[oh_sigh]

my context: I've bought and hodl'd TSLA since the day of the IPO @ ~$19.

I agree with you I have no idea why it is valued the way it is. My original thought for getting on at the IPO was that since they were one of the first big electric car players, they would get a patent portfolio that would be worth a lot in the future even if they failed as a car manufacturer. Of course, that logic went out the window when Elon promised to license the patents freely to anyone who wanted to build electric cars a number of years ago.

I can understand people valuing TSLA at more than, say, Ford, because of their future prospects and because they aren't burdened with legacy issues like worker pensions, but it's hard to believe it should be worth 10x. It also isn't clear to me how TSLA went down ~10% over the past 5 days but is right back up there on news of the split.