7 ms·

It’s all in a stock that may very well be near its zenith when this closes (or maybe not. This is so far past fundamentals it’s impossible to tell). They’re s

It’s all in a stock that may very well be near its zenith when this closes (or maybe not. This is so far past fundamentals it’s impossible to tell). They’re spending Monopoly money. It also seems like SpaceX is poised to Hoover up all of Elons companies so it’s might not be “just a space company” for long.

munk-a 3mo ago
Elon's award is tied to growing Tesla's market cap - it's pretty transparent that he's just trying to ball-of-mud together everything he can to hit that target and grab the bag.
- andruby 3mo ago
  What would it mean if SpaceX buys Tesla though? Does the combined market cap count? That would be wrong. Tesla buying SpaceX just for hist bonus and then rebranding to X would be classic Musk. It's a game for him, but so ridiculous. While Tesla was pushing electrification and SpaceX pushing rapid rocket re-use I kind of tolerated Elon's antics, but since he got involved in politics and DOGE I can't bear it anymore.
  - lesuorac 3mo ago
    > Does the combined market cap count? That would be wrong. It counts and it's not wrong. Sure, the Tesla award takes into account any M&A but growing a 2T company to 3T is a 50% increase. While growing a 1T company to 2T is a 100% increase so it's expected to be easier for him to hit his award targets with the companies merged as opposed to not merged.
    - andruby 3mo ago
      I understand Tesla acquiring other companies counting to the cap, but Tesla _being acquired_ by another company, why would that count?
      - lesuorac 3mo ago
        Because that's the grand plan from the start. You don't put a sentence like "In other words, upon a change in control where Tesla is acquired, vesting of milestones under the CEO Performance Award does not require the achievement of a matching Operational Milestone." if you didn't think Tesla could be acquired. The goal is to give Elon his 2012 award package but making it his 2018 one.
    - xmprt 3mo ago
      If we combine the market cap of the entire S&P500 we get close to 70T. That doesn't mean any of those individual companies are any more valuable or any of the investors are any richer. It makes no sense that Tesla shareholders would be ok with paying out a performance bonus just for M&A that doesn't grow the value of Tesla and would just dilute their shares.
      - s1artibartfast 3mo ago
        Most are tied to operational milestones as well if I understand correctly
        lesuorac 3mo ago
        As pointed out by somebody else [1]; Operational Milestones are waived if SpaceX buys Telsa. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=antasvara https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=antasvara
        s1artibartfast 3mo ago
        Thats not what it says. My understanding is SpaceX milestones stay intact. For Tesla ops milestones they would be waived, this is fine because accusition is a chance for Tesla shareholders to cash out at that price.
        lesuorac 3mo ago
        We're talking about his Tesla grant so SpaceX's grant is irrelevant. The text written in the link you did not read, states "Notwithstanding Sections I, II and III above, in the event of a Change in Control, the Operational Milestones shall be disregarded".
        s1artibartfast 3mo ago
        The link supports wxactly what I wrote. Not sure where your confusion is.
    - paulddraper 3mo ago
      It the shareholders' value that counts. And that doesn't get any more by 50% increase with the same dilution.
      - adgjlsfhk1 3mo ago
        the problem is Tesla's board is controlled by musk
  - antasvara 3mo ago
    >What would it mean if SpaceX buys Tesla though? Does the combined market cap count? That would be wrong. I took a look at the proxy statement as they have it outlined in this [0] document (Proposal 4). As currently formulated, Musk has 12 operational goals (like ship 1 million robots or hit 50 billion EBITDA) and 12 market cap goals. These need to be paired together for the shares to vest; so, if he reaches the first market cap number, he also needs to fulfill an operating goal for the first set of shares to be earned. These earned shares vest in ~5 years. This comes with a huge caveat. If Tesla changes control, those operational goals go out the window and his stock award is based solely on market cap (along with the shares immediately vesting). The share price for this is the greater of: 1. The last traded Tesla price prior to the acquisition, or 2. The per share price outlined in the acquisition. The "easiest" way to take advantage is to IPO SpaceX (which he did), pump up the market cap, acquire Tesla for a sizable premium, and vest as much of the stock award as you can. It means you get to avoid the operational goals entirely and vest a bunch of Tesla (but soon to be SpaceX) stock. [0]: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/000110465925087598/tm252289-4_pre14a.htm#tKTPC https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/000110465925...
    - NuclearPM 3mo ago
      Conflict of interest laws don’t apply to fascists.
      - brigandish 3mo ago
        Fascists don't support free speech. Please, learn what that word means[0] and then use it responsibly. We're already seeing the effects of misusing and overusing several other important words for political/societal discourse, and this is one of them. It's entirely unhelpful and lowers the quality of conversation here. [0] The Doctrine of Fascism is available, for free, in several places. Start there.
        bakies 3mo ago
        Elon fits the definition in Britannica pretty neatly
  - mcintyre1994 3mo ago
    I feel like it has to eventually become X. Just because he’d find it funny for the stupidest people in the world to post about how he’s turned Twitter into a $2t or whatever company.
- itslennysfault 3mo ago
  I agree with this, but it seems so crazy to me. How can money be a motivator when you're that rich. I'm not even "rich" but I'm already at a point where money is far from my #1 motivator. I LOVE puppies, but if I had a trillion of them the last thing I'd want is another puppy.
  - davidguetta 3mo ago
    Assuming best intentions, making a colony on mars is gonna require money
    - Jtarii 3mo ago
      Not even Elon is delusional enough to truly believe a mars colony is a remote possibility.
      - amoss 3mo ago
        I don't think you can describe his beliefs using booleans like that: you have to use a numeric scale. It would be be correct to say: Elon would need a hell of a lot of ketamine to believe a colony on mars is a possibility.
  - carlosjobim 3mo ago
    You cannot get that rich without money being the motivator.
    - digitaltrees 3mo ago
      Yes you can. Money is a medium of exchange. Stock is a medium of exchange. But they buy the ability to effectuate your will in the world. If you have a vision of the world money, human capital, political power are not the measure of success or the goal. They are the instruments of executing a vision. Some people aren't motivated by money, they are motivated by reputation, or pathology.
      - deleted 3mo ago
- testing22321 3mo ago
  His award is also tied to numbers of vehicles and robots sold. So just increasing market cap won’t do it alone. Even if he merged them, they still have to produce WAY more than they are now.
- digitaltrees 3mo ago
  No. He is making it an AI company. The prospectus makes that clear. Everything is in service of training and deploying AI. Twitter is data, distribution and marketing, space x is distribution with data centers and internet in space. Cursor is training data and hostile distillation.
  - munk-a 3mo ago
    NewBird AI is an AI company which had an extremely irrational stock price bump because it's all about AI. It AI'd its AI with some more AI to AI harder with AI... and that equaled money. If you're writing a prospectus right now and want a lot of large institutional investment you put AI between every letter. We are in a bubble, I don't think there's any disagreement about that, when the bubble will pop nobody knows - but while we're in this bubble everything is AI. I think it's unwise to read that prospectus in good faith given all the other factors (the court case against OpenAI, the race to IPO first, Google's additional stock grant, Elon's history of corporate bailouts) that are pretty plain to see.
  - AmericanOP 3mo ago
    Unfortunately computers generate heat, so while Elon can build a business running on hot air on earth, he will not be able to do so in space.
    - Catloafdev 3mo ago
      This is very far from an obstacle, space-functional radiators and thermal management systems do exist.
      - denkmoon 3mo ago
        KW scale radiators for GW scale compute demand. It is not based in reality.
        keeganpoppen 3mo ago
        it actually is not that impossible, and in fact can be done in a form factor not that different from Starlink satellites: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlQYU3m1e80 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlQYU3m1e80
- rlt 3mo ago
  That’s not how it works. There’s provisions to adjust the targets if there’s M&A.
- burnte 3mo ago
  > it's pretty transparent that he's just trying to ball-of-mud together everything he can to hit that target and grab the bag. I agree, and most people do too, yet he'll get away with it. We're in the kleptocracy phase of the fall.
0xffff2 3mo ago
The company that just IPOed is already overwhelmingly "X AI" financially, regardless of the fact that it says "Space X" in the marketing. Whether SpaceX also buys Tesla is hardly even going to move the needle.
- iririririr 3mo ago
  $10 how "space x" will sell for peanuts the starlink portion to musk and keep only the sinking Ai pieces for the bag holders
  - IgorPartola 3mo ago
    StarLink is a bad investment too in my opinion. It is fundamentally a US company that must charge US prices but in the US there are relatively few people who need that tech. Only in more rural areas that are sparsely populated do you not have access to fiber or cable which give better speeds and latency. The majority of their revenue is overseas. But there they can’t reasonably charge $99/month. And there labor and land are cheap such that you can get fiber laid cheaply and quickly.
    - danisth 3mo ago
      Yep, it feels like forever a niche market. As soon as you think about it like fundamental infrastructure (which as I understand it is what we’re supposed to think about) it quickly becomes obvious that cables are better suited. Wealthy enclaves, digital nomads etc will pay for it, but that’s not going to get the revenue they’re hoping for.
      - Fogest 3mo ago
        You mention that cables are better suited... but that is the whole point of Starlink. Getting cables everywhere is either not feasible or expensive. The rural properties are already mentioned as a very big source of usage right now around the world. But you also have everyone who is using it for some mobile purpose. Whether that be planes, boats, RV's, cars, military, etc... I've even seen people live streaming things using Starlink due to cell towers not giving good enough connections where they are. While they may not be ideal or people living in Urban areas, they also aren't limited to selling to people who are physically connected by cable like a regular ISP would be. I think you're underestimating the market here. Especially on the enterprise side when you start thinking of things like airliners, cruise ships, etc...
cryptos 3mo ago
Everything will be folded in "X" eventually, anyway.
joering2 3mo ago
> It’s all in a stock that may very well be near its zenith when this closes No, it is not. This is not legal or financial advice, but I believe the stock could easily rise 2.5x - not because of its current or future financial condition, but because it is run by what may be the most skilled fraudster our planet has ever breed. Charles Ponzi himself couldn't have pulled this off. While most CEOs are careful about what they publicly say or "predict," Musk's companies are fueled by increasingly fantastical projections. The consequences have amounted to some $1.5 million in SEC fines that, relative to the value created, were negligible - and that was under the previous administration. The current one won't be any more aggressive. The closest comparison I can think of is Trevor Milton and his famous "electric" truck that was filmed rolling downhill under its own momentum. He went to prison for that, although he was later pardoned by Trump. Many people have lost fortunes betting against Tesla based on fundamentals. SpaceX's shareholder list includes so many influential and powerful names, including people closely connected to the current administration, that I find it hard to imagine the stock being allowed to fail in any meaningful percentage. Obviously I'm exaggerating when I say the government would send agents door-to-door to collect valuables from American households to plug any hole in the balance sheet before allowing the stock to fall significantly. But that's honestly closer to how protected I think the company is than what traditional financial analysis would suggest. I'm nobody special, just someone with about $1.8 million in a stock portfolio. Yet this thing called SpaceX stock gives ordinary investors like me a chance to ride alongside the biggest players on their way to even larger fortunes. They are guaranteed not to lose money, and to me its not personal.
- keeda 3mo ago
  I mostly agree but it still seems like a huge risk to play along with the memestock-ery. I have no idea how long this can be sustained. Like, would the upcoming elections going a certain way cause things to unravel? Or, say, the Anthropic IPO tanking and shaking investor confidence (highly doubtful, but a relevant example.) Or would some other unrelated event essentially cause a gigantic rug-pull? And this is before getting to worrying about what kind of large-scale market manipulations we're up against (e.g. relevant example: https://www.forbes.com/sites/hershshefrin/2025/04/05/significant-mispricing-of-tesla-stock-usually-occurs-during-after-market/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/hershshefrin/2025/04/05/signifi...) Compounding this is the fear that even the indexes seem to be compromised (fast-tracking SpaceX etc.) I'm paranoid but at times the entire US stock market looks like a gigantic pump-and-dump. (Seriously, some of the stocks, like NET, rise and fall with highly predictable regularity.) I can't tell, and I know I'm not nearly smart enough, attentive enough, and definitely not well-connected enough to have the perfect timing required to survive a sudden shift or whatever game it is the big players are playing, so I'm just trying to play it safe (which is also hard, because everything is impacted at this scale!)
madaxe_again 3mo ago
Yup - given that it’s $60bn of stock, now is an excellent time to do it, as the current valuation isn’t even irrational. And I say that as someone who believes they have great long term prospects.
HerbManic 3mo ago
Yep, bundle it all together, rename the whole company X (for added confusion), get a few final pay outs in the hundred of billions if not trillions and then Elon flees to Argentina as the whole house of cards crumbles.
- QuaternionsBhop 3mo ago
  Elon flees to Mars*
- plaidfuji 3mo ago
  Does anyone really believe he’s doing all of this just to sell out and live on a beach somewhere? This dude sleeps at his own factories. He literally works like 24/7 and has no personal life. If this was all a cash grab he’s had dozens of opportunities to cut and run with well beyond F U money. If you wanted to scam people there are a lot easier ways to do it than repeatedly founding revolutionary technology companies. I’m not denying that his companies are awash in zany financials, but I don’t think that’s ever been the point
  - seanclayton 3mo ago
    Elon's not going to work 24/7 through the upcoming depression
  - JohnMakin 3mo ago
    gamblers who like to martingale bet strategies often run up huge sums without ever doing the sane thing and cashing out
  - HerbManic 3mo ago
    The optimistic take is that he is doing all this to achieve his space goals, that the ends are justification of the means. But when he is interested in actively interfering with elections the world over and probably spends more time on twitter than anything else, I am not so sure. The thing with the sell out routine is that they think it is all working until it suddenly isn't. The money isn't about living the high life it is about having the high score. Bezos is probably trying to figure out how he can take the No 1 spot right now. If Elon is smart, we will cash out right before the fall.
aaron695 3mo ago
[dead]
locknitpicker 3mo ago
> They’re spending Monopoly money. They also seem to be desperate to buy their way into a monopoly, even though the company itself has a long track record of failing to deliver anything noteworthy.
- Cthulhu_ 3mo ago
  FOMO; Apple grew to one of the biggest companies over time and people were like "h*ck I should've bought it years ago". Tesla then seemed somewhat similar - also 5 years ahead of the curve for EVs, even if they reinvented things that didn't need to and their construction was substandard, so one group of investors bought and boosted the stock to impossible heights. Now SpaceX is the next one, and people want to get on board. I don't think anybody actually believes SpaceX will be worth it. I think some still believed Tesla would be, but their competition has caught up. Everybody is just there to ride the wave of mass hype and FOMO, thinking everybody else is an idiot. This has been coming in a few waves over the years in Tesla, cryptocurrencies, the Everything Bubble, etc.
AbstractH24 3mo ago
> Stock that may very well be near its zenith when this closes (or maybe not. This is so far past fundamentals it’s impossible to tell). Nah, not in a bubble or anything at all.
- slfnflctd 3mo ago
  "The market can remain irrational..." I called bubble on Tesla and Bitcoin both over 10 years ago. Still going strong. It's a whole lotta chaos, fueling some pretty messed up stuff. It is hard to watch.
  - AbstractH24 3mo ago
    Great quote. It's easy to predict what will happen. It's hard to predict when or the second and third-order effects.

munk-a 3mo ago

Elon's award is tied to growing Tesla's market cap - it's pretty transparent that he's just trying to ball-of-mud together everything he can to hit that target and grab the bag.

andruby 3mo ago
What would it mean if SpaceX buys Tesla though? Does the combined market cap count? That would be wrong. Tesla buying SpaceX just for hist bonus and then rebranding to X would be classic Musk. It's a game for him, but so ridiculous. While Tesla was pushing electrification and SpaceX pushing rapid rocket re-use I kind of tolerated Elon's antics, but since he got involved in politics and DOGE I can't bear it anymore.
- lesuorac 3mo ago
  > Does the combined market cap count? That would be wrong. It counts and it's not wrong. Sure, the Tesla award takes into account any M&A but growing a 2T company to 3T is a 50% increase. While growing a 1T company to 2T is a 100% increase so it's expected to be easier for him to hit his award targets with the companies merged as opposed to not merged.
  - andruby 3mo ago
    I understand Tesla acquiring other companies counting to the cap, but Tesla _being acquired_ by another company, why would that count?
    - lesuorac 3mo ago
      Because that's the grand plan from the start. You don't put a sentence like "In other words, upon a change in control where Tesla is acquired, vesting of milestones under the CEO Performance Award does not require the achievement of a matching Operational Milestone." if you didn't think Tesla could be acquired. The goal is to give Elon his 2012 award package but making it his 2018 one.
  - xmprt 3mo ago
    If we combine the market cap of the entire S&P500 we get close to 70T. That doesn't mean any of those individual companies are any more valuable or any of the investors are any richer. It makes no sense that Tesla shareholders would be ok with paying out a performance bonus just for M&A that doesn't grow the value of Tesla and would just dilute their shares.
    - s1artibartfast 3mo ago
      Most are tied to operational milestones as well if I understand correctly
      - lesuorac 3mo ago
        As pointed out by somebody else [1]; Operational Milestones are waived if SpaceX buys Telsa. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=antasvara https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=antasvara
        s1artibartfast 3mo ago
        Thats not what it says. My understanding is SpaceX milestones stay intact. For Tesla ops milestones they would be waived, this is fine because accusition is a chance for Tesla shareholders to cash out at that price.
        lesuorac 3mo ago
        We're talking about his Tesla grant so SpaceX's grant is irrelevant. The text written in the link you did not read, states "Notwithstanding Sections I, II and III above, in the event of a Change in Control, the Operational Milestones shall be disregarded".
        s1artibartfast 3mo ago
        The link supports wxactly what I wrote. Not sure where your confusion is.
  - paulddraper 3mo ago
    It the shareholders' value that counts. And that doesn't get any more by 50% increase with the same dilution.
    - adgjlsfhk1 3mo ago
      the problem is Tesla's board is controlled by musk
- antasvara 3mo ago
  >What would it mean if SpaceX buys Tesla though? Does the combined market cap count? That would be wrong. I took a look at the proxy statement as they have it outlined in this [0] document (Proposal 4). As currently formulated, Musk has 12 operational goals (like ship 1 million robots or hit 50 billion EBITDA) and 12 market cap goals. These need to be paired together for the shares to vest; so, if he reaches the first market cap number, he also needs to fulfill an operating goal for the first set of shares to be earned. These earned shares vest in ~5 years. This comes with a huge caveat. If Tesla changes control, those operational goals go out the window and his stock award is based solely on market cap (along with the shares immediately vesting). The share price for this is the greater of: 1. The last traded Tesla price prior to the acquisition, or 2. The per share price outlined in the acquisition. The "easiest" way to take advantage is to IPO SpaceX (which he did), pump up the market cap, acquire Tesla for a sizable premium, and vest as much of the stock award as you can. It means you get to avoid the operational goals entirely and vest a bunch of Tesla (but soon to be SpaceX) stock. [0]: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/000110465925087598/tm252289-4_pre14a.htm#tKTPC https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/000110465925...
  - NuclearPM 3mo ago
    Conflict of interest laws don’t apply to fascists.
    - brigandish 3mo ago
      Fascists don't support free speech. Please, learn what that word means[0] and then use it responsibly. We're already seeing the effects of misusing and overusing several other important words for political/societal discourse, and this is one of them. It's entirely unhelpful and lowers the quality of conversation here. [0] The Doctrine of Fascism is available, for free, in several places. Start there.
      - bakies 3mo ago
        Elon fits the definition in Britannica pretty neatly
- mcintyre1994 3mo ago
  I feel like it has to eventually become X. Just because he’d find it funny for the stupidest people in the world to post about how he’s turned Twitter into a $2t or whatever company.
itslennysfault 3mo ago
I agree with this, but it seems so crazy to me. How can money be a motivator when you're that rich. I'm not even "rich" but I'm already at a point where money is far from my #1 motivator. I LOVE puppies, but if I had a trillion of them the last thing I'd want is another puppy.
- davidguetta 3mo ago
  Assuming best intentions, making a colony on mars is gonna require money
  - Jtarii 3mo ago
    Not even Elon is delusional enough to truly believe a mars colony is a remote possibility.
    - amoss 3mo ago
      I don't think you can describe his beliefs using booleans like that: you have to use a numeric scale. It would be be correct to say: Elon would need a hell of a lot of ketamine to believe a colony on mars is a possibility.
- carlosjobim 3mo ago
  You cannot get that rich without money being the motivator.
  - digitaltrees 3mo ago
    Yes you can. Money is a medium of exchange. Stock is a medium of exchange. But they buy the ability to effectuate your will in the world. If you have a vision of the world money, human capital, political power are not the measure of success or the goal. They are the instruments of executing a vision. Some people aren't motivated by money, they are motivated by reputation, or pathology.
    - deleted 3mo ago
testing22321 3mo ago
His award is also tied to numbers of vehicles and robots sold. So just increasing market cap won’t do it alone. Even if he merged them, they still have to produce WAY more than they are now.
digitaltrees 3mo ago
No. He is making it an AI company. The prospectus makes that clear. Everything is in service of training and deploying AI. Twitter is data, distribution and marketing, space x is distribution with data centers and internet in space. Cursor is training data and hostile distillation.
- munk-a 3mo ago
  NewBird AI is an AI company which had an extremely irrational stock price bump because it's all about AI. It AI'd its AI with some more AI to AI harder with AI... and that equaled money. If you're writing a prospectus right now and want a lot of large institutional investment you put AI between every letter. We are in a bubble, I don't think there's any disagreement about that, when the bubble will pop nobody knows - but while we're in this bubble everything is AI. I think it's unwise to read that prospectus in good faith given all the other factors (the court case against OpenAI, the race to IPO first, Google's additional stock grant, Elon's history of corporate bailouts) that are pretty plain to see.
- AmericanOP 3mo ago
  Unfortunately computers generate heat, so while Elon can build a business running on hot air on earth, he will not be able to do so in space.
  - Catloafdev 3mo ago
    This is very far from an obstacle, space-functional radiators and thermal management systems do exist.
    - denkmoon 3mo ago
      KW scale radiators for GW scale compute demand. It is not based in reality.
      - keeganpoppen 3mo ago
        it actually is not that impossible, and in fact can be done in a form factor not that different from Starlink satellites: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlQYU3m1e80 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlQYU3m1e80
rlt 3mo ago
That’s not how it works. There’s provisions to adjust the targets if there’s M&A.
burnte 3mo ago
> it's pretty transparent that he's just trying to ball-of-mud together everything he can to hit that target and grab the bag. I agree, and most people do too, yet he'll get away with it. We're in the kleptocracy phase of the fall.

0xffff2 3mo ago

The company that just IPOed is already overwhelmingly "X AI" financially, regardless of the fact that it says "Space X" in the marketing. Whether SpaceX also buys Tesla is hardly even going to move the needle.

iririririr 3mo ago
$10 how "space x" will sell for peanuts the starlink portion to musk and keep only the sinking Ai pieces for the bag holders
- IgorPartola 3mo ago
  StarLink is a bad investment too in my opinion. It is fundamentally a US company that must charge US prices but in the US there are relatively few people who need that tech. Only in more rural areas that are sparsely populated do you not have access to fiber or cable which give better speeds and latency. The majority of their revenue is overseas. But there they can’t reasonably charge $99/month. And there labor and land are cheap such that you can get fiber laid cheaply and quickly.
  - danisth 3mo ago
    Yep, it feels like forever a niche market. As soon as you think about it like fundamental infrastructure (which as I understand it is what we’re supposed to think about) it quickly becomes obvious that cables are better suited. Wealthy enclaves, digital nomads etc will pay for it, but that’s not going to get the revenue they’re hoping for.
    - Fogest 3mo ago
      You mention that cables are better suited... but that is the whole point of Starlink. Getting cables everywhere is either not feasible or expensive. The rural properties are already mentioned as a very big source of usage right now around the world. But you also have everyone who is using it for some mobile purpose. Whether that be planes, boats, RV's, cars, military, etc... I've even seen people live streaming things using Starlink due to cell towers not giving good enough connections where they are. While they may not be ideal or people living in Urban areas, they also aren't limited to selling to people who are physically connected by cable like a regular ISP would be. I think you're underestimating the market here. Especially on the enterprise side when you start thinking of things like airliners, cruise ships, etc...

cryptos 3mo ago

Everything will be folded in "X" eventually, anyway.

joering2 3mo ago

> It’s all in a stock that may very well be near its zenith when this closes No, it is not. This is not legal or financial advice, but I believe the stock could easily rise 2.5x - not because of its current or future financial condition, but because it is run by what may be the most skilled fraudster our planet has ever breed. Charles Ponzi himself couldn't have pulled this off. While most CEOs are careful about what they publicly say or "predict," Musk's companies are fueled by increasingly fantastical projections. The consequences have amounted to some $1.5 million in SEC fines that, relative to the value created, were negligible - and that was under the previous administration. The current one won't be any more aggressive. The closest comparison I can think of is Trevor Milton and his famous "electric" truck that was filmed rolling downhill under its own momentum. He went to prison for that, although he was later pardoned by Trump. Many people have lost fortunes betting against Tesla based on fundamentals. SpaceX's shareholder list includes so many influential and powerful names, including people closely connected to the current administration, that I find it hard to imagine the stock being allowed to fail in any meaningful percentage. Obviously I'm exaggerating when I say the government would send agents door-to-door to collect valuables from American households to plug any hole in the balance sheet before allowing the stock to fall significantly. But that's honestly closer to how protected I think the company is than what traditional financial analysis would suggest. I'm nobody special, just someone with about $1.8 million in a stock portfolio. Yet this thing called SpaceX stock gives ordinary investors like me a chance to ride alongside the biggest players on their way to even larger fortunes. They are guaranteed not to lose money, and to me its not personal.

keeda 3mo ago
I mostly agree but it still seems like a huge risk to play along with the memestock-ery. I have no idea how long this can be sustained. Like, would the upcoming elections going a certain way cause things to unravel? Or, say, the Anthropic IPO tanking and shaking investor confidence (highly doubtful, but a relevant example.) Or would some other unrelated event essentially cause a gigantic rug-pull? And this is before getting to worrying about what kind of large-scale market manipulations we're up against (e.g. relevant example: https://www.forbes.com/sites/hershshefrin/2025/04/05/significant-mispricing-of-tesla-stock-usually-occurs-during-after-market/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/hershshefrin/2025/04/05/signifi...) Compounding this is the fear that even the indexes seem to be compromised (fast-tracking SpaceX etc.) I'm paranoid but at times the entire US stock market looks like a gigantic pump-and-dump. (Seriously, some of the stocks, like NET, rise and fall with highly predictable regularity.) I can't tell, and I know I'm not nearly smart enough, attentive enough, and definitely not well-connected enough to have the perfect timing required to survive a sudden shift or whatever game it is the big players are playing, so I'm just trying to play it safe (which is also hard, because everything is impacted at this scale!)

madaxe_again 3mo ago

Yup - given that it’s $60bn of stock, now is an excellent time to do it, as the current valuation isn’t even irrational. And I say that as someone who believes they have great long term prospects.

HerbManic 3mo ago

Yep, bundle it all together, rename the whole company X (for added confusion), get a few final pay outs in the hundred of billions if not trillions and then Elon flees to Argentina as the whole house of cards crumbles.

QuaternionsBhop 3mo ago
Elon flees to Mars*
plaidfuji 3mo ago
Does anyone really believe he’s doing all of this just to sell out and live on a beach somewhere? This dude sleeps at his own factories. He literally works like 24/7 and has no personal life. If this was all a cash grab he’s had dozens of opportunities to cut and run with well beyond F U money. If you wanted to scam people there are a lot easier ways to do it than repeatedly founding revolutionary technology companies. I’m not denying that his companies are awash in zany financials, but I don’t think that’s ever been the point
- seanclayton 3mo ago
  Elon's not going to work 24/7 through the upcoming depression
- JohnMakin 3mo ago
  gamblers who like to martingale bet strategies often run up huge sums without ever doing the sane thing and cashing out
- HerbManic 3mo ago
  The optimistic take is that he is doing all this to achieve his space goals, that the ends are justification of the means. But when he is interested in actively interfering with elections the world over and probably spends more time on twitter than anything else, I am not so sure. The thing with the sell out routine is that they think it is all working until it suddenly isn't. The money isn't about living the high life it is about having the high score. Bezos is probably trying to figure out how he can take the No 1 spot right now. If Elon is smart, we will cash out right before the fall.

aaron695 3mo ago

[dead]

locknitpicker 3mo ago

> They’re spending Monopoly money. They also seem to be desperate to buy their way into a monopoly, even though the company itself has a long track record of failing to deliver anything noteworthy.

Cthulhu_ 3mo ago
FOMO; Apple grew to one of the biggest companies over time and people were like "h*ck I should've bought it years ago". Tesla then seemed somewhat similar - also 5 years ahead of the curve for EVs, even if they reinvented things that didn't need to and their construction was substandard, so one group of investors bought and boosted the stock to impossible heights. Now SpaceX is the next one, and people want to get on board. I don't think anybody actually believes SpaceX will be worth it. I think some still believed Tesla would be, but their competition has caught up. Everybody is just there to ride the wave of mass hype and FOMO, thinking everybody else is an idiot. This has been coming in a few waves over the years in Tesla, cryptocurrencies, the Everything Bubble, etc.

AbstractH24 3mo ago

> Stock that may very well be near its zenith when this closes (or maybe not. This is so far past fundamentals it’s impossible to tell). Nah, not in a bubble or anything at all.

slfnflctd 3mo ago
"The market can remain irrational..." I called bubble on Tesla and Bitcoin both over 10 years ago. Still going strong. It's a whole lotta chaos, fueling some pretty messed up stuff. It is hard to watch.
- AbstractH24 3mo ago
  Great quote. It's easy to predict what will happen. It's hard to predict when or the second and third-order effects.