The only person who can compete with Donald Trump for space above the digital fold right now is Elon Musk, and at this point, Trump and Musk are a Venn diagram.

The overlap between the two is such that it’s very difficult to talk about one (or indeed, even to see one) without mentioning (or seeing) the other. Musk was with Trump in Washington on Wednesday when Trump gathered House GOPers for a pep rally, and he’s now an influential voice when it comes to Trump’s cabinet picks. As most readers are surely aware, Trump does indeed intend to stand up a “Department of Government Efficiency” run by Musk (and Vivek Ramaswamy), stoking fears in some corners that “DOGE” could serve as the implementation arm for a long-rumored purge of the civil service.

Musk is benefiting enormously from his association with Trump. I’ve talked at length since the election about the extent to which Tesla is now being traded for precisely what it is: Musk with intraday liquidity and, better yet, options, which some enterprising market participants leveraged (pun fully intended) to juice an already explosive upside move in the stock.

In “Elon’s World,” I cited Nomura’s Charlie McElligott in noting that the notional value of traded TSLA stock on November 11 was 10% of the total value of all US cash equities trading. That raises the following question: What usually happens in and around these sorts of Tesla-centric tapes? Charlie has the backtest. Here it is:

The table shows the forwards when TSLA was 10% or more of total US cash-traded value during a single session.

“The takeaways need to be looked at not simply on the median return level, but particularly noting the awful -37% excess return in that t+3-month horizon, before the stock generally gets its legs [again] and rallies strongly further out on the median, between six and 12 months,” McElligott wrote.

Editorializing around that backest, Charlie said he’s fielded “bunches of inquiries from folks looking for perspective on ‘when is the right time’/ ‘what is the signal’ to short TSLA?'” (“WEN SHORT?”)

Not investment advice, but I’d steer clear of trying to step in front of Musk right now. He wasn’t this close to the US presidency in and around previous melt-ups for Tesla. That’s not to say Tesla isn’t “due” for a breather, but coming full circle, Musk has made himself synonymous with the President-elect of the United States. That seems like a decent bull case, maybe?

If you’re hell-bent on betting against liquid Musk, proceed with caution: According to S3, hedge funds caught with Tesla shorts post-election were burned to the tune of $5.2 billion.