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The stock, and subsequently the stock market, is so detached from reality. For the life of me, I can’t understand why investors will literally put a 100x premium on Musk, and the things he touches. I feel like I’m living in some alternative universe.
Have you watched a Starship launch? The more I understand the incredible feats of engineering they are performing the more bullish I become.
Starship is still in development. Do you think the next generation of the iPhone is a waste of time because it doesn't make money yet?

The stock price reflects the potential of the business in the future as well as its current concrete value.

"It doesn't make money."

if that's the reason, why people invest in amazon then since Amazon literally need 20 years for that company to be profitable

because they are not targeting dividend that's why, they expect the exponential growth by re-investing profit to grow the business at scale

we literally live in YC subs where (almost)every startup isn't profitable either but VC still invest, I wonder why you write this

Starship and anything space related is like 5% of the valuation.
Space X is first and foremost being valued on their AI data centers.
Which make no physics sense
The more I understand the incredible feats of engineering they are performing the more bullish I become.

You know he's not going to sleep with you, right?

There is no reason to be surprised investors aren't always that rational, though it is weird how extra giddy they are to simp for Musk in particular.

Company literally does not make money, and his other major company is getting dumpstered in its market too.

SpaceX had this similar mystique to where owning a private share was something rich people bragged about like having a rare Lamborghini.

A lot of these modern bubble stocks are underpinned by a bunch of intangible collectibility reasons that realistically only exist because of a huge cash glut in the US stock market.

Maybe it goes on for a long time, but realistically as baby boomers start drawing down on their retirement portfolios and/or dying there's reason to believe money will start leaving the markets in the next 20ish years.

If you're right, that's great news for you, as you can make tons of money buying Spacex puts
If the market is detached from reality then you very much cannot. It's like you weren't even listening.
Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.

- John Maynard Keynes

Not if people continue to have the 100x premium on Musk. Puts only make sense if the market returns to rationality.
SpaceX will cocoon the planet with next level new accelerated technology the way baseload grid electricity supply took 300 years to achieve.
In a word, baloney.

What, exactly, is the "next level new accelerated technology"? That's a lot of hype-y buzzwords, but what does it mean? What's the actual technology?

Starlink? I mean, we already have internet. Is Starlink that much better, to deserve this glowing description?

Or is it some other tech? If so, what is it?

If you can write that glowingly, can you put some substance behind it? Or is it just hype?

Congratulations to the US. I'm sure it must be nice to have a trillionaire

I wish my country had a trillionaire. That would give my day to day life meaning

It's not like his checking account has $1T in it, this is just a technicality that sums up all of the hypothetical value of the shares he owns in companies.

If he actually tried to sell it and turn it into cash it would be less than $1T.

Yeah but he can borrow against it and not pay any taxes.
Same as anyone else with a HELOC, asset secured loan, etc. You have to pay loans back, which is why they're not taxed as income.
If you borrow against it you still have to pay interest. If he somehow found someone to loan him $1T, which would probably be practically impossible, the interest would make the total amount he got less than $1T.
Do people do that? Can I e.g. borrow against my assets and not pay any taxes? Curious to learn more.
So? Imagine he sells all his ownership and this tanks the value of his companies by 90%. Oh no. He only has $100,000,000,000 in the bank. Enough to be ludicrously rich a thousand times over.

I have never once understood this "oh it is only paper money" argument.

I'm just saying that when you say "trillionaire" it evokes the idea that he's hoarding $1T in a bank account. But it's almost entirely just locked up in shares of companies, and if he actually wanted to turn it into cash it wouldn't actually be 1T.
If it's so worthless, let me have it instead of him.
It's more like "he was already rich before, but now more of his wealth is countable".
SpaceX will be listed on QQQ in the next fifteen days. There are only around 4.2% shares publicly available for trading, (about $75 billion out of a $1.75T market cap). This means passive funds that include QQQ will be forced to buy and compete over a very small sliver of the total shares (estimated at around $25 billion)

The exchange regulations have just been inexplicably loosened a month ago to allow this circus to happen. Beforehand, a company would have to show profitability and stability and wouldn't be allowed to be listed on an index for at least a year after its IPO.

So there is no wonder why the price is as it is. Perfect scam for wallstreet and the little guy get screwed so even better.

Musk has killed hundreds of thousands of people with his reckless dismantling of USAID (https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/how-elon-musk-killed-hun...) and actively promotes white supremacy and race riots on Twitter. The Georges Ruggiu of social media.

Meanwhile, here in our little tech bubble, we pretend it's not happening -- that he's not spending half the day amplifying some of the literal worst people on Earth and blathering about how immigrants are coming to rape our culture. Just focus on the IPO. Don't look behind the curtain.

Where is a good chunk of this newfound money going to go? Into the pockets of AfD, Reform, and other far-right monsters around the world.

It's all just... abhorrent. Beyond words. Regretfully, I start to understand the state of society that can foment revolution. Never before have I felt such impotent fury at the state of things.

I can only hope his career ends as Ruggiu's once did: in shackles in front of an international tribunal.

It'll end in suicide or OD. Every time he pulls off a coup like forcing huge indices to buy and hold massive amounts of $80 billion float he delays the inevitable but in the end his puffery will collapse at some point.

I feel second hand embarrassment for all the bankers and analysts who have felt the need to pump this

I think he's steadily working towards "too big too fail": make the entire US economy depend on his rat's nest of a megacorp, plus miltech/policetech (SpaceX, Grok).
Agreed, but please saying "Meanwhile, here in our little tech bubble, we pretend it's not happening" is a quite a bit of a leap.

Right now there are a few stories on "/newest" calling out what is going on. A few of them:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48514107

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48513464

Also plenty of people upvote these stories when they come up. Yes, most of them are not welcomed by the HN moderating rules/team, and yes a large portion of them get death-flagged.

But please do not disregard the people silently doing something about it. It only reinforces the lie that "people who care about democracy" are outliers and alone. No we are not!

Yes, but: it's hard to have optimism when 4/5 of articles about Musk's horrifying behavior are insta-killed, while Grok and SpaceX puff pieces are cheerfully discussed with nary a mention of their owner's murderous politics.

What does it take to make someone persona non grata in SV tech? Absolutely nothing, as long as they keep bringing in the big bucks. Nazi salutes, incitement of racial violence, thousands dead from starvation and cut-off medical care -- doesn't matter in the slightest. In a functioning society, Musk would not be able to go anywhere without being swarmed by protestors.

I've read somewhere that even some janitors / lunch ladies became millionaires from their shares. Looking then at the great performance of some other stocks, I really wonder where we're headed
I would be surprised if janitors get shares. This is Musk we’re talking about.
Spacex gave lots of low level employees stocks. Either on top of, or as a payroll deduction ESPP.
I’ve never worked at any large company where janitors/cleaning staff were employees. Usually that kind of work is contracted out.
its janitor at first but he climbs into engineering team
Something like ~500 new millionaires is what i've read on x.
It was actually 4500, but that was at the $135 price. With it having gone up 40% that number might now be more like 6500.
the level of cynicism being communicated on this thread is astounding!
Looking at the figures, I think it is justified.