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238

Why does it feel like Elon is artificially boosting his companies? (programming.dev)

submitted 3 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

79 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.

(page 2) 30 comments

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 3 days ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago (11 children)

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...

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 days ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 days ago (5 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago

Just wait until the April report.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 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

[–] [email protected] 50 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (4 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 days ago

You've just explained most Tech Startup unicorns, by the way.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 days ago (3 children)

You'll need to have 500k shares total for the valuation to be 1M

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago

Yep, good catch!

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago

From someone who doesn't know shit about finance, thank you for the explanation

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Because he is

[–] [email protected] 60 points 3 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Good find. I am convinced Tesla is the Enron of our day.

The scheme only works as long as most people keep holding their stock. Once they start selling, it will be a very quick road down.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 days ago

And with the global outcry against the company, I don't think that day is far off. They know there's going to be reduced demand for their products, because even those who don't feel like they want to boycott Tesla out of principle might still reconsider buying one if they don't want to deal with the shame/risk they'll get from others.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 days ago

And then he will be a dead Hopefully. Through Vanguard and Blackrock the Saudis and Qataris are said to have substantial investments in Tesla. And especially the former are not kind people when it comes to fraud to their disadvantage.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago* (last edited 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.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

The stock market is not the real economy.

Unironically also part of the reason why these fuckers are completely morally bankrupt.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 days ago

Russia, Saudi Arabia, North Korea pumping the stock.

[–] [email protected] 93 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Yet Tesla stock is up.

Well, over what period of time are you talking about?

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/TSLA/

For the day, TSLA is up 5.27%.

For five days, down 0.51%.

For one month, down 26.37%.

Year-to-date, down 38.41%.

For six months, up 4.39%.

Like, depends on the start and end time that you're looking at.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 3 days ago (1 children)

For 1 year, up 45.59% (this is fucking crazy!) For 5 years, up 625.30%

This is not normal for any stock, even if the company was doing good. But the company isn't doing good.

Their market share is small and hasn't grown in ways promised. The Cybertruck was a disaster, with almost no customers, only legal in some parts of the world (parts without proper regulations) and a bunch of delays and technical issues. Demand has been decreasing, even before Musks latest public Nazi shit. Revenue is down. There appears to have been fraud in the numbers they did report and those weren't good to start with. The whole promised future of self driving cars has turned out to be total BS and only the very strict anti-sue terms has saved them on this point. Other companies in the same space are doing better on all fronts.

Yet somehow the stock is worth more than the rest of the market they are in? It makes zero sense and you can bet your ass illegal shit has been done to get it to this point.

Musk has been begging people to please hold on to their stock. And if I know one thing, if the big shareholders start saying shit like that, sell immediately! It's a sign they are going to sell and you need to get out before all the money is gone.

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[–] [email protected] 37 points 3 days ago (2 children)

People have the memory of a goldfish nowadays.

I was alive during the 2000 and 2008 market crashes, but also the 2020 non-crash.

It could be that Tesla really has cracked autonomous driving by summer, as Elon claims, and then they will recover a lot of market value.

But more realistically, as the saying goes, even a dead cat bounces.

Markets never go down in perfect lines. There are dead cat bounces along the way.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Tesla really has cracked autonomous driving by summer, as Elon claims

He really says that??

He must be sooo desperate LMAO

[–] [email protected] 27 points 3 days ago (2 children)

He's been saying "fully autonomous" by next year for literally like 10 years, lol. Short memories indeed.

I believed in him since like 2001. I stopped believing in him by 2015.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 3 days ago (4 children)

to be fair what they've built is amazing, and good enough for 80-90% of the time. but it needs to be 99.9999% of the time and thats not this year. they will release something of course, and rely on remote human intervention, and many people will die. but the media wont mention it and the statistics will be buried, and when it rains or is foggy or too hot etc millions will all be stranded.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

What they've achieved is irrelevant. They're never gonna achieve 99.999% with standard cameras + AI for decades. Elon can't magically manifest the safety of Lidar through hopes and prayers; yet he believes he can, so the only logical conclusion is that he's a complete fucking moron con artist, only skilled at separating people from their money.

If you don't understand this yet, print me out some examples of your best code, and email me a list of your top accomplishments from the last week!

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 days ago

I'm of the opinion that we are on the brink of a facism that makes the previous ...

funny enough, fuck it

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