Since he stepped down as co-POTUS in April, I lost track of the daily melodrama that is Elon Musk.

So, I imagine, have a lot of other Americans, and to the extent that’s the case, we’re collectively better off for it.

You could argue we should keep at least one eye on Musk given his demonstrated propensity for heavy-handed intervention in American politics and penchant for inserting himself into US foreign policy without a State Department chaperone.

But keeping even one eye on Musk is to subject yourself to the machinations of a madman which can be… well, maddening. Musk isn’t a madman in the Vladimir Putin sense of the term. But Musk is crazy. I say that as a crazy person myself. So, not necessarily pejoratively.

Some readers are inclined to dispute this, but I don’t think it’s debatable: Musk is some sort of genius. We can quibble about what sort, but at the least, he’s a Michael Burry-type who instead of picking winners and shorting losers in financial markets, threw his diagnosable eccentricity into an increasingly ambitious collection of moonshot companies including one venture which actually catapults things to the moon. By and by, he became history’s richest person.

While I have no problem deriding Musk’s politics — especially when he veers into white replacement theory and other notions of ethno-cultural superiority — I do struggle to dismiss him as an intellect or really in any other sense. I think we should all be similarly modest vis-à-vis Musk, not because we’re obliged to submit to the tyrannical reign of a “techno-fascist,” but rather because… well, let me put it this way: In response to the suggestion he’s not a visionary, Musk might very fairly ask of you or me, “I’m Elon Musk, now who the fuck is a you?” To which the honest among us would have to sheepishly concede, “Well, Elon, when you put it that way…”

That said, he’s still just one man. His bandwidth, despite being immeasurably wider than yours or mine, is limited. And we reached that limit last year when his immersion in politics became, in the opinion of at least some critics, an existential distraction for Tesla. Although I can’t say precisely why, Tesla seems to really, really need Musk in a way that even Apple didn’t need Steve Jobs. It’s almost as if the company’s fortunes are tethered to him as the tide to the moon.

All of that to set up Tesla’s Q3 report which, at the very least, was guaranteed to show a return to YoY sales growth. Recall that deliveries in Q3 re-accelerated, hitting a record above 497,000 globally. That was up more than 7% YoY and easily ahead of consensus. The caveat, of course, is that some of the jump was attributable to a kind of pull-forward effect ahead of the tax credit expiration.

Total revenue in Q3 was $28.095 billion, Wednesday’s report showed, up 12% YoY. That was the best result growth wise since mid-2023.

That said, auto sales rose just 6%. The growth was in energy and storage, where revenues rose 44% from the same period a year ago. Expenses jumped 50%, and operating profit took a commensurately large hit, falling 40% YoY. Margins improved sequentially, but contracted sharply versus Q3 2024.

Capex fell more than 35%, and free cash flow of nearly $4 billion counted as a huge beat to the $1.25 billion consensus.

As usual, the slide deck was vaguely specific on the product roadmap. And no, that’s not a contradiction in terms when you’re Tesla. They’ve perfected the art of being nebulously particular. Here’s the vague part:

We continue to evolve and augment our product lineup with a focus on cost, scale and future monetization opportunities via services powered by our AI software. We remain focused on growing our sales volumes through a differentiated and efficiently managed product portfolio, which includes leveraging and optimizing our existing production capacity before building new factories and production lines.

And here’s the ostensibly specific part:

Cybercab, Tesla Semi and Megapack 3 are on schedule for volume production starting in 2026. First generation production lines for Optimus are being installed in anticipation of volume production.

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a company which so confidently pronounces upon things everyone knows it isn’t confident about.

I’ll be the first to concede I haven’t the faintest when it comes to what the actual timetable is on Tesla’s product roadmap. I don’t even know what all’s on that roadmap. But no one else does either. And you shouldn’t let anyone delude you on that point.

If this were any other company — seriously, any other company, with emphasis on “any” — I’d be unsparingly critical. Because it always feels like investors are being led on. Not in an illegal way, but led on all the same.

But this isn’t any other company. It’s Tesla, and it’s just a bet on Musk. Tesla shares are liquid Musk, as unpalatable as that surely sounds. As long as Tesla has enough liquidity to keep the science lab staffed and open, there will be buyers for the stock. At what price I can’t say, but usually at a price that’s far higher than any fundamentals can justify. Because, again, it’s publicly-traded Elon.

Musk may not be Einstein, but shorting Elon is historically a fool’s errand. According to one definition of insanity often misattributed to Einstein, that means betting against Musk makes you as crazy as he is.