Peter Gray
But I do have to question why any negative comment on Musk is questioned as fake by you, but I've never seen any positive remarks from Musk or Tesla questioned in the same way by you.
I could write a good bear case for shorting Tesla, but for the moment I believe the bull case is more compelling, especially when one gets articles like that by Maureen Callahan in the NYpost which is a very well written emotional bear case with imho nothing of any use for bears.
If we look at article:
NYpost article
“Not sure we actually need a building,” he tweeted. Meanwhile, he was “back to sleeping at the factory” to hit production deadlines.
This is a genius?
Tesla was founded in 2003, but the world’s largest automakers quickly surpassed Musk’s vision for electric vehicles. Tesla will never catch up. Shareholders are finally catching on.
Musk isn’t sorry and nothing is ever his fault
So should the government, which reportedly gifts Musk’s companies with an estimated $4.9 billion in subsidies.
Star investor Jim Chanos called Tesla a “walking insolvency” back in 2016. He doubled down in December, saying Tesla is “headed for a brick wall.”
SpaceX — which Musk touts as replacing NASA and colonizing Mars — has been a literal failure to launch. So many of its rockets have burned up or crashed that Musk, for reasons unknown, has made a blooper reel.
In this section she first of all infers that Musk is an idiot, by asking how could a genius sleep on the factory floor?
Then she states that in 15 years Musk’s vision has been surpassed by the world’s largest automakers. In what sense? In electric cars sold, in charging stations,… nothing, just an emotional argument appearing to anyone who knows none of the facts.
Then another jibe at Musk, suggesting he is arrogant and takes no responsibility.
Then she cites Chanos as a star investor, a man who is down hundreds of millions on his Tesla short. Thats not the kind of star anyone wants investing their money.
Then the article attacks his rocket launches saying so many have failed that he has a blooper reel. Reads great but at odds with the facts and the blooper reel was of his early launches showing what problems SpaceX had to overcome.
How one would one describe this article. The current vogue is describe it as fake news, more historical descriptions would be a hit job, the sort of thing that editors are told to do their by their owners. One sees this all the time in UK tabloid press with one paper arguing for one political party, another for a different one, all emotional and all well received by the target audience who don’t want balance. The susceptibility of the masses to this kind of influence was for centuries used as a justification for keeping power within a small select group which eventually grew to be males with property and only recently to embrace all the adult population.
I find it interesting and although I would like to dismiss it, the reality is that such things sway voters and purchasers of things and all companies and politicians put intense efforts in to good PR. E.g. VW always market them selves out as makers of reliable well engineered motors, conveniently forgetting to mention how they made cars that deliberately flouted US emission regulations and were heavily fined for cheating their purchasers.
So for now there is so much ridiculous stuff being produced on Musk that it is amazing to me how well he has so far managed to ride it all out and what I fear most about Tesla as an investment is not that this stuff is predominantly spun reality more like lies than balanced journalism, but that someone might decide the only solution here is to take Musk out and that imho is currently the biggest bear threat for Tesla.
Others argue that it is Musk flamboyant style that will destroy him. Those folk have not studied the historical cases of similar figures. If one were to look at Wedgwood, Arkwright, Edison, Ford ...and others who changed the world one will find this same kind of ego flamboyance, obviously tempered by the limited media of their time. One can do the same thing with politicians. No one could describe Churchill as a man of modest ego, or in more recent times Thatcher, Reagan and Trump. Yet all of these got elected and did things that defined the lives of their voters during their tenure. Although many folk trained in the hard jobs loathe the concept it is emotion and the ability to master and focus it that is critical in human advancement. Take that away and one has bland politicians that no one remembers and whose achievements are forgotten.
Regards,
