I don't care for the gossip, but I do appreciate the discussions it often spurs in the HN comments. There are already a few good comments here, and without this post we wouldn't have those comments.
I think this is probably why people are constantly shorting Tesla. Why would you expect a company run by a person who hardly seems to care about share price to maintain its share price over the long run?
That's precisely my point. The stock price is a moving average of people's guesses and hopes about Tesla's performance. Very few of these people actually have a window into what's in Elon's mind. To that extent, the stock price is more a metric of the 'ignorance of the commons', rather than their wisdom.
Elon absolutely should not be focusing on micro-optimizing Tesla stock.
I think the essence of this situation is, the stock market wants companies to pander to its every whim, BUT the stock market also has a dim awareness that this is trading off long-term success for short-term cash-in tactics. They know what they want but they also know it is bad for them, they just can't help themselves.
You could counter this by being fierce and stern and saying 'no, you must eat your spinach before dessert!' and probably have some success, if your business was based on hard-nosed determination. Amazon can do that, because they are tougher than Wall Street and will do what's best for Amazon, garnering respect.
Tesla's different. Musk's positioning is the foggy-eyed mystic, the guy with a vision WAY beyond what anybody else dares to have. Whether or not this is true this is how he has to behave. So, if Musk says things like 'ectually capital isn't even real, so the share price doesn't matter, it just slightly affects how fast we can roll out batteries and synergize with going to Mars', if it was a normal company the stock market would go WHACK and it would be goodbye Tesla.
Instead, since Musk is Musk and since the whole concept of Tesla/SpaceX is based on that impossibly grand vision, the stock market sort of gets wide eyes and goes quiet, and are careful not to cross Musk.
It's a type of dominance behavior. He doesn't have to yell at them: he acts like they're BENEATH him, and since the stock market likes to go for short-term thinking, technically they are. He can't go to Mars etc. while complying with stock market expectations because his business would implode. So he does it anyway and they interpret his arrogance as dominance, which it is.
Tesla, Amazon, and Uber each have their own type of dominance behaviors with the stock market. Tesla is the visionary seeing the burning bush and unaware of anything the stock market says, and they command awe. Amazon is the hard-bargainer who understands what the stock market wants, but won't trade away their own power, and they command respect. Uber just acts the way the stock market wants to act, and they command love (from the stock market, at least: maybe not from anything human!)
The market doesn't want anything, nor does it have any awareness.
>Tesla's different.
The Musks of the world are rare, but we've seen many captains of indsutry in history.
>and are careful not to cross Musk.
That's why it has massive short interest, right?
Tesla (the company) is great. TSLA (the financial instrument) is a hyped up momo stock, detached from anything underlying. That's it. There's no magic. Sorry.
We as a species may die due to global warming, according to some models. Tesla is, by my measure, the tech company that comes closest to addressing this in any way. I couldn't care less about internal gossip and politics, I care about the greater vision. Politics are not business, they are an obstacle to business.