On April 23, I wrote about Elon Musk.

At the time, Tesla was struggling badly. The shares were off 42% for the still-young year and there were pseudo-existential questions about the company. I bought the dip, and I made a show of it, or as much of a show as I make of my personal investments, which is deliberately not much: Do your own research. Consult your financial advisor. I’m not your fiduciary. Not investment advice. Etc.

Regular readers will recall my rationale. Here’s what I said in that linked article:

Absurd as it seems to pay up for no growth, remember that Tesla will never be “fairly” valued. If you’re waiting around on a “sane” multiple to buy Tesla, you’ll never buy it. To reiterate: The stock will never trade on a reasonable multiple. If it ever does, that’s when you know it’s over for Musk. That’s when you should sell.

Stakes in Musk are on sale 65% off versus the peak. That’s what you’re buying when you buy Tesla: Stakes in Musk. That’s what accounts for the perpetually rich multiple. If you think you’re buying an EV business (or an AI company or anything else) when you buy Tesla, you’re not thinking about it correctly.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but I’ve scarcely ever been more right in my life. (I don’t count the October 2022 Meta call. That was pure luck.)

Tesla went vertical post-election, and so did Musk’s net worth. The shares had a helluva day last month in and around earnings, but the real fireworks were in the days after Donald Trump was reelected with more than a little help from Elon.

I highlighted the chart above in the latest Weekly. It’s updated with Tesla’s Monday market cap gain as it stood at 1:30 PM ET. Musk’s EV company is worth almost $1.1 trillion.

I don’t think I’m going to offend anyone by calling that what it plainly is: Musk has succeeded in monetizing his relationship with Trump, to whom Musk endeared himself obsequiously in the lead-up to the vote. That’s not a “partisan” assessment. It’s a statement of fact.

He (Musk) may get some manner of official position in the Trump administration — the “Department of Government Efficiency,” or “DOGE” for short (because everything has to be a puerile joke). Who wouldn’t want exposure to a billionaire with an official post in the government of another billionaire who happens to be the most transactional president in American history? And what’s the purest way to bet on Musk? Well, Tesla, of course, just like I said on April 23 when it was trading at — checks notes — $143 and some change.

On Monday, the shares were $341 as the near 90-degree angle rally continued apace.

I’d decry this spectacle as a terrifying harbinger of the techno-plutocracy to come, but that’d be hypocritical considering that, as a few of you know, I’m still hanging on to half the position I established in late April.

Charlie gets it. “Tony Stark’s global magnitude has left the stratosphere,” McElligott wrote Monday. Traders, he said, are “people-proxy[ing] exposure to his upside via his electric car company.”

New record highs for Tesla are within reach. I dare say a foregone conclusion, with the caveat that after this sort of run-up, a pullback would be natural. With that in mind, I’ll close with one more quote from the April 23 piece linked here at the outset:

I don’t know what the future holds for Tesla, but I’ll say this: The notion that we’ve seen the highs — that Tesla shares will never notch a new record — is far-fetched. I don’t pretend to know how long it’ll take, but it won’t be a Nikkei sort of deal. It won’t be decades.