• merc@sh.itjust.works
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      1 day ago

      Toyota is a car company that makes solid cars with an anonymous CEO. It has a P/E ratio of about 7.5 and a market cap of about $230 billion.

      Tesla is a car company that makes a few solid cars, and one absolutely ridiculous vehicle that is the laughing stock of trucks. It has a CEO that most of the world has an intensely negative opinion of, and that negative opinion is highest among the people wealthy enough to consider buying a Tesla. It has a P/E ratio of approximately 175 and a market cap of $918 billion.

      If Tesla’s P/E ratio fell to something more realistic, let’s be extremely generous and say 7, it would be worth only $37 billion, about 4% of the current value. Realistically, it should be significantly below that. When people are regularly spraypainting swastikas on your vehicles, your P/E ratio should be lower than other automobile manufacturers because it’s a sign that your future growth prospects may be slightly impaired by the unwillingness of people to buy your vehicles.

      When Tesla’s value does collapse (and I’m convinced it’s a “when” not an “if”) it will crater Musk’s net worth, because at least half of it is due to his Tesla stock.

      • LePoisson@lemmy.world
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        17 hours ago

        I fucking hate stock market bullshit it’s just made up of people’s feels. Not even grounded in reality in the slightest.

        Maybe when people collectively realize this ridiculous smoke trick of run away capitalism as our means of social organization is just that, smoke, we may have a chance.

        But I guess in the meantime I wish I would have bought Bitcoin years ago even though it’s being treated as a security when it’s backed by thin air. It’s wild how concentrated the actual amount of Bitcoin is though. It’s like an oligarch’s wet dream.

        • merc@sh.itjust.works
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          17 hours ago

          As much as people hate short sellers, this is how they’re useful. They help make the prices of things in the stock market more realistic by finding the companies that are overvalued, short-selling them, and then telling the world how badly overvalued the companies are so that their stock returns to a more realistic price.

      • snooggums@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        Supposedly the self driving capabilities is the reason for the high valuation, but he has lied about having it ‘by the end of the year’ for about a decade now. So maybe they will catch on around 2030 if the economy doesn’t completely collapse in the next few years.

        • merc@sh.itjust.works
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          24 hours ago

          Nobody who knows anything about self-driving would give Tesla any credit for that.

          The fact that Tesla’s slight improvement to lane-assist is labelled as “full self-driving” by Tesla has really damaged the reputation of the industry. GM is way ahead of them because of the knowledge they have in-house thanks to Cruise. And Cruise gave up because they were so far behind Waymo.

          • anomnom@sh.itjust.works
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            3 hours ago

            Cruze also parked on a pedestrian, but I think Waymo is only working because google has the money to blow on human monitors working remotely.