I bought BYD stock in 2025 before split in the hope that their market dominance will translate to great returns. The stock has pretty consistently traded down since then. Meanwhile Tesla stock soared purely on the air coming out of Elon’s mouth.
Even all of that aside, the idea that foreign investors will be allowed to meaningfully participate in the upside of Chinese companies is questionable. Every Chinese company is one recapitalization away from zeroing out the common stock owned by foreigners. What are they gonna do, sue in Chinese court?
> The filing by Berkshire’s energy subsidiary recorded the value of its BYD investment as zero as of the end of March, down from $415 million at the end of 2024.
> Buffett’s company began investing in Shenzhen-based BYD in 2008, when it paid $230 million for about 225 million shares, equivalent to a 10% stake at the time.
> It began selling those shares in 2022 after BYD’s share price had risen more than twentyfold.
Warren Buffett’s fund exits BYD after a 17-year investment that grew over 20-fold in value - https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/22/investing/warren-buffet-berks... - September 22nd, 2025
BYD is at heart an automobile manufacturer and so maybe he felt more confident evaluating it using his normal tools.
Buffett didn't love automobile stocks either, but Berkshire Hathaway held General Motors from 2012 to 2023.
I think he said something about equivalent of selling shovels to miners in a boom, that PV was going to need storage etc.
But in practice, wouldn't such an event on X large Chinese company have a cascade effect on stock values of all other Chinese companies?
They have precedence for cutting down their tech giants and their tuition industry recently.
> tuition industry
Domestic trade doesn't really factor in here.
If your hypothetical happens, yes. China has been working hard to turn domestic investment away from housing. A trustworthy domestic stock market is key.
* The Shanghai and Hong Kong stock market seems to have improved regulatory enforcement. I have no way of measuring this...just stories from others.
* Over the past 10 years the China gov pressed on with building more housing in part to dilute value. Each year they have warned that houses are for living, not speculation. Last year, they dumped a huge amount of cheap lending into the market to provide movement...warning this is the last step...a month ago the 2026 gov priorities list removed protecting the housing market...first time in modern history. Expectation is the next two years will see realized losses in property. It would be a huge mistake if the gov hasn't ensured regulatory enforcement of other segments have not reached maturity for the retail investor. We'll see...
* As for civil courts, over the past 20 years I've run into quite a few stories from friends and business colleagues that needed to go to China court. The stories are similar to what you may hear in the US. No one suggested the court/process itself was dodgy/unfair.
for civil disputes, i am sure they are.
For disputes between the gov't and you, i highly doubt it. Is there a single instance of the gov't being sued for a policy that was meant to be political in nature affecting the supplicant?
Even someone like jack ma is unable to use the courts to obtain any justice - his Ant Financials IPO was shut down for political reasons, and he was reeducated. There's no such thing as due process in china.
Name me a single country where a rich person goes against the government and wins? You just don’t see it happen much in the US because the government is run by rich capitalists, but pretty much every country is the same.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/mar/06/isds-fea...
China is just big enough to be able to ignore these global orgs.
"Law and order" is not equal to "the rule of law". Both China and the US ascribe to the idea of "might makes right", which is in essence an organized form of lawless state. It is conceptually the same as in criminal gangs, only with vastly better optics. That is why anyone not in power should strive for a rules-based order, for their own best interest at least.
Neither place the rights of their citizens in much regard, though money definitely helps in both places.
The possible outcomes for individuals in China though are Orwellian.
https://www.nzz.ch/english/why-george-orwells-1984-is-so-pop...
China has been disappearing people for dissent for decades. Whether Trump is the start of a similar regime, I guess we'll have to wait and see...
Like that I'm American, or not Chinese. Or that you giving your 50 cents isn't transparent.
It is a matter of degrees. The harder it is for a poor individual to be done justice against the government, the weaker the rule of law. On a tangent, parties that play the horn about "law and order" usually mean "rules for thee but not for me".
It just so happens that most western “democracies” are run by rich people, so they can avoid all that unpleasant business by just running the government in the first place.
E.g.
Broniowski v. Poland (ECtHR, 2004)
Doğan and Others v. Turkey (ECtHR, 2004)
Hirst v. United Kingdom (No. 2) (ECtHR, 2005)
Scoppola v. Italy (No. 3) (ECtHR, 2012)
KlimaSeniorinnen v. Switzerland (ECtHR, 2024)
These judgments show that individuals and civil society groups can hold European states accountable for violations involving property, voting, asylum, climate, and broader rule‑of‑law issues.
They often lead to legislative change, financial compensation, or policy reversal, and many are used as precedent by lawyers and activists in new cases across Europe.
I will admit that my original statement lacks nuance, which makes it easy to nitpick.
Having read some of your cases though, a pattern emerged: it’s usually supra national organizations adjudicating these cases, and the nations are not bound by the rulings.
For example, in Hirst vs UK it was ruled that it’s a violation of human rights to deny prisoners the vote, and yet the UK government deliberately ignored that ruling and as a result prisoners still can’t vote in the UK. Not to mention that when this case was brought up in a UK court it was dismissed.
There are numerous examples of citizens winning court cases against the government.
Take the just the uk, three examples:
Anti‑protest regulations (Liberty v Home Secretary)
Air pollution litigation (ClientEarth v UK Government)
Rwanda asylum plan (AAA & Others v Secretary of State
Windrush - Members of the Windrush have repeatedly challenged the Home Office over wrongful detention, removal, and denial of rights, leading to government admissions of unlawfulness and an official apology in 2018.
Your claim is false. The world is not the same the world over, civil liberties are better in some places than in others.
Prisoners still can’t vote, people are getting arrested for peacefully protesting holding signs, and the Rwanda ruling was overruled by parliament and the only reason the plan was stopped is because the PM changed.
People have been arrested for peacefully holding signs, but they haven't just permanently disappeared.
I'm bored. The grey has shades, only children see in black and white.
Perhaps one of a few genuinely positive policies which only China can do. Meanwhile western countries will rather stab their economies to death than accept even just stagnating real estate prices.
Not sure where this is coming from. The EU recently just won a WTO dispute[1] against China that prohibited patent holders (often EU companies) from pursuing or enforcing patent infringement cases in non-Chinese courts -- it violated several provisions of the WTO's Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement), including Articles 1.1, 28.1, and 28.2.
Foreigners generally view the Chinese court system with significant skepticism, primarily due to a perceived lack of judicial independence from the ruling Communist Party (CCP), opacity, and the use of the judiciary to serve political goals.
1. DS611: China – Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights
Nonsense.
Total Retail Sales of Consumer Goods went up 4.6% in the first 11 months of 2025. That is the number with spending on automobiles excluded. A total of 24 million cars were sold in China in 2025 with vast majority being Chinese brands. If 24 million car purchases a year is "aren't buying their own products", then car industry doesn't exist in the US.
See TikTok as an example.
This in no way addresses the accusation that Teslas valuation is built on nothing. BYD also has self driving software. So what exactly does Tesla have that is not cars and batteries?
The ludicrous humanoid robots with dubious use cases? That’s not it either because the stock was absurdly high before that was a thing.
I have never seen a better example of how arbitrary and irrational markets are than Teslas valuation.
There's been a lot written about China's "Fiscal Federalism"
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01475...
> How they do financial bailouts by printing their own debt-free money [...]
What do you mean by that?
> [...] and having fine-grained control of the banking system is also something that the west doesn't do.
Giving bureaucrats even more levers to pick winners badly isn't a good idea. There's a reason China isn't as rich as the west.
[1] https://www.rba.gov.au/publications/bulletin/2024/apr/chinas... [2] https://newbagehot.yale.edu/docs/china-1999-asset-management...
I have no doubt the same will happen with EVs. But that's another reason to hold off on investing in any specific Chinese company rn.
In the US you usually have 2-3 giant companies who are pets of the federal government and get tax breaks and subsidies if they make 'jobs' in particular states, particularly where useful congressmen live. It's a far more centralized market even though it has little direct government capital investment.
Old legacy companies being propped up in the name of national interests while they slowly become more and more detached from the global market.
On top of that China allowed heavy investment in infrastructure and real estate instead of interfering in it, so everything from property to energy costs are cheaper. Making cost of doing business cheaper.
A competitive market destroys revenue potential, essentially forcing companies to constantly reduce margins or innovate. Both of which are very good for the consumer, but these companies need to run harder to stay in the same place.
I've heard that for example, NIO is facing fiscal troubles, since their business model was that they sell somewhat nicer cars for more money, however everything they come out with tends to be quickly incorporated by the competition at a lower price point.
US capital is the completely dominant center of global capital and it will be so for decades to come. Ultimately this will flip too as China becomes the global economic center but I am not quite sure what it will look like and I don't assume the process of capital allocation will be exactly the same as it is today in the US-system (there may be more state directed investment, more bank lending, perhaps less public speculation, or even novel financial structures).
That said - Chinese stocks had a good year in 2025 and are currently on a run - and there is certainly a lot of value there.
> Part of the reason that China’s stock market trends sideways is that everyone’s profits are competed away. Big Tech might enjoy the monopolistic success smiled upon by Peter Thiel, coming almost to genteel agreements not to tread too hard upon each other’s business lines. Chinese firms have to fight it out in a rough-and-tumble environment, expanding all the time into each other’s core businesses, taking Jeff “your margin is my opportunity” Bezos with seriousness.
https://www.investasian.com/stock-market/hong-kong-brokerage...
But as another comment pointed out, they have tons of debt, and TFA states that their "revised" target was revised downward, meaning earlier stock valuations were priced for higher sales.
There is less hype and they are also not affected as much as US if stock goes down or stays flat.
If you just want to invest money, there is real estate or investing in a family member’s business. Pensions and other institutions in need of safe (in aggregate) investments won’t go near the SSE yet.
China is doing more things right but still has a long way to go on other things.
What does that mean?
Insider trading is good for the function of the market: it makes sure information is reflected in prices sooner, benefiting the general public.
> Like, you could wager some money on a mahjong game, or you could blindly pick a stock and hope you can get some money by riding in the wake of a connected insider trader.
If you are a clueless retail investor, buy a low cost index fund. Why would you be picking stocks?
Current insider trading laws are about _preventing_ it (but it still happens). This makes it so that insiders who do trade and get away with it make bank, but this does little to benefit the over all market information equilibrium.
What needs to make insider trading "good" (instead of bad), is to make the insider's trades 100% transparent and instant (instead of the months of SEC filing currently needed before it becomes public info). Doing this will ensure that insider's trades immediately gets reflected and copied/arbitraged against, and will allow the price of a stock to reflect information not yet released but is acted upon by insiders.
In any case, I'm not making some innovative new argument or hot take. This is pretty standard, orthodox academic stuff. See eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insider_trading#Arguments_for_...
What's an Epstein? Is that some other company you don't like?
When Warren Buffett decides that he wants to buy stock in a company, he knows that if this became public, the target company's stock would go up. Nevertheless, he's allowed to trade on this insider information (about himself!) without informing the general public first.
> You need to take your insider trading again (every bigcorp makes you do it) and learn what insider trading actually is, and why it is illegal, and why you’ll probably get caught. I’ve heard too many sad stories where immigrants from a country with looser laws came to the USA for very high paying tech jobs, and throw them away for just $100k of insider trading gains.
That's true but also entirely irrelevant to my point: in these cases the company does not consent to the employee using the information. And, yes, that's illegal.
Insider trading law in the US is about breaching fiduciary duty. If the company consents, there's no fiduciary duty that was broken. (But the conditions are more complicated. So let's go with the simpler example of a company trading on its own secret, insider information.
It's a fun little legal Gedankenexperiment to craft the conditions that make what would otherwise be insider trading legal in the US. But as you suggest, it's not very relevant in practice, because they all require the company's consent, which you normally don't get. Matt Levine sometimes likes to write about these sorts of things in his 'Money Stuff' newsletter.)
Don't know how you got this from Matt Levine. Isn't his catchphrase "Everything is securities fraud"?
No, no, you can still construct scenarios where it's legal. But yes, buybacks are especially heavily regulated. And yes, you have a fiduciary duty to shareholders. (But not to the 'integrity of the market'. There might be some duties and vague laws there, but it's not a fiduciary duty.)
In any case, what specifically are you referring to that's "clearly not true" in my comment? I constructed some examples that deliberately avoid a company (or an employee of said company) buying their own stock.
> Don't know how you got this from Matt Levine. Isn't his catchphrase "Everything is securities fraud"?
He has more than one catch phrase. The relevant one here is that insider trading in American law is about misappropriating information and fiduciary duty. Which he contrasts to French law amongst others, which is about fairness and a level playing field.
However, regulators in the US often want to spin the rules to be about fairness, but courts so far mostly disagree.
One example he brought up was: suppose you work for Bank X and you take the train in the morning to work. You overhear an employee of Bank Y talking about some deal on the phone (and that other guy doesn't notice you). You have no fiduciary duty to Bank Y.
By French law, you couldn't trade on the information you gained.
But by American (and UK law, where the example was from) your fiduciary duty to your employer, Bank X, might even compel you to use the information to their advantage. Especially if you were on company time when you overheard the conversation.
The company ultimately being the shareholders. Hard to imagine a scenario where allowing an employee to trade on insider information would benefit the shareholders.
Paying people in secrets isn't different in principle, only in degree.
However I agree that the scenarios where this would be useful to shareholders would be a bit weird, but it's just a Gedankenexperiment where we assume that for some reason the shareholders already think this is a good idea.
> When Warren Buffett decides that he wants to buy stock in a company, he knows that if this became public, the target company's stock would go up.
Warren Buffett is not a publicly traded company, and in this hypothetical he is buying stock in another company, which (by assumption) he has no insider information about.
> Insider trading law in the US is about breaching fiduciary duty.
This is false. It's about protecting traders. This is why it applies specifically to publicly traded companies. If it was about protecting shareholders (from what?) then it would apply to all companies.
No, that's not true in US law. It doesn't have to be the stock of the company you work for to get you into insider trading trouble.
> Warren Buffett is not a publicly traded company, and in this hypothetical he is buying stock in another company, which (by assumption) he has no insider information about.
Well, that's why your definition is wrong.
> If it was about protecting shareholders (from what?) then it would apply to all companies.
Huh, what? You don't have a fiduciary duty to people you don't work for.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insider_trading#Misappropriati...
Well, there you go. Any more questions?
Trading while having more information than someone else is perfectly legal.
From the NA vehicle POV it doesn't look healthy. Stocks of the major auto makers have done well this year, while product gets more and more expensive and limited. Barely seems possible to buy anything but a F150like anymore.
https://gfmag.com/data/economic-freedom-by-country/
If the broader market is rigged, investors don’t rush in for just one segment.
> Twelve are the factors related to four key aspects of the economic environment that are graded from 0 to 100 and averaged to determine a country’s score: rule of law (and related sub-categories: property rights, government integrity, judicial effectiveness); government size (government spending, tax burden, fiscal health); regulatory efficiency (business, labor and monetary freedom); open markets (trade, investment and financial freedom).
Quite the definition they made up.
why bother to read past that? save yourself some time.
The US allows much more tax dodging than Singapore, for example. Try not paying your taxes or violating any other law in Singapore any time, if you want to find out.
The US also heavily subsidizes EVs but the subsidies mostly only go to one company. Just take a look at the mind-boggling amount of subsidies we've given to Tesla both federally and on a state-by-state basis. Nevada's almost 2$ billion being the most blatant https://subsidytracker.goodjobsfirst.org/parent/tesla-inc
China and Chinese companies still want to shake off the "China means bad quality" image, so they actually want to make a great product at a good price for the consumer. To-the-moon share price growth doesn't happen by giving your customers a good deal.
Also the CCP doesn't want corporations forgetting who calls the shots, so there is some internal pressure keeping things less "frothy" than Western markets (where most governments are running scared of the big global corps).
Maybe that's why they behave differently?
Also, their market position has already been factored in by market participants with multiple orders of magnitude greater capital and access to information about the company than you do. Thats not to say the market valuation is accurate, but it does mean that you guessing which way the market has mis-valued the stock is a coin flip.
Tesla is also not very transparent so it's hard to cite statistics but a recent study found that Tesla had the highest rate of fatal accidents of any brand in the US
You bought BYD after it had been hyped to the moon. Of course the price doesn’t move when it meets sales expectations.
stocks and the whole money-as-a-business is US thing - making actual product is the China thing
> "11 out of 17 listed Chinese automakers were profitable."
> "93 of 169 automakers operating in China have market shares below 0.1%."
https://nypost.com/2025/12/31/tech/tesla-owner-completes-fir...
https://www.reddit.com/r/SelfDrivingCars/comments/1pmnilm/se...
There is still the law suite about FSD and the old hardware.
There is still Elon the hitler Musk Oligarch who wielded a chainsaw.
There were plenty of FSD videos last year and the year before showing that FSD is working. The question is still, is it working good enough, and what will be the business of a robotaxi.
The Taxi market overall is not that big, competition is hard and the most critical thing is peak demand.
In parallel random people believe tesla will wipe out the whole taxi industry + private cars tomorrow. Ignoring competition and everything else.
Aaand as an edit: When it finally works, people will tell you "told you so look at it, FSD works" yeah really? Of course it works but it was promised from Musk that 2020 all these Teslas will drive autonomsly. Its 2026
It's partially about fully automated cars, but that's barely started. IMO, it's more about them as ADAS now.
And it's not just about whether anyone else will catch up in terms of automation/ADAS, it's about whether anyone else will catch up in terms of manufacturing+automation/ADAS.
Edit- And yes, Elon acting like that doesn't help, but Tesla isn't Elon.
And there has never been a person like Elon, interfering in german election, USA election etc. and being the posterchild for companies.
In what timeframe did V3 and V4 improved for you? At least for me, even FSD 2023 videos were quite impressive.
Nvidia has its own platform with ML based training. Im pretty sure car companies can and will just use them if necessary. Besides that, left and right other companies are working on it, i saw an xpeng driving autonoms through the city and it worked very well.
Teslas first mover advantage is gone
I think his decisions have been helpful in the past, especially compared to half-hearted attempts at EVs by most of most other large manufacturers, but only time will tell if his current positions will pay off. At least the new compensation is performance based. If he can't deliver, he doesn't get paid.
V3/V4 have significantly improved in the past few months. I use one, the other, or both, daily, more V3 than V4. They are well ahead of where they were in 2023.
I'm sure Nvidia and others will eventually catch up, but they have to catch up in terms of auto manufacturing/use, inference/training/sensor hardware manufacturing/use, fleet training data, etc... simulataneously.
Xpeng driving autonomously is great, and shows they are catching up at least in a specific situation. They may be catching up in the aggregate, they may not be. I agree that a Chinese manufacturer has the best chance to catch up overall.
In general, I think it's about whether a distributed, lower-compute/sensor with higher-data/training approach like Tesla/etc have will beat a more singular, higher-compute/sensor with lower-data/training like Waymo/etc have.
Distributed has been able to offer better ADAS at a lower cost, but singular is winning at fully autonomous driving. If distributed can catch up in terms of autonomous diving while continuing to improve ADAS, distributed is done. I have a hunch that's a part of why there's so much demand for DRAM/etc...
you take Elon out of Tesla and you will end up with Ford, $13-16/share
> At least the new compensation is performance based. If he can't deliver, he doesn't get paid.
Unfortunately, with Elon and TSLA, this is not the case. He just has to promise he will deliver in some imaginary future (as he’s been doing for more than a decade) and he’ll be handsomely rewarded
And Tesla has to hit market cap and operation goals before any stock is awarded to Elon.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/heres-what-elon-musk-needs-to...
If the Market cap isn't there, no stock. If the operational goal isn't there, no stock. They both have to be satisfied for the award.
He might have been able to push prices up to +/-10+% when Tesla was smaller, but I doubt he could even move it 5% these days.
Have they faked their current sales? How are they going to fake future sales?
It's clear you're not a fan of Elon or Tesla, but they'll have plenty of opportunities to mess things up themselves like any other company. There's no need to speculate about trillions in fraud and millions of fake sales.
If they hit the targets, he gets equity, if they don't, he doesn't.
- next time don't just look at stock value and volume. Look at cashflow
- Consider that most investment volume comes from institutional investors in Wall Street, not in China. Even Chinese investment is routed through NY, Singapore, UK, etc, with the slight exception of Hong Kong.
- Consider geopolitics before investing too. Trump really went all-in in tariffs that basically geofence EV business to american brands.
- The hope for BYD is in EU and UK markets. EU has also been extremely harsh to welcoming BYD and protectionist of their (German) auto makers. This hasn't avoided BYD entering the market, but also has stopped them from shipping en masse. Might change.
- BYD is not a competitor to Tesla. BYD market is the low end market mostly. For example, what today in EU is Dacia (1st or 2nd best seller by number of units). Tesla on the other hand is purposely set up as a mid-high seller. It is too expensive for the cheap segment of the market (10-20k) and is well below luxury vehicles. Different market segment, also better margins in that segment.
- Auto industry is cyclical not defensive. In times of economic uncertainty like today, if you want a solid investment you should look at defensive not cyclical.
- Generally it is a bad idea for retailers to invest in Chinese HQed companies due to the complex geopolitics that surrounding the stock. For example, you have severe limitations in stock market products and they have tight regulation, unlike the US where you have a free-market.
- Consider the market of derivatives. Very different market of futures in China vs the US.
- Tesla is also a self-driving company and robotics company. It would be better compared to XPENG than to BYD.
- Tesla owns the EV market in North America. Period. This is the reality today.
- On top of all that yes the stock is hyped up. But you should know that and invest with that in mind. Being full blown rational in an irrational market will not work.
The way this will change is Chinese companies opening factories in the EU. BYD is opening one in Szeged, Hungary soon.
Wrong orifice.
Interesting take there. Tesla Model Y is the #1 best-selling car globally in 2025 for the third year.
Meanwhile, your BYD is bleeding from real price wars and demand slumps. Tesla's valuation? Still baked in autonomy, energy, and AI upside not just car volume. Calling it "air" while hyping your own wishful dominance is nothing but peak projection.
You must be trolling. 'Having seen them up close' isn't a serious basis for an opinion on an any vehicle. Take a proper 24-hour test drive and then talk about build quality.
Tesla valuation is not baked in anything, it's entirely hype about potential, and has absolutely nothing to do with automation, robotics, AI, energy. It is largely betting that Elon Musk will do well, not that Tesla will do well. It might as well just be called EM.
What other EV manufacturers are you even referring here? Do you even know the top 5 EV manufacturers in terms of global sales?
The data you're referring to is from Oct 2025 we're talking about the entire 2025 CY here.
> Overall tesla models looks dated, quality is not great, ongoing safety issue with underwhelming responses, competition on the ev segment is just better on many points now.
That's your uninformed biased opinion. If it were even remotely true, the Model Y will not be the world's best selling car for 3 years in a row. Math and sales numbers don't lie.
> And Tesla’s sales for the year are down for the second year in a row. Hardly a logical reason for the stock to go up.
If the market originally expected and priced in an even bigger decline, the stock would logically go up. Because of all the possible anticipations stock price movements are hard to understand, even in retrospect.
I think its because Elon would continue to be CEO of tesla , Elon is a brand at this point
its well known "brand", Yes there is a lot to hate but you cant ignore his huge follower
I mean Elon can come to Saudi and Saudi can invest in his company because they like him, that is just the way it works
Surely this can't be a serious nor a logical statement so I'll have to assume it's a joke or engagement bait. Here are 3 that I can think off the top of my head.
1. Robotaxi TAM: Tesla's already running unsupervised Robotaxis (no safety driver) in Austin tests as of late 2025, with plans to expand cities in 2026 — that's not vaporware, it's early scaling of high-margin autonomy.
2. Cross-country FSD milestone? Legit: A Tesla owner just nailed 10,000+ intervention-free miles on FSD v14.2 coast-to-coast in Dec 2025, including parking and Supercharging — verified via telemetry.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnLswbNB0SU
3. Model Y #1 for 3rd year? Tesla proudly claimed it in their 2025 recap as of the latest DEC 2025 data.
Stock still up ~11-25% in 2025 despite EV headwinds and ending of EV credits because the market prices in future upside: autonomy software margins, energy storage boom, Optimus, and robotaxi fleets. That's logical valuation, not "no reason."
Dismissing all that while cherry picking doubts is at best nothing but drivel.