Your morning schadenfreude: Elon Musk breaks world record for largest loss of personal fortune in history

Atlant said:

Does anyone other than Tesla fans think that the Cybertruck is going to be worth spit? I can't understand its appeal at all.

The Semi is a much more interesting question.

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Steve Jewell said:

No!! The real problem here, with all companies that share this problem, is found in how tough it is to invest when the company is so very tied to just one guy. That always creates this potential extra volatility.

For better or worse. Elon Musk is Tesla. If you invest here you accept that no small part of your risk is with him when you invest in this company. When things are going well everyone loves the genius owner who turns all he touches to GOLD and when things start to slid we hear plenty of calls to remove or limit him.

Remove him as CEO? Hey, you could......but the resulting loss of confidence would almost certainly be catastrophic for shareholders.

Tesla's real issue here isn't Elon Musk. It's found in the disconnect between the company and it's equity valuation placed on it in daily trading of it's stock. For a very long time now, yeah just 10 years or less but still that's a long time in the world of EVs, Tesla was the name and no competitors worth motioning even existed.

We could point to Musk's ill advised walk into the cesspool of Twitter. We could point to any one of his various eccentric behaviors as a problem that has created the fall in Tesla's share price but in reality all we'd really be pointing at are reasons to suggest why it's happening more quickly than it might have if he were a little more traditional in his CEO roll.

Ultimately Tesla was almost certain to see this fall in valuation eventually anyway.

Alan Greenspan's "irrational exuberance" line comes to mind. Before the latest fall in value Tesla was valued at more than all other car companies in the world combined. Priced as if all would be competition would fail to ever happen and eventually we'd all be leaving our ICE powered cars and trucks behind in favor of a new Tesla replacement.

CRAZY RIGHT? Of Course it was....competition is going to be FIERCE going forward. Tesla is still the leader and it may even stay there for quite awhile but they are no longer the only game in town and all the big players have a crap load of EV products coming to market now and over the next couple of years.

Bottom line: this fall was coming for Tesla's valuation. Doesn't mean the company is in trouble, doesn't mean Elon Musk needs to be blamed....... it's just a simple return to reality for a lot of pretty short sighted silly investors who paid way too much and pressed the market cap of Tesla to insane valuation over the last couple of years.

Removing Elon Musk wouldn't have prevented this and removing him now or in the near future wouldn't return company to insane valuation. Even from here, after a dramatic fall, it's still easy to argue Tesla as far too richly valued vs it's actual prospects going forward.

Lesson is simple. Stock pricing can easily get pretty disconnected from the real prospects and current condition of business at any company and when a company is as hot a topic as Tesla has been.....WOW!!

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Atlant said:

Semi =/= Cybertruck

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