Tesla dealerships are getting protested and, in some cases, vandalized. Sales are down on 9 of the top 10 countries Tesla sells in. Yet Tesla stock is up. Twitter is a cesspool of nazi-themed bots, and somehow just pulled in $1bn and raised its valuation back up to $44bn.

How is any of this possible? It seems really artificial to me, but I don’t really understand business.

  • Frostbeard@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    When highly profitable companies are valued less than companies like Tesla just confirms that in the stockmarket the rules are made up, and the points don’t matter

  • clutchtwopointzero@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    He gave his stock on those companies as collateral for bank loans and he needs those stocks to hold value otherwise the banks will call the loans and will reduce Musk’s ownership of his companies

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    It’s market manipulation of the highest order. It’s not legal but no one is going to do anything about it.

  • Libra00@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    That’s what we call the dead-cat bounce. The further and faster a stock price falls, the more people think it will go back up and buy in at the new low price, thus at some point there is a short-lived reversal of the decline before it continues as it was. Although much of Tesla’s value recently was from a big jump in November (getting a fancy new oval-shaped office will do that for you), so this is likely as much a correction of that overreaction as it is some protest of or loss of faith in Musk.

    • IMALlama@lemmy.world
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      Although much of Tesla’s value recently was from a big jump in November (getting a fancy new oval-shaped office will do that for you)

      I don’t think many people realize just how big a jump this was.

      • Libra00@lemmy.world
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        Yeah, the price nearly doubled. But then it all came crumbling down again. I doubt it will go much below where it was before for long, but I could be wrong.

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      3 days ago

      Yeah, they are literally begging maga idiots to buy TSLA to keep the price up while executives are unloading shares. International sales completely gone. Domestic sales declining. Cybertruck flopped. Tariffs are going to cripple their production. Competing EV are making TSLA look like amateurs. Like, what’s the upside?

  • stoy@lemmy.zip
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    3 days ago

    Something that is very easy to forget is that stock value is only very loosely tied to actual company value.

    Stock value is based on what people are prepared to pay for the stock, not what the company is worth.

    Say that I create a company that makes newspaper hats for tanks in Ukraine, something utterly worthless, I am the only employee and my inventory is just yesterday’s newspapers that I found in the gutter.

    My company has zero actual value, but I decide to create 50000 shares of my company, sell one to my friend for €2, and suddenly my company’s market value would look like €100000.

  • Raiderkev@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    TSLA has been notoriously impossible to short the last few years. I firmly believe this DD from 5 years ago that Elon figured out a way to pump their stock value through gamma squeezing with OTM call options. The DD is 5 years old, but it was spot on and for a time, the stock just kept going up to where it was inexplicably worth more than it’s next 10 competitors combined. I think the actual sell volume of the world was outpacing his ability to do this for a time, but he is going to continue to try.

    https://www.reddit.com/r/options/comments/hk7nqe/tesla_infinity_call_gamma_squeeze/

    Phillip Low fired him with cause for attempting to manipulate his company’s stock in 2021.

    https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2025/01/27/elon-musk-booted-from-startup-neurovigil.html

    https://www.reddit.com/r/EnoughMuskSpam/comments/1ib5792/philip_low_longtime_friend_and_peer_of_elon_musk/

    Elon has repeatedly trolled the SEC and says he does not respect them. He’s absolutely pumping it up to keep it afloat, and it may even return to ath.

    Elon is a manipulative piece of shit, and that’s why I do not put it below him to have used his vast wealth to have undermined the 2024 election and believe he had a part in hacking it. Hell, he can’t even play video games fairly as we all already saw.

  • Wispy2891@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    The value of a private company is a number that can be pulled from their ass, right?

    Before: there was an idiot that wanted to pay $54.20 for each of the 800 million publicly traded shares = 44 billion valuation even if the yearly earnings after all expenses (EBITDA) was only 680 million (data public, as required by sec) so the board sued that guy to force him to pay when backed down as that valuation was insanely high and the board would never get such a big golden parachute

    Now: we don’t need to publish financial data anymore but CEO says that the company is super profitable, valuation is back to 44 billion, trust us 😉

  • BaumGeist@lemmy.ml
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    Fascism. Once a p single private interest controls the government, they can effectively do whatever they want in the private sector, making them a sure bet for investors

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    3 days ago

    You are not wrong. Elon Musk is the PR man for the companies he either founded or have a majority of shares in. However, his companies’s products and services are not actually superior to his competitors. Take Tesla, the cars are not road-worthy, they are expensive, the battery sets on fire more often, and uses inferior image-detecting camera when driving automatically. Meanwhile, Chinese competitors are cheaper, more safe and use better LIDAR technology for automated driving (but only because the Chinese government heavily subsidise in EV companies making their cars far superior).

    So, as someone already mentioned, hype up your company and convince anyone to buy shares, then your companies’s valuations increase tremendously. It creates the illusion that your company is productive and valuable when in reality it is not.

    • dan1101@lemm.ee
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      3 days ago

      Which is pretty much how Trump has lived his life, but less successfully. No wonder they’re friends. It’s a coop grift.

    • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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      Why is the alternative to Tesla on here is always “Chinese EV” when traditional manufacturers exist and make better products? We don’t want Chinese dumping their cars and leading to the loss of even more manufacturing jobs in North America and Europe.

      Fucking hell, the fight against globalization truly was for nothing, people these days are even defending it against their best interests…

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        Normally I’d be the one to say this is an unfairly harsh take, but when BYD is continuing the proud Chinese tradition of using slave labor to make cheaper products than the competition, I’m inclined to say that maybe they should be off the table as well.

        Maybe EVs shouldn’t be as affordable until the industry is actually sustainable. I’d rather buy a vehicle made by union workers who are paid fairly for their labor, even if it’s more expensive.

      • TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world
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        Chinese EVs are cheaper, unfortunately, so they are competitive.

        Fucking hell, the fight against globalization truly was for nothing, people these days are even defending it against their best interests…

        Globalisation is not bad, it is mismanaged.

        • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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          They’re cheaper as a dumping strategy to make us reliant on China after all local manufacturing is gone, just like China did for everything else.

          Globalization lead to all the bullshit we’re currently living, good jobs left for Asia, people can’t afford housing. Yay globalization! If you want to keep local jobs you can’t be in favor of globalization.

          • TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world
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            We wanted cheaper products, and now we are reaping what we sow.

            Globalisation is not bad, it is mismanaged. Why? There is no globally harmonised rules, policies and regulations to prevent exploitation of workers in third world countries to produce cheap products and services, compensate workers for their jobs being outsourced, prevent environmental degradation, and prevent over accumulation of wealth at the hands of miniscule amount of people. Norway can’t exactly tell Bangladesh they should pay the same wages that workers in Norway are getting.

            How are those going to be resolved? A world government that implements rules and regulations uniformly; instead of dealing with different standards, regulations and policies of other countries-- or lack thereof in case of third world countries (which is why we have cheap goods because these countries offered themselves to be the world’s factory).

            The world government is like the EU but on the world level. It should be able to address the unequal distribution of wealth, unequal division of labour and enviromental issues that the current lawless globalisation “order” has wreaked havoc both to humans and environment. Are you down for that kind of set up? I thought so.

            • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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              Even then, with global trades comes the environmental impact of transporting goods all over the world. It’s not normal to expect the whole world to have access to the same things, it’s not normal that I can purchase a pineapple in Canada, especially not in the middle of winter. All regions of the world would be better served by focusing on local and adjacent productions. Hell, China understood that, they don’t rely on the rest of the world for their shit, they mostly produce what they need and export surplus and are laughing their way to the bank.

              • TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world
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                We can’t exactly stop shipping that is not pragmatic. That is like trying to stop air travel. What we can do is to promote alternatives where it is more practical and easier like converting to EV’s on the road, and using more renewable energy in power plants. Even if majority of CO2 consumption comes from shipping, a huge portion nevertheless comes from vehicles and electricity generation so switching to alternatives would have already made dramatic changes to reducing carbon emissions. Although, if shipping could sail on renewable energy (not that I am aware of), then that would be even better!

                Autarky has been tried before and failed. Good luck growing coffee in China. Speaking of which, China is strangely the new champion of global free trade because they know they can’t produce and grow everything on their own; not because they make literally everything contrary to your statement.

              • Rhoeri@lemmy.world
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                3 days ago

                For someone who is in another thread attacking someone for having an opinion on something you feel they aren’t relevant enough to have anyone to care about their opinion of,

                You sure do have a lot of opinions.

                • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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                  If you looked at my comment history you’ll see that I mentioned that contrary to the person I’m talking about, my opinions aren’t shared in mainstream media. She can have all the opinions she wants and share them, I don’t give a crap about that, I’m concerned when mainstream media starts giving importance to the opinion of people who have no expertise on a subject.

        • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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          Yeah, against the thing that lead the Western world to be dependent on China and to lose most of its manufacturing capacity and that lead to the disappearance of the middle class.

          Maybe you’re too young to realize that back in the 80s and 90s some people were wise enough to understand that if the rich people on the right were fighting for it, it wasn’t good for regular folks.

          • Tattorack@lemmy.world
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            And I’m wise enough to understand that fighting against globalisation is fighting against gravity, or the heat death of the universe.

            All technological and societal advancement leads to globalisation. The fact we can have this argument right now is a result of globalisation.

            If you don’t want globalisation, you might as we stop all world trade, give up on using the Internet altogether, and live like a vagabond in the hills somewhere.

  • Jeffool @lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    If I’m not mistaken it was in 2020-2021, when Tesla stock prices when going gangbusters, Musk was saying it was overvalued. Given constant Cybertruck updates/recalls, general Tesla safety concerns, Ford and Rivian apparently doing well in trucks, and Mercedes apparently having the best self driving, all happening since then, I’m not sure why it should be valued exceptionally high. They had a good name in EV cars, now they have scary stories.

    And that’s not even getting into politics and dropping sales, so, I’m not surprised the stock is trending down

  • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    Every public company bolsters its’ values as much as possible whenever possible unless they’re planning to do stock buybacks or it’s disassembling the business’ assets for profit with the intention of bankruptcy and boardmember bonuses as the end goal (vulture capital).

    However, it should be said that Elon Musk isn’t just artificially boosting his companies. He is literally boosting them. His newfound government power and influence is helping him serve government contracts to himself and cancel them for competitors. The state department awarded him a $400,000,000.00+ USD contract just a short while ago for electric armored vehicles.