I hate to say I told you so, but… well, I told you so.
“Way” back on April 23, I wrote about Elon Musk. Tesla’s shares were beset, and there were pseudo-existential questions swirling around about whether the company’s hard pivot to “Robotaxi” might be a kind of death knell.
I wasn’t worried. In fact, I was buying. As I reminded readers, you don’t buy Tesla to bet on cars. You buy Tesla to bet on Musk. “I don’t care for the man. At all. But that’s a separate consideration from whether I’d be a buyer should ‘he’ go on sale for 75% off versus the highs,” I said, in an article called, simply, “Elon Musk Will Figure It Out.”
Seven months and one election later, Tesla’s 189% higher. Musk did in fact “figure it out.” Specifically, he figured out how to commandeer the US government. I’m kidding. Sort of. Not really? As JonesTrading’s Mike O’Rourke put it a few weeks ago, “Musk’s investment in Donald Trump’s election may have the greatest ROI of any investment ever.”
I bring this up again — and this is the “I told you so” part — because on Wednesday, Tesla hit a new record high, up near (amusingly in the context of Musk) $420. In the same April article mentioned above, I said it was “far-fetched” to suggest, as some people did, that Tesla would never notch a new record. “I don’t pretend to know how long it’ll take, but it won’t be a Nikkei sort of deal,” I said. “It won’t be decades.” In fact, it was just a few months.
It’s difficult to overstate the audacity of this gambit. Musk has monetized the US presidency to the tune of — checks notes — well more than half a trillion so far, measuring with Tesla’s market cap (see the figure below). And Trump’s not even physically in charge yet.
Tesla was worth $807 billion on November 5. As of Wednesday, it was worth $1.34 trillion. Plainly — and I don’t give a damn about any Tesla analysts’ protestations on this point — that has virtually nothing to do with any cars, and pretty much everything to do with Musk’s proximity to Trump.
You could argue those two considerations are inseparable given that Musk will leverage his proximity to the White House to improve Tesla’s “fundamental” outlook, but that glosses over the key point: We’re witnessing, in real-time, the birth in America of a Putin-style, symbiotic oligarchy.
The prelude was Jeff Bezos’s decision to nix WaPo’s Kamala Harris endorsement. That’s what’s known as “anticipatory obedience.” Musk took it a step further with what we might call “anticipatory obsequence.” It’s paying off. His net worth on Wednesday exceeded $400 billion.
I’m not complaining. As someone who bought Tesla in late April, this is working out just fine for me. But I worry it won’t work out fine for the country.
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Are you selling TSLA now or holding it due to the “tailwinds”? I don’t own it, I am just curious.
I don’t need the money and I don’t want to pay the taxes on it, so I’m holding it.
My grandfather used to say it was his patriotic duty to pay taxes; but greed is good I guess…
Well I mean I’m already paying taxes on the part I sold, and if I thought the rest of it was going to just crater tomorrow, I’d obviously sell it too, but if the past month’s any indication, Elon’s going to leverage his relationship with Trump for everything it’s worth, and by God I want my piece of that additional upside. [shrug]
If Beelzebub’s in the pilot’s seat with Lucifer riding shotgun, might as ride the slipstream…
I thought you were godless H, is trump your god now?
Uh, what? You folks are seriously mad that I continue to own Tesla? Pull it together, guys.
Why not? Musk is constitutionally barred from the presidency or he’d already have it. And he gets much more money this way. He saw what Trump did in his first term. He sent bills to the government for millions, paid zero taxes and weaseled out of some bad property deals. Musk and Trump are a couple of grifters who really understand “magic beans.” That third wheel they picked will be gone by summer.
Didn’t mean to start this. The comments below are childish. Thanks for your honesty, H.
I saw something relevant to this a day or two ago in a story about the possible negative impact on corn belt farmers and workers (think MAGA base) if RFK is confirmed and moves to ban HFCS. There were amazing photos of a couple of giant refineries producing both corn syrup and ethanol.
The author interviewed workers at each. Unsurprisingly they were not real enthusiastic about that prospect but rightly kept a wait-and-see attitude, while also trusting Trump not to stab them in the back. The relevent quip came when an interviewee piped in and said “I’M SURE THAT ELON WILL THINK OF SOMETHING!”
So can we add “Elon will think of something” to “Trump will fix it” as mottos for 2025?
would love to see the end of HFCS and ethanol. would love to see end of musk corporate welfare.
when they make the lists of which things to actually do, these arent onthe list. just like Homan isnt going to TX or FL to find illigal immigrants, he’s going to chicago.