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Comment by greenmilk | Hacker News Reader

Hertz infamously came out of bankruptcy guns-blazing and purchased 100k cars for $4.2 billion and helped drive Tesla's market cap above $1 trillion in 2021

By 2024 they had begun dumping the EVs and reported a $2Bn loss as a result.[0]

The HTZ stock price has fallen 90%.[1]

Somehow TSLA is still trading in the neighborhood of that 2021 peak. Currently trading at a PE ratio of over 300, despite declining revenues[2].

Really wish I understood the Elon Musk voodoo.

[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2024/01/14/hertz-makes-agile-decision-t...

[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/HTZ/

[2] https://stockanalysis.com/stocks/tsla/revenue/

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He's an effective conman for those with money that needs investing. His track record is objectively bad[0] and that doesn't matter as long as he can say the right thing at the right time to keep the stock high and his investors happy and believing that the breakthrough is just around the corner.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_predictions_for_autono...

Many of his investors probably understand that they're holding a bunch of very expensive tulip bulbs but the opportunity to profit off of the greater fool is too great to ignore as long as they don't mistime the peak. With the amount of loose money sloshing around the global economy, he can probably continue riding this wave until some black swan event forces everyone to confront reality.

I think that's a pretty fair take on the situation overall. There is the potential of a merger between Tesla and SpaceX which might help him paper over the short-term issues Tesla is facing around deliveries, largely due to the public backlash around his political medling and DOGE.

Plenty of people have gotten rich buying Tesla stock.

Right, that's the point. It doesn't matter if he delivers on his promises as long as people believe he will eventually and the stock goes up. People have also made money investing in Ponzi schemes but they're still Ponzi schemes.

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