Some day the shoe is going to go cold and he's going to be fucked. He'll drop off the richest people list faster than he climbed it (which was too fast).
Tesla's valuation is insane, it's great evidence that markets are just kind of broken right now. We could speculate on why, but I decline to do that right now.
It appears to me that he mostly focuses on the fundamentals of his companies, including engaging in braggadocio and performance art to pump interest and keep people thinking about what he's doing. But the point of crap like "full self driving", in my opinion, is to sell Teslas. Pumping Tesla stock is a nice side effect, right up until it isn't.
My point is that if Tesla can get robustly profitable, but the stock declines to some reasonable multiple of actual revenue, Elon would count the negative thirty billion dollars next to his name on the Forbes list as a win.
Once it became clear he'd get nothing more than a slap on the wrist for that stunt they backed off and the hype machine had no counterbalance.
Once the shorts do come back though they will come back with a vengeance.
He's been pretty clear that he thinks shorting, as it works right now, is dirty pool and should be illegal.
I try to stay out of esoteric finance stuff, but it's hard the way the world works these days. I kinda think he has a point about naked shorts, at least, Gamestonk showed everyone an ugly failure mode for that one.
So my take is that the huge Tesla pump was just a side effect, this was Elon taking something personally and wading in like the 800 pound gorilla he is.
No opinion on whether he should have been punished more, or deserved it, I basically don't understand where the boundaries on market manipulation or insider trading or any of those things are really supposed to be. Just moderately confident that he was personally trying to rake short sellers over the coals, not so much moon Tesla stock to an insane valuation.
You're saying he committed securities fraud for a higher moral purpose and you're moderately confident that the fact it led to him briefly becoming the richest man in the world didn't motivate him in any way?
That's quite an interesting claim.
If I could publicly pump and dump something I would also be on a hot streak.
Are we forgetting about the secured funding to take Tesla private tomfoolery.
His level of wealth presently is silly and unsustainable, however SpaceX can probably sustain him on the richest list just fine (takes $20b+ to stay in the top 100, SpaceX can give him that by itself). It would have to RUD for him to fall off, which appears quite unlikely at present. I'd bet against Tesla before I'd bet against SpaceX. There are no serious competitors to SpaceX looking out five years, whereas Tesla has enormous competition coming at them from every angle (not least of which is in China, where they may have already extracted what they wanted from Tesla, explaining the recent propaganda attack there against Tesla and turn south in the narrative in the state controlled media). The US Government, NASA and the military all desperately need SpaceX to succeed, they're nice allies to have so vested in your well-being, they help smooth over problems and risks; they've been paving the way for SpaceX since early on.
The most successful the gambler is, the more of other's people they get to gamble.
He's at that point where he could never be right again and it'd never personally affect him. I mean if Tesla goes to 100 tomorrow morning, who gets hurt more? Elon or instructional investors that are supposed to be funding things like pensions?
I always get a laugh for the people trying to scare people that Tesla stock will fall while not realizing a lot of the early purchaser will still make a profit even it the stock tanks big.
Or maybe you don't know what an institutional investor is? Because you're not an instructional investor...
The comment is saying even if Tesla goes to 100, it doesn't matter to Elon. It's not saying Tesla is going to 100. 100 is an arbitrary number representing a steep drop. It's not about what an "early purchaser" holding peanuts compared to any instructional investor is holding.
It's saying the standard of living of the guy worth 154 Billion isn't going to change because Tesla stock goes up or down. His entire Tesla stake could go to 0 tomorrow morning and he'd still be worth enough for it not to matter to his life past maybe some vanity issues.
But I'd be very interested to see Musk's personal trading accounts, and the trading accounts of his close associates.
Some of these anti-Musk conspiracy theories are truly crazy especially considering the man is so out there that you don't even need to fabricate weird theories like this to make him look bad.
I think it's fair to suspect something here though, and question Musks behavior these last few years. Yes, originally he wanted to save the world with Tesla and also find a new world with SpaceX (at least that was the outspoken goals), but his current dealings that skirt on legality of things, gives another side of him.
Some people who seemed to be driven by the goodness of their heart ends up chasing the same money-dragon as many before them. It's not impossible.
...we are talking about Elon Musk, right? The one who got rich founding the definitely-ethical, not-at-all-shady company PayPal? That Elon Musk?
That's why they're not actual net worth. They are not liquid and will almost never be.
Private pump and dump schemes generate real cash, that can be used.
Musk can never leverage his Tesla stocks to do anything useful near the theoretical amount he has. better get some real cash that can buy actual yachts.
this is a good point, but if I held Tesla, I would probably prefer cash. it could be that Tesla's greatest value is as a prop for BTC scams.
Teslas catch on fire randomly. Their roofs fall off sometimes. Their self-driving tech doesn't work as well as people expect, and when people get that expectation wrong, it sometimes results in them dying. The bulk of the company's revenue comes from carbon credits.
maybe he's pumping and dumping Bitcoin because he doesn't expect his wealth to last, and if he sold a bunch of Tesla stock, people would notice. a little scam to set aside a nest egg just in case the other scam doesn't pan out.
the weaknesses in this argument are SpaceX and PayPal, so I'm not totally convinced of my own position here, but I haven't seen any good counterarguments otherwise.
he could also just find scams fun for their own sake.
Maybe there was no master plan, but it would be a lot better for his personal net-worth if he went long/short on bitcoin before each tweet.
For now. Spacex is going to be the most valuable company on Earth and Mars.
― Shel Silverstein
There's no conspiracy here.
Musk should be investigated, this is not the first time his actions lead to massive market perturbations.
Not true. They made their numbers by selling 100M or so of BTC last quarter.
https://www.autoweek.com/news/green-cars/a36266393/tesla-mad...
> The second item that helped Tesla were sales of bitcoin, the "positive impact" of which amounted to $101 million.
The article says that was 1/10 of what they own. We won't know until next quarter how much more they have sold.
1. Buy BTC 2. Announce Tesla will accept BTC. 3. Sell BTC. 4. Announce Tesla will no longer accept BTC.
More likely is that Musk liked the idea of Bitcoin, but got a lot of pressure from environmental activists after committing to it and decided it wasn't worth it anymore. Companies change their positions based on the outcry of political activists all the time. That's far more believable than saying Musk tanked his own company in effort to execute the worst pump-and-dump of all time.