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Tesla stock dipped a little today it seems but it's still up 8 percent over the month. I really don't understand those investors and how they price a struggling

by nemomarx 10mo ago

Tesla stock dipped a little today it seems but it's still up 8 percent over the month. I really don't understand those investors and how they price a struggling company so highly.

toomuchtodo 10mo ago
TSLA exposure is a call option on Musk succeeding (with success criteria being "TSLA price go up") regardless of reality. SpaceX is buying up Cybertrucks; is it illegal? Will anyone do anything about it? That sort of success (quasi fraud). The product is the stock and the hope there is a greater fool who will buy it eventually. SpaceX Buys over 1000 Cybertrucks - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46405984 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46405984 - December 2025 Last week: Elon Musk's SpaceX bought tens of millions worth of Cybertrucks Tesla can't sell - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46317462 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46317462 - December 2025 (6 comments) Elon Musk's SpaceX and XAI Are Buying Tesla's Unsold Cybertrucks - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45572152 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45572152 - October 2025 (8 comments) Tesla's European Sales Plunge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46391352 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46391352 - December 2025 (3 comments) Tesla US sales drop to nearly 4-year low in November - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46248803 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46248803 - December 2025 (60 comments) Tesla looks to reset strategy amid sluggish India sales - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46084554 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46084554 - November 2025 (2 comments) Tesla's European sales tumble nearly 50% in October - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46063634 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46063634 - November 2025 (57 comments) Tesla sees worst sales performance in China in years - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45881302 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45881302 - November 2025 (1 comment) BYD Pulls Ahead of Tesla in UK, Closes Sales Gap in Germany - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45859618 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45859618 - November 2025 (35 comments) Tesla's German car sales more than halve in October as wider EV sales jump - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45827314 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45827314 - November 2025 (135 comments) [Flagged] Tesla sales in Germany have cratered from last year, data shows - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45826384 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45826384 - November 2025 (28 comments) Study: The Musk Partisan Effect on Tesla Sales - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45825382 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45825382 - November 2025 (2 comments) ("Without the Musk partisan effect, Tesla sales between October 2022 and April 2025 would have been 67-83% higher, equivalent to 1-1.26 million more vehicles. Musk’s partisan activities also increased the sales of other automakers' electric and hybrid vehicles 17-22% because of substitution, and undermined California’s progress in meeting its zero-emissions vehicle target.") Tesla Cybertruck sales are flatlining - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45573985 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45573985 - October 2025 (17 comments) Tesla Pivots to Robots as Investors Question Sales and Soaring Valuation - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45228566 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45228566 - September 2025 (3 comments)
- coliveira 10mo ago
  The "new economy" is full of self-dealing. That's the result of loose (or non-existing) regulations on monopolies. It all starts with Wall Street controlling stocks on thousands of large companies that are ultimately owned by small groups of the same shareholders. Now it's evolving to large sectors owned by fewer and fewer people.
  - toomuchtodo 10mo ago
    That is certainly a contributing factor, which Matt Stoller has documented robustly in his newsletter "Big" [1] [2], as well as the More Perfect Union org [3] [4]. [1] https://www.thebignewsletter.com/ https://www.thebignewsletter.com/ [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=thebignewsletter.com https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=thebignewsletter.com [3] https://perfectunion.us/ https://perfectunion.us/ [4] https://substack.perfectunion.us/ https://substack.perfectunion.us/
  - stocksinsmocks 10mo ago
    I don’t think self-dealing is new. Although it was eye-opening, when I learned that BlackRock, Vanguard, and Fidelity all own 5-10% of every company and competition between the companies they hold is not meaningful. Everyone just has to have nice steady predictable returns and nobody is allowed to innovate too far ahead of anyone else for fear of devaluing the real bosses’ other assets. I don’t even know what to call the kind of system we have.
    - coliveira 10mo ago
      As I said, BlackRock and their friends were just the beginning. NVdia is trying to own a huge chunk of the AI space using their profits. Other tech companies are using a similar playbook. And of course they're all owned by Wall Street. The competition is highly controlled so the winners are all part of the same club.
- SoftTalker 10mo ago
  All BEV sales, not just Tesla, are tanking, at least in the USA. Ford and and others have retreated on their plans as well. Tesla may be worse off because of Musk's extracurricular antics but BEVs are not selling well.
jordanb 10mo ago
Tesla's stock is a tulip future at this point.
magic_man 10mo ago
I don't think Tesla stock has traded on fundamentals for a while.
- nxm 10mo ago
  Short it then
  - toomuchtodo 10mo ago
    Can't win against irrational exuberance and fraud that isn't prosecuted in the capital markets ("voting machine vs weighing machine"). Just have to wait for failure of the enterprise, equity wipeout, and recapitalization under better human management (if you're optimizing for a company that actually manufacturers and sells a product vs a shell to pump a stock and enrich the board members who enable him with a lack of corporate governance). The factories and Supercharger network will remain intact under a reorganization. Musk can move money around SpaceX/Tesla/XAI/whatever the next story to investors is to prop up valuations and share prices, but can he win against China's clean tech export machine? Long term, I think not (China is a third of global manufacturing capacity as of this comment, and the world is their TAM). So he'll do the tech bro thing, giving talks, going to demo days, spending his wealth on pet projects, etc, while innovators innovate and point the firehose of these products at the world. Are you going to talk people out of his religion? Unlikely. The faithful will remain so, because that's how the human brain sometimes operates. Ember Energy: China Cleantech Exports Data Explorer - https://ember-energy.org/data/china-cleantech-exports-data-explorer/ https://ember-energy.org/data/china-cleantech-exports-data-e... (updated monthly) ("In 2024, China produced around 80% of the world’s solar PV modules and battery cells, and 70% of electric vehicles.") US warns China overproducing EVs, batteries, semiconductors for global dominance - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41909869 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41909869 - October 2024 China's Batteries Are Now Cheap Enough to Power Huge Shifts - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40954508 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40954508 - July 2024 China Already Makes as Many Batteries as the Entire World Wants - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40933773 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40933773 - July 2024 (as of this comment, ~50% of light vehicle sales in China are NEVs [battery electric of plug in hybrid] while exporting ~6M units/year, more than total annual US light vehicle sales)
andsoitis 10mo ago
> I really don't understand those investors and how they price a struggling company so highly. Struggling, not so much: '24/'25 revenue of just under $100B, with Q3'25 record profitability and deliveries yielding $1.5B net income. Strong liquidity and a current ratio of about 2, boosting short-term financial stability. Solid cash reserves and relatively low debt ratio. High stock price: far exceeds that of traditional auto makers even though Tesla's revenue is significantly lower. High valuation reflects investor expectations of growth and future tech upside. Exuberant? Probably. OTOH, Tesla has delivered better ROI for investors than the other automakers.
- stingraycharles 10mo ago
  It has delivered a better ROI in the same way a ponzi scheme can deliver higher ROI.
  - andsoitis 10mo ago
    > It has delivered a better ROI in the same way a ponzi scheme can deliver higher ROI. It sounds like you're arguing that high valuation compared to fundamentals means buyers expect gains from future buyers paying more sounds like a Ponzi, but it isn't, it is speculation. The comparison doesn't make sense. Some surface features of speculative markets can look Ponzi-like, but the underlying mechanics are very different. A Ponzi-scheme returns to earlier participants directly from money contributed by later participants, with no real underlying business generating value. In a Ponzi-scheme, there is no real product (or it is irrelevant), the operator controls payouts, and investors are promised steady or guaranteed returns. None of that applies to Tesla stock. Ponzi-schemes hide losses, smooth returns, collapse suddenly. Tesla stock is volatile, has had large drawdowns, and public reflects bad news, margin compression, demand shifts. Volatility is a sign of a market, not a Ponzi.
    - boroboro4 10mo ago
      Mechanics is exactly the same - it's not Tesla revenues driving returns for investors, it's new investors putting their money into the stock at very high price.
paxys 10mo ago
There's nothing to understand really. Tesla is a meme stock, and will keep rising as long as Elon and others keep hyping it up.
- mapontosevenths 10mo ago
  I don't understand why this keeps working. The dude doing the hyping is widely hated. 67% of Americans have said they'll never consider buying a Tesla. 56% cite Musk as either the entire reason or part of the reason. [0] Tesla IS Elon Musk. Without him they're nothing, with him they can't access 2/3rds of the market. Why would anyone invest in that? [0] https://www.yahoo.com/news/two-thirds-of-americans-now-say-they-wouldnt-drive-a-tesla--and-most-of-them-cite-elon-musk-as-the-reason-why-according-to-a-new-poll-152619516.html https://www.yahoo.com/news/two-thirds-of-americans-now-say-t...
  - vkou 10mo ago
    Stock valuations are not a democracy of public opinion, they are the product of investors putting their money into the stock. Musk is a shit human, but to an investor, everything he touches turns to gold. Whether his companies make anything useful doesn't matter, what matters is that the stock price in his companies goes up, so people give him more money. This works until it doesn't.
  - iknowstuff 10mo ago
    TSLA investors: * don't believe the 67% will follow through with that after experiencing FSD * don't need 67% of Americans to purchase the car. Robotaxi use is plenty. * look beyond the American market and its pathetic 5% EV share.
    - mapontosevenths 10mo ago
      Personally, I suspect they're very wrong about the first two points, but that's just my opinion. Thanks for explaining the other side of it.
    - dzhiurgis 10mo ago
himinlomax 10mo ago
The promise of self driving is what's driving Tesla stock. Two things can happen: The dream is a bust, and Tesla is worthless. Or the dream pans out, and almost all other car companies are worth a lot less. Unless you absolutely want to believe that either self driving is impossible, or Tesla is uniquely unable to achieve it, the valuation is not entirely unwarranted. Put shortly, Tesla is not a car company, it's a bet on self-driving cars.
- Animats 10mo ago
  A more likely outcome is that all major auto manufacturers offer self driving. Ford and Mercedes already have Level 3 systems. Toyota is working with Waymo. Several Chinese automakers have self driving, at various levels of quality. It's going to become a routine feature of cars. Tesla isn't even the leader.
- debo_ 10mo ago
  Well, they don't have a self-driving car but they do have a self-driving share price!
- Scubabear68 10mo ago
  This omits the fact that Musk has slashed costs in critical areas of Tesla cars, notably in relying only on visual sensors. They abandoned the hardware most promising to help enable self-driving.
- neogodless 10mo ago
  There's a simple third option you omitted: Tesla is not the only company to achieve self-driving, and all companies that achieve it share the market with them. (Or the fourth option, it will take decades for self-driving to take even a significant market of "driving" as humans continue to want to own and drive cars rather than short-term rentals.)
- kilna 10mo ago
  Framing it as unwarranted to not think "Tesla is uniquely unable to achieve it"...? Seriously? The real question is if Tesla is uniquely ABLE to achieve it, above others in the market... including new startups or tech/auto-maker partnerships which may yet form. Tesla has some supply chain innovation, but none of what they do can't be replicated... and Musk's slavish commitment to video as opposed to LIDAR is hobbling them.
malshe 10mo ago
If you want to understand how Tesla bulls pump the stock, check out any of the numerous videos of Dan Ives you will find on YouTube. He is regularly invited on CNBC and other financial new media as well as on financial blogs/vlogs. Here is one recent video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecLsZ4bkW6Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecLsZ4bkW6Q
- moogly 10mo ago
  Wow, that is the least confidence-inspiring person I've ever listened to (and perhaps laid eyes upon).
  - sidibe 10mo ago
    I think somehow the goofiness and untrustworthiness of the pumpers is a way to select their audience, just like how spammers intentionally misspell to not waste their time on people with discernment
1970-01-01 10mo ago
Because you're getting a biased storyline both here and over there. The 4680 supply chain isn't a requirement for anything to succeed at Tesla. The product still sells, just with lower profit per unit. At best, it marks the removal of the current Cybertruck battery pack chemistry. Everything else about the future of Tesla is (as always) clickbait speculation.
vinyl7 10mo ago
Stock market is all based on vibes at this point. Giant gambling system
- y0eswddl 10mo ago
  Has been for much of the late-and post-ZIRP period. Our so-called "gdp" is mostly rent and legal ponzi schemes
bgwalter 10mo ago
Tesla has the government and a vast propaganda apparatus behind it: https://fortune.com/2025/03/20/howard-lutnick-pumps-tesla-stock/ https://fortune.com/2025/03/20/howard-lutnick-pumps-tesla-st... “If you want to learn something on this show tonight, buy Tesla,” Lutnick told Fox News host Jesse Watters. In this economy we have a billionaire clan selling hot air and backing each other up. The main "achievements" of this administration are in pumping Bitcoin, "AI", cannabis sales and and online gambling.
y0eswddl 10mo ago
have because despite the story that most people try to tell about the market and the economy... in the late- and post-ZIRP era, it's been mostly based on Hype, Feelings, and Vibes. It's why the entire S&P 500 teeters on the back of 7 companies without any presently viable paths to profitability that would justify the current valuations. It's why repeatedly lying for a decade+ made Elon so rich even though the business output and fundamentals never really matched the valuation. Still doesn't - this valuation is mostly vestigial beliefs that AI would eliminate an entire workforce ("history often rhymes") of drivers and replace car ownership with subscription. The majority of the performance in the market has little to do with actual material value being produced and everything to do with how much rent finance bros think they can extract from the stock.
chrsw 10mo ago
I see a lot of Teslas on the road. But I spend a lot of time in Massachusetts and some in California.
Tycho 10mo ago
Think of Tesla as a well-funded pharmaceutical company that has invented a cure for a widespread ailment (call it “driving”) and now is waiting on regulatory approval.
Veedrac 10mo ago
The stock market learns from experience, because it's made of people who learn from experience. Imagine an investor's experience with TSLA. From the beginning, they're flooded with news reports about 'fundamentals' this, 'fundamentals' that, about how Tesla would imminently collapse, how it's a scam, yada yada. Said investors _constantly_ see themselves being right and those skeptics wrong. Tesla is in fact disrupting an industry. They really are just continuing to scale. Marginal profitability keeps going up. Their cars keep getting better. FSD keeps getting better. The competition that people kept pointing at kept failing to materialize. None of this seems to change the skeptics' byline. Tesla is actually in a materially worse position than it was a few years ago, by many metrics, but the stock price isn't set by 'fundamentals', it's set by the people setting demand for the stock. With TSLA, this is disproportionately going to be people who have learned to and gotten rich from ignoring the people loudly telling them why investing in Tesla is a bad idea. A market will correct eventually, but corrections either require people to change their minds or run out of capital. Neither has happened yet, so the market can't correct.
rich_sasha 10mo ago
My take is there are not really any reasonable Tesla investors left. Due to a steady supply of Real Believers, anyone with a short bet got burnt time after time. So these people are no longer shorting. Sane long-only people, likewise have been out for a long time. You're left with a clique of people who won't sell regardless, and when Elon promises to make ice cream with robotaxies, they'll buy a bit more stock. When only irrational people trade something, the price and market for it are irrational too.
throw-12-16 10mo ago
Teslas CEO bought the presidency of the USA.

Tesla stock dipped a little today it seems but it's still up 8 percent over the month. I really don't understand those investors and how they price a struggling company so highly.

toomuchtodo 10mo ago

TSLA exposure is a call option on Musk succeeding (with success criteria being "TSLA price go up") regardless of reality. SpaceX is buying up Cybertrucks; is it illegal? Will anyone do anything about it? That sort of success (quasi fraud). The product is the stock and the hope there is a greater fool who will buy it eventually. SpaceX Buys over 1000 Cybertrucks - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46405984 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46405984 - December 2025 Last week: Elon Musk's SpaceX bought tens of millions worth of Cybertrucks Tesla can't sell - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46317462 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46317462 - December 2025 (6 comments) Elon Musk's SpaceX and XAI Are Buying Tesla's Unsold Cybertrucks - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45572152 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45572152 - October 2025 (8 comments) Tesla's European Sales Plunge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46391352 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46391352 - December 2025 (3 comments) Tesla US sales drop to nearly 4-year low in November - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46248803 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46248803 - December 2025 (60 comments) Tesla looks to reset strategy amid sluggish India sales - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46084554 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46084554 - November 2025 (2 comments) Tesla's European sales tumble nearly 50% in October - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46063634 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46063634 - November 2025 (57 comments) Tesla sees worst sales performance in China in years - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45881302 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45881302 - November 2025 (1 comment) BYD Pulls Ahead of Tesla in UK, Closes Sales Gap in Germany - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45859618 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45859618 - November 2025 (35 comments) Tesla's German car sales more than halve in October as wider EV sales jump - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45827314 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45827314 - November 2025 (135 comments) [Flagged] Tesla sales in Germany have cratered from last year, data shows - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45826384 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45826384 - November 2025 (28 comments) Study: The Musk Partisan Effect on Tesla Sales - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45825382 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45825382 - November 2025 (2 comments) ("Without the Musk partisan effect, Tesla sales between October 2022 and April 2025 would have been 67-83% higher, equivalent to 1-1.26 million more vehicles. Musk’s partisan activities also increased the sales of other automakers' electric and hybrid vehicles 17-22% because of substitution, and undermined California’s progress in meeting its zero-emissions vehicle target.") Tesla Cybertruck sales are flatlining - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45573985 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45573985 - October 2025 (17 comments) Tesla Pivots to Robots as Investors Question Sales and Soaring Valuation - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45228566 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45228566 - September 2025 (3 comments)

coliveira 10mo ago
The "new economy" is full of self-dealing. That's the result of loose (or non-existing) regulations on monopolies. It all starts with Wall Street controlling stocks on thousands of large companies that are ultimately owned by small groups of the same shareholders. Now it's evolving to large sectors owned by fewer and fewer people.
- toomuchtodo 10mo ago
  That is certainly a contributing factor, which Matt Stoller has documented robustly in his newsletter "Big" [1] [2], as well as the More Perfect Union org [3] [4]. [1] https://www.thebignewsletter.com/ https://www.thebignewsletter.com/ [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=thebignewsletter.com https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=thebignewsletter.com [3] https://perfectunion.us/ https://perfectunion.us/ [4] https://substack.perfectunion.us/ https://substack.perfectunion.us/
- stocksinsmocks 10mo ago
  I don’t think self-dealing is new. Although it was eye-opening, when I learned that BlackRock, Vanguard, and Fidelity all own 5-10% of every company and competition between the companies they hold is not meaningful. Everyone just has to have nice steady predictable returns and nobody is allowed to innovate too far ahead of anyone else for fear of devaluing the real bosses’ other assets. I don’t even know what to call the kind of system we have.
  - coliveira 10mo ago
    As I said, BlackRock and their friends were just the beginning. NVdia is trying to own a huge chunk of the AI space using their profits. Other tech companies are using a similar playbook. And of course they're all owned by Wall Street. The competition is highly controlled so the winners are all part of the same club.
SoftTalker 10mo ago
All BEV sales, not just Tesla, are tanking, at least in the USA. Ford and and others have retreated on their plans as well. Tesla may be worse off because of Musk's extracurricular antics but BEVs are not selling well.

jordanb 10mo ago

Tesla's stock is a tulip future at this point.

magic_man 10mo ago

I don't think Tesla stock has traded on fundamentals for a while.

nxm 10mo ago
Short it then
- toomuchtodo 10mo ago
  Can't win against irrational exuberance and fraud that isn't prosecuted in the capital markets ("voting machine vs weighing machine"). Just have to wait for failure of the enterprise, equity wipeout, and recapitalization under better human management (if you're optimizing for a company that actually manufacturers and sells a product vs a shell to pump a stock and enrich the board members who enable him with a lack of corporate governance). The factories and Supercharger network will remain intact under a reorganization. Musk can move money around SpaceX/Tesla/XAI/whatever the next story to investors is to prop up valuations and share prices, but can he win against China's clean tech export machine? Long term, I think not (China is a third of global manufacturing capacity as of this comment, and the world is their TAM). So he'll do the tech bro thing, giving talks, going to demo days, spending his wealth on pet projects, etc, while innovators innovate and point the firehose of these products at the world. Are you going to talk people out of his religion? Unlikely. The faithful will remain so, because that's how the human brain sometimes operates. Ember Energy: China Cleantech Exports Data Explorer - https://ember-energy.org/data/china-cleantech-exports-data-explorer/ https://ember-energy.org/data/china-cleantech-exports-data-e... (updated monthly) ("In 2024, China produced around 80% of the world’s solar PV modules and battery cells, and 70% of electric vehicles.") US warns China overproducing EVs, batteries, semiconductors for global dominance - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41909869 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41909869 - October 2024 China's Batteries Are Now Cheap Enough to Power Huge Shifts - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40954508 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40954508 - July 2024 China Already Makes as Many Batteries as the Entire World Wants - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40933773 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40933773 - July 2024 (as of this comment, ~50% of light vehicle sales in China are NEVs [battery electric of plug in hybrid] while exporting ~6M units/year, more than total annual US light vehicle sales)

andsoitis 10mo ago

> I really don't understand those investors and how they price a struggling company so highly. Struggling, not so much: '24/'25 revenue of just under $100B, with Q3'25 record profitability and deliveries yielding $1.5B net income. Strong liquidity and a current ratio of about 2, boosting short-term financial stability. Solid cash reserves and relatively low debt ratio. High stock price: far exceeds that of traditional auto makers even though Tesla's revenue is significantly lower. High valuation reflects investor expectations of growth and future tech upside. Exuberant? Probably. OTOH, Tesla has delivered better ROI for investors than the other automakers.

stingraycharles 10mo ago
It has delivered a better ROI in the same way a ponzi scheme can deliver higher ROI.
- andsoitis 10mo ago
  > It has delivered a better ROI in the same way a ponzi scheme can deliver higher ROI. It sounds like you're arguing that high valuation compared to fundamentals means buyers expect gains from future buyers paying more sounds like a Ponzi, but it isn't, it is speculation. The comparison doesn't make sense. Some surface features of speculative markets can look Ponzi-like, but the underlying mechanics are very different. A Ponzi-scheme returns to earlier participants directly from money contributed by later participants, with no real underlying business generating value. In a Ponzi-scheme, there is no real product (or it is irrelevant), the operator controls payouts, and investors are promised steady or guaranteed returns. None of that applies to Tesla stock. Ponzi-schemes hide losses, smooth returns, collapse suddenly. Tesla stock is volatile, has had large drawdowns, and public reflects bad news, margin compression, demand shifts. Volatility is a sign of a market, not a Ponzi.
  - boroboro4 10mo ago
    Mechanics is exactly the same - it's not Tesla revenues driving returns for investors, it's new investors putting their money into the stock at very high price.

paxys 10mo ago

There's nothing to understand really. Tesla is a meme stock, and will keep rising as long as Elon and others keep hyping it up.

mapontosevenths 10mo ago
I don't understand why this keeps working. The dude doing the hyping is widely hated. 67% of Americans have said they'll never consider buying a Tesla. 56% cite Musk as either the entire reason or part of the reason. [0] Tesla IS Elon Musk. Without him they're nothing, with him they can't access 2/3rds of the market. Why would anyone invest in that? [0] https://www.yahoo.com/news/two-thirds-of-americans-now-say-they-wouldnt-drive-a-tesla--and-most-of-them-cite-elon-musk-as-the-reason-why-according-to-a-new-poll-152619516.html https://www.yahoo.com/news/two-thirds-of-americans-now-say-t...
- vkou 10mo ago
  Stock valuations are not a democracy of public opinion, they are the product of investors putting their money into the stock. Musk is a shit human, but to an investor, everything he touches turns to gold. Whether his companies make anything useful doesn't matter, what matters is that the stock price in his companies goes up, so people give him more money. This works until it doesn't.
- iknowstuff 10mo ago
  TSLA investors: * don't believe the 67% will follow through with that after experiencing FSD * don't need 67% of Americans to purchase the car. Robotaxi use is plenty. * look beyond the American market and its pathetic 5% EV share.
  - mapontosevenths 10mo ago
    Personally, I suspect they're very wrong about the first two points, but that's just my opinion. Thanks for explaining the other side of it.
  - dzhiurgis 10mo ago

himinlomax 10mo ago

The promise of self driving is what's driving Tesla stock. Two things can happen: The dream is a bust, and Tesla is worthless. Or the dream pans out, and almost all other car companies are worth a lot less. Unless you absolutely want to believe that either self driving is impossible, or Tesla is uniquely unable to achieve it, the valuation is not entirely unwarranted. Put shortly, Tesla is not a car company, it's a bet on self-driving cars.

Animats 10mo ago
A more likely outcome is that all major auto manufacturers offer self driving. Ford and Mercedes already have Level 3 systems. Toyota is working with Waymo. Several Chinese automakers have self driving, at various levels of quality. It's going to become a routine feature of cars. Tesla isn't even the leader.
debo_ 10mo ago
Well, they don't have a self-driving car but they do have a self-driving share price!
Scubabear68 10mo ago
This omits the fact that Musk has slashed costs in critical areas of Tesla cars, notably in relying only on visual sensors. They abandoned the hardware most promising to help enable self-driving.
neogodless 10mo ago
There's a simple third option you omitted: Tesla is not the only company to achieve self-driving, and all companies that achieve it share the market with them. (Or the fourth option, it will take decades for self-driving to take even a significant market of "driving" as humans continue to want to own and drive cars rather than short-term rentals.)
kilna 10mo ago
Framing it as unwarranted to not think "Tesla is uniquely unable to achieve it"...? Seriously? The real question is if Tesla is uniquely ABLE to achieve it, above others in the market... including new startups or tech/auto-maker partnerships which may yet form. Tesla has some supply chain innovation, but none of what they do can't be replicated... and Musk's slavish commitment to video as opposed to LIDAR is hobbling them.

malshe 10mo ago

If you want to understand how Tesla bulls pump the stock, check out any of the numerous videos of Dan Ives you will find on YouTube. He is regularly invited on CNBC and other financial new media as well as on financial blogs/vlogs. Here is one recent video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecLsZ4bkW6Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecLsZ4bkW6Q

moogly 10mo ago
Wow, that is the least confidence-inspiring person I've ever listened to (and perhaps laid eyes upon).
- sidibe 10mo ago
  I think somehow the goofiness and untrustworthiness of the pumpers is a way to select their audience, just like how spammers intentionally misspell to not waste their time on people with discernment

1970-01-01 10mo ago

Because you're getting a biased storyline both here and over there. The 4680 supply chain isn't a requirement for anything to succeed at Tesla. The product still sells, just with lower profit per unit. At best, it marks the removal of the current Cybertruck battery pack chemistry. Everything else about the future of Tesla is (as always) clickbait speculation.

vinyl7 10mo ago

Stock market is all based on vibes at this point. Giant gambling system

y0eswddl 10mo ago
Has been for much of the late-and post-ZIRP period. Our so-called "gdp" is mostly rent and legal ponzi schemes

bgwalter 10mo ago

Tesla has the government and a vast propaganda apparatus behind it: https://fortune.com/2025/03/20/howard-lutnick-pumps-tesla-stock/ https://fortune.com/2025/03/20/howard-lutnick-pumps-tesla-st... “If you want to learn something on this show tonight, buy Tesla,” Lutnick told Fox News host Jesse Watters. In this economy we have a billionaire clan selling hot air and backing each other up. The main "achievements" of this administration are in pumping Bitcoin, "AI", cannabis sales and and online gambling.

y0eswddl 10mo ago

have because despite the story that most people try to tell about the market and the economy... in the late- and post-ZIRP era, it's been mostly based on Hype, Feelings, and Vibes. It's why the entire S&P 500 teeters on the back of 7 companies without any presently viable paths to profitability that would justify the current valuations. It's why repeatedly lying for a decade+ made Elon so rich even though the business output and fundamentals never really matched the valuation. Still doesn't - this valuation is mostly vestigial beliefs that AI would eliminate an entire workforce ("history often rhymes") of drivers and replace car ownership with subscription. The majority of the performance in the market has little to do with actual material value being produced and everything to do with how much rent finance bros think they can extract from the stock.

chrsw 10mo ago

I see a lot of Teslas on the road. But I spend a lot of time in Massachusetts and some in California.

Tycho 10mo ago

Think of Tesla as a well-funded pharmaceutical company that has invented a cure for a widespread ailment (call it “driving”) and now is waiting on regulatory approval.

Veedrac 10mo ago

The stock market learns from experience, because it's made of people who learn from experience. Imagine an investor's experience with TSLA. From the beginning, they're flooded with news reports about 'fundamentals' this, 'fundamentals' that, about how Tesla would imminently collapse, how it's a scam, yada yada. Said investors _constantly_ see themselves being right and those skeptics wrong. Tesla is in fact disrupting an industry. They really are just continuing to scale. Marginal profitability keeps going up. Their cars keep getting better. FSD keeps getting better. The competition that people kept pointing at kept failing to materialize. None of this seems to change the skeptics' byline. Tesla is actually in a materially worse position than it was a few years ago, by many metrics, but the stock price isn't set by 'fundamentals', it's set by the people setting demand for the stock. With TSLA, this is disproportionately going to be people who have learned to and gotten rich from ignoring the people loudly telling them why investing in Tesla is a bad idea. A market will correct eventually, but corrections either require people to change their minds or run out of capital. Neither has happened yet, so the market can't correct.

rich_sasha 10mo ago

My take is there are not really any reasonable Tesla investors left. Due to a steady supply of Real Believers, anyone with a short bet got burnt time after time. So these people are no longer shorting. Sane long-only people, likewise have been out for a long time. You're left with a clique of people who won't sell regardless, and when Elon promises to make ice cream with robotaxies, they'll buy a bit more stock. When only irrational people trade something, the price and market for it are irrational too.

throw-12-16 10mo ago

Teslas CEO bought the presidency of the USA.