Tesla is the worst-performing stock in the S&P 500 this year
qz.comMy worst performing mutual funds have massively increased in value inversely proportional to the value of Tesla.
So why is Musk an effective CEO, who the article says is crucial to his companies? Is it because he's abusive and forces unethical practices (eg. unsafe working conditions, gaslighting regulators and his customers (e.g. regarding self-driving), but the markets and regulators tolerate/let him get away with it?
Seems like Bezos is another such a CEO, I'm seeing a pattern, I should write a "How to be a great CEO" book based on this idea. Hey I can even write a chapter about how to extend this behavior and end up president..
I think the theory is that without Musk, people might start valuing it as a car company, rather than a magic future company what was going to release self-driving farting flamethrower robots any day now. For all that it hasn't performed well this year, Tesla's valuation is still much higher than one would naively expect.
Amazon's a fairly different situation; no-one's really valuing Amazon on the basis that it might suddenly start doing something completely different and magical.
Musk is a great CEO because he is free marketing. Tesla would be a fraction of its size without musk, not because of technical merits, but because the general public loves (or atleast loved) his wacky personality and his links with high tech. The "elon musk is a real-life iron man" statement was a thing before tesla's rise during covid. Personally I think he got trapped with self-bullshit and that allowed cracks to peel through. Had he been less open about politics and stuck with generic memes, tesla would have still been on the rise.