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Comment by lotsofpulp | Hacker News Reader

That reasoning would lead to concluding all the businesses in SP500 are traded at 10x their worth on paper. Or at least all the ones with market caps greater than Tesla.

Edit, since I hit posting limit.

To pooper:

> Since it's such a big part of the S&P500

The conclusion is based on that premise, so any other business that satisfies that premise should also lead to the same conclusion.

To llm:

> I think their point is that businesses at the top of the S&P500 are traded at sentiment and momentum based values that are pretty disconnected from a logical P/E

I have read the same about other businesses many times. There is nothing logical about only using P/E as a factor in determining price (or “worth”). No one knows the future, so even a price derived from an arbitrary standard of P/E is a “sentiment and momentum based” value.

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I think their point is that businesses at the top of the S&P500 are traded at sentiment and momentum based values that are pretty disconnected from a logical P/E, which is valid enough. The multiple happens to be 10x in Tesla's case, it's not 10x for all of them (in the case of Saudi Aramco it's probably less than 1x), but it's much less of an informed valuation than the sheer volume of trading would make you think.

Index adda pop and deletes drop in price.

So index membership does change the stock multiple (but not by 10x).

Also, Tesla is an idiosyncratic stock with very high volatility and very high retail participation. Things can be true of Tedla stock which do not have to be true of the median stock.

Can you please elaborate on this? I am unable to follow the logic here.

I'm claiming this based on fundamental analysis of Tesla's sales/net profits/ROIIC and other metrics, which I take from their 13F fillings (AKA quarterly earning reports) compared to other car manufacturers.

Some stocks are overpriced, and others are undervalued. The inclusion in the S&P500 alone is just 1 of the factors.

In my opinion, Apple and NVIDIA are significantly undervalued based on their fundamentals, even though they make up a gigantic % of the SPX.

I understand, and I’m claiming there is no one logical or fundamental way to derive a price.

It could be logical to ascribe some value to a business’s leader having access to a US president known to be “open for business”? And we know a big tax bill is likely to be passed by year’s end.

Perhaps that will lead to good fortunes for Tesla shareholders. Or maybe not.

You can derive the "true price" with a certain probability. Of course, unexpected things can happen, like Musk being assassinated, but the stock market is not completely unpredictable.

And the thing is, I don't have to be right about Tesla because I'm not making a single bet on that company. I'm making hundreds of bets using my methodology, and it's enough that I'm right 50-something% of the time (or even less than 50%, if we're talking Options trading).

That's what the whole stock market game is about. Hence, some investment companies, like Berkshire Hathaway, consistently make more than others over the long term.

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