid point. But the markets are a harsh mistress. If you don't like fallacies, you don't buy. And if you think the number is not going to go up, you can always short the stock.
In defence of Mr Musk, despite his character flaws, Tesla is the only Western electric car company in the top 20, and this includes Korea and Japan. Also, SpaceX is ~90% of the world's commercial rocket launch capacity.
But this does not mean SpaceX would be correctly priced at the moment. It may be expensive, but SpaceX is going to have many years to come to reap the benefits of their hard work building the business.
> Tesla is the only Western electric car company in the top 20
WV is number 6 in the top 20, and BMW is number 10. And while Tesla has good sales now their lack of innovation is a huge risk.
https://www.blackridgeresearch.com/blog/list-of-global-top-e...
> In defence of Mr Musk, despite his character flaws, Tesla is the only Western electric car company in the top 20, and this includes Korea and Japan. Also, SpaceX is ~90% of the world's commercial rocket launch capacity.
This conflates the quality of the product with the value of the business. There is no contradiction between Tesla cars selling well because they fit a market and Tesla the business not being a good investment.
> you can always short the stock.
Which is going not too badly for the shorts, so far. There's a reason almost 50% of the float is loaned out.
We'll see once the earnings call rolls around.
Possible that a lot of those shorts are by early SpaceX investors who want to lock in a specific price before their share lockup period ends.
Unlike Tesla, SpaceX is still a visionary and innovative company. Their current cash problems are precisely because they are so heavily invested in so many innovations that have yet to pan out
Tesla is making two big R&D plays into humanoid robotics and cyber taxi. That’s just as bold and requiring innovation as the SpaceX AI and starship stuff. That plus Tesla/SpaceX/Intel are together putting big money into Terafab to make semiconductors in Texas for those platforms.
> Tesla is making two big R&D plays…
The funniest thing you can write… Can’t believe people still write “Robotaxi” after 12+ years of failed promises… wild wild stuff
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Love the typo.
I think Musk's luck is running out, he's been too political this past year and he seems to also have run out of geek "street cred". Remember youtubers visiting (whatever the Tesla trade show was called) were more perplexed than impressed with what has been shown. Similar sentiment seen across trade shows (like CES) where everything was AI and no one seemed to ask themselves "why are we putting AI in this?". The answer, of course, for startups and stock listed companies, to make themselves more valuable on paper.
Investors would probably be aware of that if they run any kind of sentiment analysis on online social media content. And at the same time there's some pull-out from tech stock. So maybe some are starting to realise that things are too shaky for their risk profile?
It’s so weird to see people actively try to criticize arguably the most successful person in the history of Earth.
That’s some weirdly perverse attitude to have. Regardless if it’s Musk or anyone else, in general the actions of highly successful people have a disproportionally high impact on the society. So they need to be criticized as harshly as is reasonable for any misstep they take.
It's because his companies have insane P/E and constantly overpromise
Are you young and raised with the cult of personality, like so many gen Z and alpha?
Because I find your words surprising since critique is what I was raised with in the late 90s early 2000s. Offline and in the media.
At the same time your definition of criticizing is very lax, when I'm stating banal opinions and a broad observation.
If you framed it as 'the biggest criminal' it'd still be impressive but would read mighty different. Acquiring money and power is no way to go through life. Not at that cost.
Some of the richest people the world has ever seen seem to tick all the same boxes as the least likeable and most devoid of love and empathy.
If only some billionaires (trillionaires?) could strike a better balance between successful and human. Especially since most wealth is actually wealth transfer from the poor and from taxpayer coffers to the rich.
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Envy is a hell of a drug
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I have achieved nothing this year, and yet I have had a lot more success than Mr. Musk in the "human lives saved" category by not gutting USAID. With reasonable estimates on the weight of this category I'm quite confident to have been more successful overall as well.
It's really sad to see that we just accept that Elon Musk, one of the most influential and maybe-still-the richest person in the world is constantly lying to shareholders for his own benefit. And gets zero punishment for it.
We really need to stop thinking in terms of individuals and more in terms of systems. The problem isn't just Musk. If it wasn't him, it would be someone else.