Tesla’s 2022 Collapse Hits 69% After Deepest Selloff Since April
finance.yahoo.com
finance.yahoo.com
A lot of people I know hesitate to take a seat on a plane, even for a week-long holiday. Having to read about Elon Jet and that Musk takes a whole plane to watch a football game certainly rubs them the wrong way.
Censoring users at will for his own ego or his own benefit also seems to go against what intellectual tech enthusiasts value.
A lot of his tweets seem cold-hearted, passive-aggressive towards minorities like immigrants and LGBT people.
For the people who followed it (not sure if it is many of the Tesla target demographic), it must have been a change from "Smart free speech absolutist who works on accelerating the advent of sustainable energy to save the world" to "Unethical, narcissistic despot with ill will towards minorities".
- It was so incredibly overvalued before being mature, that once it actually started to deliver on some promises its price shot up even further from where it should be.
- It reached "maturity" too late. Other car makers have caught up. Consumers can buy a Ford F-150 Lightning, an Rivian R1T or a GMC Hummer EV today, but not a Cybertruck. Kia, Nissan, Mini, Porsche, Audi, etc have great EV offerings. Tesla isn't even the biggest seller of electric cars in the world anymore (it's BYD, 354k sales vs Tesla's 254k)[1]
[1] https://www.counterpointresearch.com/global-ev-sales-61-q2-2...
The most important part in the EV transition is still who can buy/produce the most batteries.
He is so unlikable, foolish and actually rude to people that I wouldn't want to be driving around a car that's associated with him. It' a massive shame because I really think at some point he was a force for good and he really wanted to see progress in the world. Sadly and I mean this in the nicest way possible, he now just seems like a fraud.
I actually think Tesla already had a bit of stigma associated with it, kind of a "show offs" car...but now, it's just a liability.
It feels like all of that toxicity was unnecessary and he could have been impactful and transformational without it, but maybe I'm wrong.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackmccullough/2019/12/09/the-p...
Quacks like a duck for me.
Why rob banks for $10k when you can whip up fervor on social media for millions?
Criminal activity is there, basically, cuz people want to get what they want, norms, morals, and the well-being of others be damned. Musk doesn't have to rob banks to get what he wants, and probably never would have since his family owned gemstone mines in S Africa.
If you want to judge the man, see how he treated his ex's, his children, etc. That paints a far less flattering picture.
I think what gave him some cover is that for a long time nobody else was able to do what his companies could do at the same scale, or even close to it. Maybe Blue Origin is not equal to SpaceX yet, but putting Captain Kirk into orbit was a good PR coup. And the legacy car companies are not as experienced as Tesla as making electric cars, but they have been manufacturing cars for a century. US automakers were hurt by Asian carmakers a few decades ago, but survived. It might take a few more years, but I think they will figure out how to survive this transition.
His companies were close to monopolies in their niches for a long time, so he kind of walked on water. Now other companies are catching up, and he is not as special.
Musk was divorced like 5 times already.
I doubt he is going to rip the Powerwall off his house or sell the Tesla, but I'm quite sure based on the conversation that if he didn't own either of these Tesla products right now he would seriously consider other options if he were buying today.
This is just one example obviously, but there is no doubt that Elon is upsetting some key demographics who want to purchase Tesla products, and while I have no idea if it will have a major negative impact on the bottom line, it certainly can't be good.
I mentioned a few times at peak it was valued as much as the entire auto industry combined plus a utility company plus a battery company plus a software company or two plus a solar company - and then some - all while manufacturing about 10% as many cars as Toyota and showing no success in anything other than cars.
It was always a question of when, and he forgot that JPow giveth and JPow taketh away.
Like Trump he could have just sailed off into the distance a rich and largely beloved man but he flew just a little too close to the sun.
I’ve joked before that Trump is a poor person’s idea of a rich person (“I bet rich people have solid gold toilets”) in the same way Elon is a 'left-curve' idea of a genius (“I bet geniuses just spend all day inventing crazy ideas and going to Mars and digging holes and stuff”). They’re both, in real life, caricatures of what they’re projecting to be. More showmen than anything. That’s not a criticism; they’re both excellent showmen. More Barnum than Rockefeller or Nikola.
Now we know that Tesla will probably not be the first with level 5 autonomy and that their no-lidar approach may not even be sufficient at all.
But the belief in their FSD was priced into Tesla's valuation as well and by now it's clear that this part was overvalued.
[edit1] All while getting them to pay up to $12,000 for software that didn't exist and had no path to existing within the promised timeframe.
Textbooks will be written about this bezzle.
[edit2] > Bezzle: Alone among the various forms of larceny [embezzlement] has a time parameter. Weeks, months or years may elapse between the commission of the crime and its discovery. (This is a period, incidentally, when the embezzler has his gain and the man who has been embezzled, oddly enough, feels no loss. There is a net increase in psychic wealth.) At any given time there exists an inventory of undiscovered embezzlement in—or more precisely not in—the country’s business and banks. [2]
Not suggesting a crime occurred here, to be clear - just the broad shape of what transpired re: FSD rhymes real good.
[1] https://jalopnik.com/elon-musk-promises-full-self-driving-ne...
[2] https://carnegieendowment.org/chinafinancialmarkets/85179
This bubble birthed and featured Cathie and Saylor (again) to a large degree, but the real star was Elon.
There's always too much poetry in these cycles for him not to fall apart on the way back down.
Look, some of his points have some standing but the points have to be more nuanced. I’m also annoyed by PoCo and the power-grab by US identity-identitarian Calvinists, painting anyone that does not defer to their moral authority as fascist monsters. I’m also irritated by the “present your pronouns” because you’re “either an ally or part of the problem.”
But indeed, for every time you snap back, there’s a real trans person who’s suffering an identity crisis, victimized and exploited by all sides of the polarized flame-fest that’s smashing any chance for a reasonable debate.
I don’t know if Musk is a true reactionary bumpkin of just burnt out, and out of touch. He should really get a public relations specialist to fix his public persona and teach him how to stay out of rhetorical minefields.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathias_Döpfner Who apparently texted Musk during the Twitter transaction. He’s a media magnate too eh!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barre_Seid You should thank this respectable man for the Roe repeal. Good luck avoiding their products.
I think a bigger factor is that some parts of social media sees Musk as a partial replacement for Trump.
And, particularly, that the part of social media to which Trump was most valuable for several years (before he was finally booted), and which has failed to draw Trump back recently despite very visible efforts, and which Musk now owns, sees him that way.
For a lot of reasons I like Toyota and I’m super happy I don’t really know the CEOs name. If they do something silly I won’t have to feel like I can’t continue driving Toyota
When I buy a Toyota
Their products have abysmal initial quality, durability, and reliability.
Their parts/service/bodywork repair/support network sucks. The cars are ludicrously expensive to repair because Musk is using insurance company payouts to subsidize his company.
They've lost almost every advantage they had. Their cars aren't the fastest in acceleration, don't have the most range, don't have the best efficiency, aren't the fastest charging, etc.
GM, Ford, and Volkswagen are gunning for Tesla and Tesla doesn't stand a chance.
Uhh, wat?
I would guess that Tesla is losing the premium they can put to their prices and that is pushing Tesla value to a transactional value. No more apologists for the build quality or features that are pay now get it next year(every year, next year), if Tesla makes good cars and sell them at good price people will buy and if they don't people won't. If can't do autonomous driving, can no longer sell autonomous driving. No more paying extra to save the planet.
If I'm hungry and I'm at the airport I'll grab something that's quick and convenient. My choice might not be the best, but whatever, I'm in a hurry and I'll forget what I ate by my next meal. A car on the other hand is a purchase I'll mull over for months— I'll consider everything, because it'll involve a lot of cash and I'll live with that decision for years.
On the other hand, I think you're right, and I doubt this is all just a consequence of Twitter saga. There's a lot of other forces at play here; there's more competition, Tesla keeps pushing some promised launches back, the whole stock market in general doing poorly, etc.
- restaurant: inconsequential which I pick, won't remember the quality of the meal, likely have a few similar options, very low stakes -- why support the chain that's owned by jerks?
- vs major life purchase, weigh all the pros and cons, mileage and economy and environmental impact and identity all come into play: how much long term, big picture economy would I trade to maximize my self identity?
I think it works your way too -- just seems neat.
They were never "good money vs value" tradeoff kind of choice.
Most people I know are aware of what kind of cars I drive[1].
Even if there's equal stigma attached to both, it's easier to quickly move past spending $5 on chicken than $50k+ on a car that's going to be with you for years.
0. I don't. It's a sandwich.
1. Both EVs, neither made by Tesla.
What hurts Tesla isn’t a few terminally online folks refusing to buy some expensive electric cars but the perception they will in a very difficult market.
Tesla made cool cars before Elon joined (it was founded by Eberhard and Tarpenning - Elon was an early investor who started calling himself a founder one day and got sued by the actual founders, they settled allowing him to continue) and it’ll continue to make neat electric cars moving forward. But they will lose their first mover margins as more players join and that’s gonna hurt.
It’ll continue to be a player in automotive but it’ll now be priced like it. Until it can demonstrate traction in literally anything other than making cars.
"Didn't buy a Tesla, bought an Audi" = poorly-executed virtue signal attempt.
Plus there is nothing wrong with virtue signaling, really. It beats vice signaling by miles and it beats passivity too.
In fact, the phrase "virtue signaling" was initially primarily used by people who seemed to lack moral or ethical concerns of their own and couldn't fathom that other people were guided by such. It's not a great term to throw around when it doesn't clearly apply.
Do you even know what point you're trying to make?
Both novels, like the majority of Rand's work, are absolutely cracking as wish-fulfillment fantasies for folks without social skills who dream of having kinky, angular sex while demanding that they be made BusinessPapa for perfecting some mechanical process.
Ignoring, of course, that perfection in a vacuum means very little; it is the ability to use said process in the context of society that makes it 1) useful and 2) profitable (although I suppose Rand would order those different :)
Who is John Galt? The kid who took his ball and went home when the other children didn't let him make all the rules.
In short, I do not find Objectivism to be a useful rubric when it comes to morality. Frankly, Objectivism is incoherent except when read as a wish-fullfilment fantasy as described above, as the life of the originator handily demonstrates. Success does not come from minimizing the contributions of everyone else -- that way lies loneliness, hypocrisy, and a reliance on the teat of the State.
As I deeply value my freedom and lack of debt, I could never adhere to such a unprofitable and vacuous quote unquote philosophy.
With regard to "moral compass" being a leftist invention -- such an accusation betrays precisely the sort of total willful ignorance I have come to expect from self-proclaimed Objectivists (akin to RATM being Atlas Shrugged devotee Paul Ryan -- aka the literal machine --'s favorite band). Suffice it to say that the phrase "moral compass" appears long before the current political paradigm -- and the concept to which it refers is literally older than written language itself.
Have you read any books OTHER than Atlas Shrugged? If not, I would be happy to provide a few suggestions to get you started!
And while I'm dispensing unsolicited-but-potentially-life-changing advice: If I were you, I'd hesitate to out myself in public forums as being unfamiliar with an inner sense of morality. Most people prefer a social circle that views their friendship as something greater than a business arrangement built on symbiotic profit.
I would ALSO hesitate before living my life in the accordance with the principles of an parasitic welfare queen like Ayn Rand, but that's an entire conversation in and of itself.
I find it amusing that this company seems to be the go-to for those refusing to buy a Tesla for ethical reasons (see also: Alyssa Milano recently announcing she sold her Tesla to buy a VW).
I’m in the market for a car and Tesla definitely lost some ground in the running because of the perceived hassle of having to defend my decision to buy supporting his behavior.
But to be honest, I can’t drive any Tesla to visit my parents without stopping to charge, especially in the winter so it’ll be a few years until I actually consider an electric car.
Probably a lot. Musk is too closely associated with the brand. For many people, Tesla is Musk and Musk is Tesla.
They've been called "Muskmobiles" in the past. I wouldn't be surprised if people also started to call them "Twitter cars".
I'm not in the market for a car so it's hard to say how much this would sway my decision. Probably not zero though. At the very least the future of Tesla feels more erratic.
Musk is known to be anti-LGBT: https://www.them.us/story/elon-musk-gay-twitter-employee-gro...
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/17/elon-musk-should-apologize-f...
https://www.vice.com/en/article/epz8jz/elon-musk-twitter-col...
https://newrepublic.com/article/169112/elon-musk-anti-trans-...
He even insinuated Pelosi's husband had gay hookers in his house! https://www.france24.com/en/tv-shows/truth-or-fake/20221101-...
and that's nothing new for him: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/19/tesla-fac...
> Assume good faith.
As to your claims:
> Musk is known to be anti-LGBT
Since when is pointing to an individual's comments who is gay and criticising them (the person or the comments) "anti-LGBT"? I'd like to see the reasoning for that one. I thought it's because Roth brings up children in questionable comments, an awful lot. YMMV.
The next link's headline is "Elon Musk should apologize for mocking gender pronouns, says group that gave Tesla top LGBTQ-friendly rating" - why? Freedom of speech includes freedom to mock. Anyone wanting, nay, demanding their own pronouns is eminently mockable, trans or not.
Next link's headline is "Elon Musk's Twitter Reinstates Anti-Trans Activists on Same Weekend as Club Q Attacked". Aside from that being a shameless guilt-by-association fallacy, the policy changed after Musk asked the question "Should Twitter offer a general amnesty to suspended accounts, provided that they have not broken the law or engaged in egregious spam?"
Portraying a general amnesty as something targeted seems a tad misleading.
Next headline: “Not content with reactivating accounts that spewed anti-trans content, Musk’s Twitter has now banned a group that organizes to protect people at LGBTQ events from far-right violence.”
I had to do a bit of digging with this one. The banned group, the Elm Fork John Brown Gun Club, claim they were suspended for two tweets (from the link you gave):
> The reason given for its account suspension, an Elm Fork John Brown Gun Club contributor told The New Republic, was that it had violated Twitter rules against “hateful conduct,” with two tweets cited: a reply to the official account of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (“Mugging at gun point,” reads the reply to an unspecified CBP post) and another post with what seems like a retort to the perpetual conservative nonjoke about pronouns, “Every queer a riflethem.”
I don't understand why that would lead to suspension.
It turns out that they are part of Antifa and were involved in targeting a conservative activist[1][2]. Perhaps it is linked to tweets like the following by its leader? [3]
> For legal reasons, this is a direct threat. Enjoy your kneecaps while you've got them.
I can't tell. This tweet[4] from Musk in response to another thread by Ngo says:
> That is a disturbing story and very concerning that Twitter took no action, despite clear violation of ToS. Report in this thread for now.
So it seems possible that it may have been because those tweets were seen as threatening somehow, or for other violations that were previously, I'm tempted to write condoned but shall we say, overlooked?
[1] https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1557475321678647297
[2] https://humanevents.com/2022/08/10/meet-the-woman-antifa-mil...
[3] https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1557478306760597504
For what it's worth, I didn't know what statements were being referred to, and I like to keep up with tech news. There are probably a lot of others in the same boat too - definitely more then there are trolls feigning ignorance about him.
It's probably best to assume good faith from the commenter, especially when their username is "transcoderx"!
Given that HN is a site by nerds for nerds, I think you’re leaping to conclusions: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcoding :-)
* He critizised that Yoel advocated for Kids using dating platforms in his PhD thesis. It's a misrepresentation IMO, but the reasoning behind his criticism is not LGBT specific.
* This is about mocking pronouns, not about LGBT people. “I absolutely support trans, but all these pronouns are an esthetic nightmare.” - EM
* He reinstated a lot of accounts that didn't violate the law (free speech). Vice cherry picked some examples that were originally banned for "anti LGBT" tweets.
* Activist account was banned for "hateful conduct". I don't know the context here, but that classification seems reasonable.
* He did delete the pelosi tweet, presumably once he realized it was false.
* The last one is about anti LGBT behavior by employees at Tesla, not by EM himself.
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1607997591870124032
Depicting the LGBT flag as one of the attributes of a brainwashed person.
You can see many tweets like this, belittling minorities, when you scroll through the "Tweets & replies" tab on Musks profile.
You are fighting imaginary windmills here. I never said Musk is acting on behalf of LGBT.
Look, learn to read FFS. This is a subthread where parent claims Musk is anti-LGBT based on the flag in the picture. Which has to be `(anyone who disapproves flag -> anti-LGBT) and (Musk is anyone) -> Musk is anti-LGBT`. And I am proving this sentence false from `(any LGBT is pro-LGBT) and (there's at least one L who is LGBT and who disaprroves the flag)` which contradicts the above statement rendering the argument invalid, specifically `anyone who disapproves flag -> anti-LGBT` part. Therefore the picture does not show Musk is anti-LGBT, at least not via the flag reasoning.
I responded to the specific claim. You are talking about something entirely different, generalizing a lot, and equating individual policy preferences with giant groups of people.
The claim I responded to was a BS. The way you argue is a BS. If "the fucking news" are doing the same, then they are also BS, and I'd rather read sources recommended by people who actually understand what's written rather than read what they want to see between the lines.
Are you saying the drugs issue is not a "conservative grievance regarding the culture wars of late"?
This goes directly against "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. "
> You are entirely not credible.
That's just a personal attack again.
I didn't stick with an easier plausible interpretation. Both of your interpretations are clear nonsense and you are not credible because you keep making completely baseless, specious arguments. If you find that offensive, stop making these kinds of arguments.
Just for you I googled up the top conservative reddit, and scanned it for topics until I hit vaccines or drugs, and drugs came up first.
I searched using this phrase and received lots of very interesting results that are in the affirmative, with lots of references from historians. I cannot rate the responses myself, nor the historians, as I am not an expert in the topic but it would seem that the topic is not settled.
I'll certainly enjoy taking a look into it and seeing what I think at the end of it.
That and Elon has recently reassured his shareholders twice that he wouldn't sell and then proceeded to sell billions.
Elon Musk’s Twitter obsession isn’t the core reason for Tesla stock’s plunge
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/12/23/investing/elon-musk-tesla...
Now with no direction of Twitter, fumbling features and losing customers and users, the "product genius" fell apart.
1) does anyone else have the battery and EV production capacity of Tesla? Maybe some Chinese makers ... maybe?
2) are they releasing new models and continuing to scale production? Yes.
3) is the exigent need of electrifying transportation still at red alert klaxon level? Oh yes.
4) does anyone else have as good a drivetrain tech yet? Not really, the lead is likely shrinking rapidly.
The fact that twitter is impacting a company in an almost totally unrelated industrial area shows that there is massive irrationalism around Tesla.
I'm still committed to getting an electric car as my next purchase and am slightly disappointed to take the Model 3 off the table but there are good options if you don't mind waiting.
Are you kidding? he's legitimately full on aggressive to them with his tweets and retweets. the entire cruelty about pronouns is so baseless it's almost unimaginable. say you were born larry but you didn't like that name so you decided james fit you better so you ask people to call you james. that's it. I don't want to be called larry so call me james because that fits my internal idea of myself more. it's easy just call people what they want to be called. you can call them whatever you want but you're an asshole if you are calling them a different name than what they want to be called and have asked you to. and this isn't even "they are going to ostracize me if i mess it up once" kinda thing... they are aware that people get it wrong just like people getting your name wrong. this is about being deliberately cruel to people you don't think matter. it's absurd.
Tesla was already over-priced on any basic metric. Elon is a phenomenal operator, regardless of whether you like his tweets or not. And if you follow the media coverage of any public figure on how you're "supposed" to think about them, I would recommend taking a breather and re-evaluating to whom you give root access to your mind to.
There are no excuses for idolizing humans, the folly is my own, he is just a man after all..
And you can feel better in knowing that he is not the brain behind any of the technology that SpaceX has created.
I have worked at companies that had a similar personality to Elmo's (though not to his level) working in a C-suit role. They are the hype machines that land contracts for the companies, or attract investors, nothing more.
Definitely affects mine, I'd buy literally any other electric car now.
But... Tesla had a ridiculous valuation anyways compared to profits. They were always a long gamble for anyone with money. Given bonds are more attractive now, makes sense it'd tank.
Why would Elon care about his and Tesla's brands in red states? Well, it seems Tesla has pretty much saturated the tech-forward, eco-friendly, upper-middle-class car buying demographic. Everyone in SV/CA that was gonna buy a Tesla has already bought one. Time to find new markets: red states.
Red states have generally had a very low opinion of EVs. Elon is just trying to sell the sizzle, not the steak. He could promote all the cool tech of Tesla vehicles, but it would generally fall on deaf ears. Coal rollers don't care about battery tech, but they do care about owning the libs, and Elon's their guy now.
Furthermore, Tesla's Cybertruck is gonna ship eventually, and its destiny is Trump Country. The bulletproof panels, unbreakable glass and ginormous size are all features that resonate in red states. I'm sure many Cybertruck owners will utilize all the cool features, but I'm guessing that most just want attention, just like those obnoxious Hummer H2 owners from 20 years ago. Then there's the Tesla Semi that will need to be at least accepted in red states in order to be successful.
And that's just cars/trucks. Tesla is also expanding its power grids, and I think Elon views red states like Texas and Florida as integral to this. Red state governments will be a lot more receptive to Tesla's power grids if Elon is already considered political gold. There's a lot of opportunity in Texas, and I think Elon wants to get to the front of the line.
And lastly, I think the icing on the cake for Elon is replacing Trump as the King Of Owning The Libs, effectively neutralizing Trump's greatest strength, making him seem old and lame. My understanding is that Elon butted heads with Trump when he was president, and now he's doing everything he can to keep Trump out of the White House, either hoping to get a more friendly Administration or simply to get back at Trump.
Or, then again, maybe Elon's just a jerk with a bunch of money.
Any normal CEO would've had a big discussion with his supervisory board if he damaged his companies' brand like this in Twitter.
The fact that he seemingly doesn't have any accountability on it worries me the most.
If we want another chaos agent in charge we should elect them democratically.
It’s like the panel gaps on Tesla cars. Yes, they exist. Yes, they could indicate worse QA issues with the car. But for most part, this is something that only bothers car reviewers. Ordinary consumers don’t notice it and still buy Teslas thinking they’re quality cars.
Ultimately, what impacts Teslas sales isn’t his cruelty of the last few months. It’s something much more mundane - other manufacturers make decent electric cars now. And their charging infra is comparable to Tesla’s.
(27 out of 28 reliability report)
But it is incomprehensible to imagine having double-digit BILLIONS cash in the bank, not on paper, in hand, and doing what he did to twitter?
It would be like the President of the United States daily tweeting insane petty crass things.
He obviously had competent people running SpaceX, Tesla, because all those products are too technical for him to be in charge exclusively.
But with twitter nope nope, it was an ego trip, hitting every branch on the way down.
I cannot comprehend having that much comfort in life and THAT is what you do with your time.
Each state in the US has a billionaire but most names are unknown. Not him.
5 Years TSLA: 425.53% GM: -18.71% FORD: -10.33% STLA: -21.52%
https://www.marketscreener.com/quote/index/DOW-JONES-US-AUTO...
Tesla's is still clearly the worst, at -69%, but Ford and GM have -45 and -43% respectively. If it's market-cap weighted (I can't tell at a glance), TSLA will have outsized influence, at a current market cap of $344B vs Ford and GM at $45B and $47B, and those three together being about 90% of the index's market cap.
Only three components of it are up for the year.
GM down 42% Past year
Ford (F) down 46% Past Year
Chrysler/Jeep (Stellantis) down 26% Past Year
Toyota (TM) down 27% Past year
Mercedes (MGGYY) down 31% Past Year
Lucid Group (LCID) down 84% Past Year
Nissan (NSANY) Down 36% Past Year
Tesla (TSLA) Down 71% Past Year
Honda (HMC) Down 18% Past Year
Volkswagon (VWAGY) Down 48% Past Year
BMW (BMWYY) down 13% Past YearAlso, Tesla went up a lot. It seems only fair to also compare the upward trend like saying from 2020pr 2019 or something.
Every company is up infinitely from its founding. The implied question is how Tesla is faring in the current market, and how it is weathering Musk’s recent travails. Neither of those defend a 2019 starting point.
For example, PayPal and Square are down 64% ytd. Is it because their CEOs go mental on social media too?
No, but it means there are firm-specific factors driving their value down faster than their benchmarks. We can’t answer why it’s happening. But we can say it’s abnormal.
But, for some reason nobody mentions this, They all point to Musk + Twitter instead.
Another counter evidence: Musk accused British diver of being a pedophile. You would think nobody would want to associate themselves with people who falsely accused other people with pedophilia, right?
Then, the stock went up 40x.
If it had any impact, it shouldn't have been 40x. I doubt Musk's erratic behavior impacts the stock price that much.
My comment above compares the change in price to other car companies because that is really what makes sense right?
Tesla went up 40x but other car companies went up 2x at best.
Tesla was overvalued like other tech companies. It is actually the most overvalued tech stock. It going down like other tech stocks seems sensible. Going up a lot -> going down a lot.
Also, I provided an example how musk's erratic behaviour didn't impact stock price.
But you didn't actually provide any comparable example. You just kinda declared that musk's behaviour impacted stock price...
By cherry picking
A down 10%
B down 90%
If B is 50% of the market, the market is down by like... 50%
You can construct practically any total within the extrema if you use the right weights.
And if you're at the point where you have some "extra" savings that you want to take out of a CD or savings account and put into a fund of some sort, reading the various fund manager reports on different funds is endlessly entertaining in how they "hide the sausage" as one does.
All that said, it seems a fair question is this; "Over the last 12 months, how has the stock price of companies that primarily make cars changed?" And the answer to that is that they have all gone down somewhat, some more than others. Interesting to me that BMW was the least affected and Lucid the most. I don't have many car stocks in my portfolio. I did add some when people were paying more to buy back used cars than they sold them for because that suggested to me they would have an uptick when the supply chain bounced back, and I do have Honda (long) since I've always admired the company's management. Other than that though, I got out mid last year (summer '21).
Toyota's market cap is 180b
Ford/GM/BMW/Honda's are around 50b
Tesla has 350b market cap now. About equal to all the ones I listed above.
It'd have an outsized affect plummeting from over 1 trillion a year ago to 350 billion now.
For example, supporting old models, maintaining inventories of available parts, complying with new regulations, labor issues and unionization, dependence on commodity input costs, environmental issues in production, risk of lawsuits as a result of accidents. Risk of lawsuits over dealership relations and bypassing local laws. Risk of lawsuits over "fully self-driving" marketing. Geopolitical risks with factories in China. Competitive risks from Chinese EV producers.
If I were to hazard a guess, I'd say too many investors are treating it as a tech stock rather than as a manufacturing company, and they don't understand that there are solid reasons why manufacturing companies tend not to do well in the U.S., and aren't able to defend high operating margins nearly as well as tech companies. At least no one has managed to explain to me why Tesla should succeed in maintaining high margins for domestic auto manufacturing when so many others have failed.
This makes me really sad because I used to admire Elon for being a CEO that really understood the technology that his companies create.
Most of the market is down, outside of energy and defense sectors. Tech and tech related things have taken a massive hit. Tesla was massively overvalued on future sales. Given we going to a recession predicted as hard landing, its within reason this stock drops and more than Toyota, honda etc
But sure, Tesla is suffering because elon is too focused on Twitter.
feels more to me like corporate news media and progressive allies have a fight with elon. they wanted him to close the Twitter deal, then they were upset elon got rid of the woke crowd running the company. now now i keep hearing Twitter is about to collapse and Tesla is collapsing, all because of elon.
i don’t buy this narrative. Nope. and from the corporate news media reports, i had a fairly negative perception of this guy until i saw his interviews and on some podcasts. he’s brash but ultimately he threatens publishing industry with what he might do at Twitter. corporate media fears him and almost has a 24/7 section devoted to him and his companies, just to get ahead in case he knives them like trump did.
The fact that it feels this way to you is exactly the problem. It's pointless to politicize a car company but that's what Musk has gone ahead and done. It's not helping Tesla's stock price and it's not helping Tesla sell cars.
> they wanted him to close the Twitter deal
Musk signed a binding agreement to buy Twitter and then spent six months trying to back out of the deal. When Musk realized a contract is a contract and he wasn't going to win in court, he finally closed the deal.
No one has done this to him. He did it to himself.
done what exactly to himself?
hes still one of the wealthiest people on the planet. he could literally shutdown Twitter tomorrow and the people who’d cry the hardest are the ones cheering for twitters collapse, on Twitter, who refuse to leave.
elon is still running spacex, Twitter, and boring company. if he lost every dime and every company, he’d get the Silicon Valley vc funding, even in this economic climate, to go do the next thing.
one thing elon has done he doesn’t get credit for is ripping the mask off this massive grift in the tech industry. With over half of the Twitter workforce gone, the site runs just fine. what exactly were these people doing? in fact, they had little to no productive output of course with exception of their culture war/far left battles they were fighting in cahoots with government.
i digress but this grift is widespread across google, meta, amazon.. all big tech. class of professional managers and a propped up elite who produce little economic output. 20% of the biz drives bottom line for the other 80%’s empire building, territorial wars, and bloated bureaucratic nonsense.
no one wants to come out and say it in fear of attacks from the corporate media, but these execs are taking note from what Elon just pulled off, in big tech and Silicon Valley vc backed companies alike
Bought Twitter, made himself look foolish doing it, and continues to make himself look foolish in the running of it.
to who? you? corporate media? this is nothing personal but do you honestly believe musk cares about how you or the corporate media portrays him? that it clouds his mind in the morning “oh no, I look like a fool?”
Are we talking about musk, whose resume includes spacex, tesla, boring company, paypal? Are you sure we’re not talking about kim kardashian?
The guy has money and influence at the .1% but it’s the fear of “looking” like a fool?
Yes. He desperately craves the attention and most especially the adulation. It's sad.
you must need a few support staff which you can hire contractors for to keep things like OS and other software dependencies patched with latest updates.. and if u using third party cloud, depending on abstraction you get this taken care of as part of the package.
His plan was not to keep it running with skeleton crew.
While that's true, if you look at S&P 500, or even just a bunch of tech stocks like GOOG or MSFT, it's pretty clear Tesla is doing much worse still.
Certainly much worse, all since November.
Unlike some other companies, Tesla was significantly overvalued to begin with. i think even elon joked as much himself. they never an energy/battery company first and they dont know how to fit and finish. none of this regressed in the last year.
These numbers seem to directly contradict your thesis that TSLA decline is just a consequence of the tech market decline, given that the second bigger loss during last month was 4 times less in percentage compared to TSLA.
That is some crazy growth still.
Assuming we're on the cusp of a global electrification of transportation, we should be looking at exponential growth. 54%->37% is the opposite of that.
And you can get an EV from any manufacturer these days, so I'd still consider double digit growth pretty incredible.
Azure had 33% growth a couple of quarters ago and financial analysts acted like they are on the verge of collapse.
If the argument is about Tesla stock was worth that because of future expectations, then this fall can just be equally described as based on future expectations. Tesla still has a 33.7 P/E ratio, it could still fall another 50% again before the valuation is "worth it" depending on what metric you personally decide to base your investments.
It's still a good market to be producing batteries and electrical vehicles in. Tesla is still a market leader in that market. They've got production capacity, supply chains, etc. working just fine with more capacity coming online. It's still growth market. Nothing has changed really other than people's perceptions. And those can change again.
It does raise the question: why are people selling shares at a loss? Who are these people? Why are they panicking so much that they'll take the loss? It's not very rational behavior. Which suggests an answer that maybe there are some people with a financial interest in this manipulating the markets.
Either way, I expect Elon Musk might be buying some shares back at a discount just to make a point. There has been talk of buying back shares by Tesla in any case so there is plenty of support for that among share holders. At the current prices of the shares, that might actually not be the worst way to spend a few billion. And slightly evil of Elon Musk as well. So, entirely in character. Sell shares to buy Twitter, cause chaos there, watch Tesla's stock price collapse, buy back some Tesla shares at a discount, stock price goes back up again and Tesla continues making money and growing like nothing happened. Win win. Maybe Twitter survives all this. Maybe it won't. But does it matter if he comes out making a profit?
Of course, the pile could also have been used to drive tech advancement. Yea, that'd been nice. Humanity might have gotten more out of it that way.
Some interesting times ahead if we start seeing some mass sell-offs triggered.
Tesla's FSD was obviously anything but; Tesla could have never gotten most of the EV market, unavoidable production limits made sure of that even before considering Tesla's patent stance (of not holding EV patents). However, many investors actually held Tesla as an 'ethical' climate-based contribution and never cared that much about profitability or hype or value. Musk was useful in promoting the brand by keeping it in the spotlight.
Now, with other carmakers finally entering EV in force + Musk being, well, Musk, this contribution factor will strongly reduce. The risk now is overcorrection in the other direction - Tesla is too firmly established to go away.
We like to construct simple narratives in which causes are few and their effects are clear. The real world is far messier than our stories about it. Perhaps Elon's actions at Twitter have played a factor here but to pretend that that is the sole (or even primary) cause would require some greater evidence than anecdotes of users who changed their minds about buying a Tesla.
It would be great to see some debate about this story in the spirit of traders discussing the merits of the business rather than a fans-vs-haters style discussion about Elon.
I would be worried more about USA turning the screw. Elon is extremely close and exposed to their biggest adversary, China. I’m actually surprised he wasn’t forced out of spacex by the military by now.
I don't think that to be true on the middle to long term, things would just settle into a nice local maximum for SpaceX/Tesla as companies but most of the real innovation would be gone for good. Just look at Apple, they're a nice $2 trillion company but they've got nothing Earth-shattering since Jobs has been gone.
To put it another way, without Musk there would have been no Starlink, which is an Earth-shattering thing in its own way (satellite internet for the masses is Earth-shattering). Without Starlink being possible the West wouldn't have had the same military results on the war front against Russia as it now has. Move Musk aside and who will come with the next Starlink?
Later edit: Speaking of the car industry and its strategic value, we all know at this point that Henry Ford was literally a Nazi sympathiser and a Hitler groupie. That didn't stop him from doing business with Stalin's USSR since early in 1929, when the US hadn't established diplomatic relations with the Soviets just yet.
If it hadn't been for Ford and for the American vehicles Stalin and USSR would have found it next to impossible to defeat Hitler and the Nazis a decade later. Stalin himself praised Henry Ford in 1944, i.e. after Ford's direct contacts with the Nazis in the late 1930s.
> Stalin wrote to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, calling Henry Ford “one of the world’s greatest industrialists” and expressing the hope that “may God preserve him.”
In other words, without the help of Nazi-loving Henry Ford most probably the Nazis wouldn't have been defeated.
Like I said, hopefully there are still some cooler heads in the Pentagon who try to look at the middle to long term and try not to be influenced by the latest ideological scandals.
[1] https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/ford-signs-agree...
How all masses including journalists missed this is beyond me
The opportunity is there. The future will tell how many of Musk's recent decisions were clever.
There may be a political aspect to it, but the way I look at it is that he's an ordinary fallible human. We all know people who would make a big mess of things if they took Musk's place, but we don't usually worry about them all that much (except maybe on their behalf) because their ability to help or harm other people is limited.
This kind of snark is uncalled for in a purportedly serious domain like financial journalism.