[mikeryan]

It’s all in a stock that may very well be near its zenith when this closes (or maybe not. This is so far past fundamentals it’s impossible to tell).

They’re spending Monopoly money.

It also seems like SpaceX is poised to Hoover up all of Elons companies so it’s might not be “just a space company” for long.

[0xffff2]

The company that just IPOed is already overwhelmingly "X AI" financially, regardless of the fact that it says "Space X" in the marketing. Whether SpaceX also buys Tesla is hardly even going to move the needle.

[iririririr]

$10 how "space x" will sell for peanuts the starlink portion to musk and keep only the sinking Ai pieces for the bag holders

[IgorPartola]

StarLink is a bad investment too in my opinion. It is fundamentally a US company that must charge US prices but in the US there are relatively few people who need that tech. Only in more rural areas that are sparsely populated do you not have access to fiber or cable which give better speeds and latency.

The majority of their revenue is overseas. But there they can’t reasonably charge $99/month. And there labor and land are cheap such that you can get fiber laid cheaply and quickly.

[TomK32]

StarLink is the only thing about SpaceX that makes a profit. But that's only possible because no one else has a network up there hence it can ask for any price it want. Let's not forget that before StarLink there was Iridium and it got ousted because there was a better offer and I wouldn't be surprised if some other company will eventually go up with a better offer.

[adastra22]

Uh, all of SpaceX’s launch business has been insanely profitable since 2010. They basically own the entire global launch market with huge margins.

[Unit327]

They aren't in the black at all, let alone "insanely" so. Maybe if they just did commercial launches on falcon 9, but instead they've been shoveling those "huge margins" straight back into r&d on starship etc.

[wafflemaker]

Starlink guided drones are tipping the scales for Ukraine right now. That's what enables the range required to successfully hit trains and fuel trucks supplying Crimea through the "land bridge" made from conquered lands in South Ukraine.

That plus satellite comms. Both Russia and Ukraine were very fond of how it improves communication.

Edit: meant to say that in the time of global instability, weapons tech is going to be valuable.

[hajile]

This is putting the world at risk of Kessler Syndrome.

[defrost]

Not so much Ukraine using drones that use starlink, more the sheer number of starlink sats up and planned, the numbers in the proposed other constellations going up and planned, and the ongoing propensity of Chinese rockets to fragment after use rather than safely de orbit.

For interest:

An Orbital House of Cards: Frequent Megaconstellation Close Conjunctions (2025)

  Our calculations show the CRASH Clock is currently 5.5 days, which suggests there is limited time to recover from a wide-spread disruptive event, such as a solar storm. This is in stark contrast to the pre-megaconstellation era: in 2018, the CRASH Clock was 164 days. 

~ https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.09643

[danisth]

Yep, it feels like forever a niche market. As soon as you think about it like fundamental infrastructure (which as I understand it is what we’re supposed to think about) it quickly becomes obvious that cables are better suited. Wealthy enclaves, digital nomads etc will pay for it, but that’s not going to get the revenue they’re hoping for.

[Fogest]

You mention that cables are better suited... but that is the whole point of Starlink. Getting cables everywhere is either not feasible or expensive. The rural properties are already mentioned as a very big source of usage right now around the world. But you also have everyone who is using it for some mobile purpose. Whether that be planes, boats, RV's, cars, military, etc... I've even seen people live streaming things using Starlink due to cell towers not giving good enough connections where they are.

While they may not be ideal or people living in Urban areas, they also aren't limited to selling to people who are physically connected by cable like a regular ISP would be.

I think you're underestimating the market here. Especially on the enterprise side when you start thinking of things like airliners, cruise ships, etc...

[hyperadvanced]

Agreed, starlink is obviously advantageous from the global (and extra-global) perspective. Running cables is expensive. But so is launching satellites, and it’s hard to see how you reach a tipping point where satellites gets cheaper than the standard boring cable networking that supports the terrestrial internet

[IgorPartola]

How many people actually live in areas that do not have some sort of broadband? That’s the whole point: this is a product designed for relatively few people.

[davnicwil]

I think there's a strong chance this is a case of it creating a whole new market though.

There are people whose current behaviour/situations will happen to benefit from this, and that may be a niche, but seems like there's a really solid chance many more people actually will change their behaviour in response to this being available. That's how disruption happens.

To be honest I can easily see the default changing if the service is good enough. I mean it seems like you basically get most of what is good about wired plus a whole load of extra previously totally unavailable benefits. For a price, to be sure, but that'll come down.

[xp84]

> labor and land are cheap such that you can get fiber laid cheaply and quickly.

Which is why all of sub-saharan Africa is crisscrossed in fiber, and every hut in those villages has an ONT zip-tied to the straw walls where they get their symmetrical gigabit service.

[sneak]

What a terrible take.

There is a huge market even just in the US for Starlink. The worldwide market for people who need internet access in remote places is positively gigantic.

Additionally, Starlink could be hugely profitable if they exclusively sold access to ships and aircraft. You'll never be able to run fiber to those.

They can indeed reasonably charge $99/month to many many millions worldwide who don't have any options for low latency, high speed internet access. You vastly underestimate the need for the service.

[gorgoiler]

On the one hand you have a technology product that’s only relevant to rural consumers. Nine out of ten people have cable already.

On the other hand your margins are amazing because all you do is fly little boxes over everyone’s heads launched with government subsidized rockets. No linemen or plant-hire or contractors to sap your profits.

The biggest threat would be commoditized terrestrial wifi / 5G. The more cell service competition there is, the smaller the market for satellite, until it’s only applicable to 1% of the population (and the poorest 1% at that.)

[simondotau]

> Nine out of ten people have cable already.

More like 8.2 out of ten. Either way the remainder is still a pretty decent market. And that's just talking about people in the USA. About 75% of Starlink subscribers are outside the USA.

> and the poorest 1% at that

Not by a lot. People who live in remote areas in the USA tend to have much less money overall, but they tend to spend much less money overall, leading to a similar amount of buying power. Someone who lives remote is more likely to own their home outright or have a relatively small mortgage. Their socio-economic status can appear numerically depressed because the numbers generally don't account for non-monetary consumption. (You got paid a salary and bought salmon from the supermarket. Remote dude fishes for salmon in a local stream. You both traded your time for salmon, but remote dude's salmon is invisible to GDP statistics.)

And furthermore, for them, Starlink would be budgeted for like an essential service rather than a luxury convenience.

[dpoloncsak]

Just throwing it out there, Im a Verizon customer in the Tri-State Area and I frequently lose service on the train or bus on my way to the city. It's more than just a 'rural issue'. I looked into getting a StarLink plan for my commute until I realized logistically, at best, I'm a freak sitting next to the window with a satellite dish on the train.

[Gud]

No it’s not.

I flew from Zürich to Bangalore via Qatar and both flights had starlink.

There are many many uses for it, besides rural homes.

[sneak]

> Nine out of ten people have cable already.

What on Earth are you talking about?!? Half the people on Earth don’t have any sort of internet access at all.

> government subsidized rockets

The Starlink launches are not subsidized in any way. Now it’s clear you are either totally uninformed, or actively trolling.

> The biggest threat would be commoditized terrestrial wifi / 5G. The more cell service competition there is, the smaller the market for satellite

This is actually one of their biggest market opportunities. How do you think the backhaul for 5G towers works in extremely remote locations?

Like I said, terrible take.

[hajile]

Most of the areas without good internet barely take home $100/m and a lot of them take home less than that.

If you hooked up every single cargo ship on the planet to starlink, you'd only add around 100k connections and average wages on most of those vessels is $5-8/hr (very few US/EU sailors these days) for a handful of people which tells you how much businesses actually care about their workers who do dangerous jobs.

[munk-a]

Elon's award is tied to growing Tesla's market cap - it's pretty transparent that he's just trying to ball-of-mud together everything he can to hit that target and grab the bag.

[andruby]

What would it mean if SpaceX buys Tesla though? Does the combined market cap count? That would be wrong. Tesla buying SpaceX just for hist bonus and then rebranding to X would be classic Musk.

It's a game for him, but so ridiculous. While Tesla was pushing electrification and SpaceX pushing rapid rocket re-use I kind of tolerated Elon's antics, but since he got involved in politics and DOGE I can't bear it anymore.

[antasvara]

>What would it mean if SpaceX buys Tesla though? Does the combined market cap count? That would be wrong.

I took a look at the proxy statement as they have it outlined in this [0] document (Proposal 4). As currently formulated, Musk has 12 operational goals (like ship 1 million robots or hit 50 billion EBITDA) and 12 market cap goals. These need to be paired together for the shares to vest; so, if he reaches the first market cap number, he also needs to fulfill an operating goal for the first set of shares to be earned. These earned shares vest in ~5 years.

This comes with a huge caveat. If Tesla changes control, those operational goals go out the window and his stock award is based solely on market cap (along with the shares immediately vesting). The share price for this is the greater of:

1. The last traded Tesla price prior to the acquisition, or 2. The per share price outlined in the acquisition.

The "easiest" way to take advantage is to IPO SpaceX (which he did), pump up the market cap, acquire Tesla for a sizable premium, and vest as much of the stock award as you can. It means you get to avoid the operational goals entirely and vest a bunch of Tesla (but soon to be SpaceX) stock.

[0]: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/000110465925...

[andruby]

Yeah, that seems like his goal.

> If Tesla changes control

Does selling Tesla to SpaceX actually satisfy "changing control" if he remains the largest shareholder?

[antasvara]

My understanding is that Musk doesn't have a controlling share of Tesla. So by the letter of the law, a SpaceX acquisition would qualify as a change in control (because we've gone to a new majority owner).

[NuclearPM]

Conflict of interest laws don’t apply to fascists.

[brigandish]

Fascists don't support free speech. Please, learn what that word means[0] and then use it responsibly. We're already seeing the effects of misusing and overusing several other important words for political/societal discourse, and this is one of them. It's entirely unhelpful and lowers the quality of conversation here.

[0] The Doctrine of Fascism is available, for free, in several places. Start there.

[andruby]

Does Elon _really_ support free speech?

* He suspended multiple journalists from Twitter/X in December 2022 after they had reported on or criticized him [0]

* He has been accused of retaliating against critics and employees through threats, lawsuits, or firings, rather than tolerating dissent. [1]

* He selective enforcing Twitter/X platform rules. Here's 10 examples: [2]

He tolerates speech he likes and often punishing speech he dislikes. That's not being a "free speech" absolutist.

[0] https://truthout.org/articles/free-speech-watchdogs-condemn-...

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/free-speech-absolutist-elon-...

[2] https://gizmodo.com/10-times-elon-musk-censored-twitter-user...

[bakies]

Elon fits the definition in Britannica pretty neatly

[anon7725]

Fascists do claim to support free speech while wielding the apparatus of state to ensure that any speech that they disagree with is suppressed, eg on college campuses.

[mcintyre1994]

I feel like it has to eventually become X. Just because he’d find it funny for the stupidest people in the world to post about how he’s turned Twitter into a $2t or whatever company.

[lesuorac]

> Does the combined market cap count? That would be wrong.

It counts and it's not wrong.

Sure, the Tesla award takes into account any M&A but growing a 2T company to 3T is a 50% increase. While growing a 1T company to 2T is a 100% increase so it's expected to be easier for him to hit his award targets with the companies merged as opposed to not merged.

[xmprt]

If we combine the market cap of the entire S&P500 we get close to 70T. That doesn't mean any of those individual companies are any more valuable or any of the investors are any richer. It makes no sense that Tesla shareholders would be ok with paying out a performance bonus just for M&A that doesn't grow the value of Tesla and would just dilute their shares.

[appplication]

Well yeah it doesn’t make a ton of sense but the shareholders already cast their vote on this. I’m not sure what they expect would happen but I also don’t think they care. Elons shareholders are a special kind of financial sycophant.

[s1artibartfast]

Most are tied to operational milestones as well if I understand correctly

[lesuorac]

As pointed out by somebody else [1]; Operational Milestones are waived if SpaceX buys Telsa.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=antasvara

[andruby]

I understand Tesla acquiring other companies counting to the cap, but Tesla _being acquired_ by another company, why would that count?

[lesuorac]

Because that's the grand plan from the start. You don't put a sentence like "In other words, upon a change in control where Tesla is acquired, vesting of milestones under the CEO Performance Award does not require the achievement of a matching Operational Milestone." if you didn't think Tesla could be acquired.

The goal is to give Elon his 2012 award package but making it his 2018 one.

[paulddraper]

It the shareholders' value that counts.

And that doesn't get any more by 50% increase with the same dilution.

[adgjlsfhk1]

the problem is Tesla's board is controlled by musk

[digitaltrees]

No. He is making it an AI company. The prospectus makes that clear. Everything is in service of training and deploying AI. Twitter is data, distribution and marketing, space x is distribution with data centers and internet in space. Cursor is training data and hostile distillation.

[RevEng]

That prospectus didn't make anything clear. It was pictures of rockets and rubbish about "the light of consciousness". The only real information was buried deep in the middle and it showed a company with poor finances and no clear path to success. Certainly not something worth the likes of Amazon.

[digitaltrees]

I agree with you. But also think the strategic positioning of being fundamentally AI was clear.

[AmericanOP]

Unfortunately computers generate heat, so while Elon can build a business running on hot air on earth, he will not be able to do so in space.

[brightball]

Are we to assume that nobody at the company who had launched more satellites than the rest of the planet combined is aware of this problem?

[Catloafdev]

This is very far from an obstacle, space-functional radiators and thermal management systems do exist.

[jeremyjh]

How much mass do we need to put in orbit to radiate 10 GW of data center heat? How much rocket fuel does it take to lift the rocket fuel required to lift that mass? Which part of this is cheaper or more effective than building data centers 100 feet below the ice in Antarctica ? Other than serving workloads that are already in orbit, I don't see the point. How much addressable market do we have for AI compute that is already in orbit?

[Catloafdev]

The appeal is solar power efficiency gains. And yes it is a notable amount of extra mass, but not a deal-breaking amount. Latency is pretty minimal regardless of location (sub-100ms) which is not nothing but it's minor for things like serving AI inference.

Not saying I think it's the best idea, but it is theoretically feasible.

[BirAdam]

I’m not even worried about the weight and heat. How do you do a disk swap or other service on a machine in a datacenter in orbit?

[denkmoon]

KW scale radiators for GW scale compute demand. It is not based in reality.

[keeganpoppen]

it actually is not that impossible, and in fact can be done in a form factor not that different from Starlink satellites: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlQYU3m1e80

[digitaltrees]

Under rated comment. May be legendary some day.

[thfuran]

Radiative heat transfer exists in space. In fact, it works quite well for cooling as long as you’re in the shade.

[dgoldstein0]

It exists, but "works quite well" is only for a small amount of heat. It takes a big radiator to get rid of heat to ax vacuum. Much easier and cheaper to just keep the computers on earth and cool them with standard air or liquid cooling setups.

[thfuran]

The required radiator for cooling isn’t that much larger than the required solar panel for powering the thing in the first place, and you don’t see everyone saying those are impossible. Is it easier to keep them on the ground? Obviously, but that wasn’t the claim. It just isn’t nearly as hard to cool things in space as a lot of people seem to think.

[munk-a]

NewBird AI is an AI company which had an extremely irrational stock price bump because it's all about AI. It AI'd its AI with some more AI to AI harder with AI... and that equaled money.

If you're writing a prospectus right now and want a lot of large institutional investment you put AI between every letter. We are in a bubble, I don't think there's any disagreement about that, when the bubble will pop nobody knows - but while we're in this bubble everything is AI. I think it's unwise to read that prospectus in good faith given all the other factors (the court case against OpenAI, the race to IPO first, Google's additional stock grant, Elon's history of corporate bailouts) that are pretty plain to see.

[munksbeer]

> Cursor is training data and hostile distillation.

What is "hostile distillation" please?

[SecretDreams]

So what are the rocket ships for?

[digitaltrees]

To launch the data center into space and the satellites that deliver the data to users over star link. The same reason standard oil owned railways. Controlling distribution is a competitive moat no one else can replicate. Only antitrust stopped the standard oil monopoly. Not market forces.

[SecretDreams]

Sounds like a convoluted and expensive way to pollute our skies for generations to come.

[Natfan]

maybe he secretly wants the kessler effect?

[koe123]

Counterpoint: what if he lied in the prospectus? With Elons proven track record of misleading investors and customers I think that possibility has to be considered.

[itslennysfault]

I agree with this, but it seems so crazy to me. How can money be a motivator when you're that rich. I'm not even "rich" but I'm already at a point where money is far from my #1 motivator.

I LOVE puppies, but if I had a trillion of them the last thing I'd want is another puppy.

[throw4847285]

An interview I recently read with Seth Rogen was very illuminating (from the NY Times):

"You know how every once in a while you read one sentence and it snaps your whole perspective into place? I remember reading that book “Going Clear,” about Scientology, and there was one sentence about how if famous people aren’t treated in a certain way, it makes them think they’re not as talented as they wish they were. Like, if I go to a restaurant and I have to wait 20 minutes for a table instead of them just seating me right away, am I not as talented as I thought I was? If someone has a nicer hotel room than me on the press tour, does that mean I’m not as good an actor as I thought I was? I think that’s how a lot of famous people interpret how they’re treated."

I think the same applies to Musk. The money is a proxy for how much everybody thinks he is a special genius. Anything in his life that makes him feel less special requires more validation that he is, and money is the easiest validation he is able to acquire.

[detritus]

It's a game to him.

He won.

Let's move on.

[Gigachad]

Did he really win? His kids all hate him, his wives all left him, he has no real friends. Anyone he interacts with is purely after money and power they can get from him. He spends all day being angry on twitter.com.

Is that winning?

[detritus]

By his metrics? Probably.

[loudmax]

Musk has more money than most of us would dream of, but the game isn't over until it's over.

Speaking just for myself, I've lost respect from Elon Musk. I admire Musk's accomplishments, especially Starship and the Falcon rockets. But I don't respect Musk's personal judgement, his moral integrity or his ethics.

He doesn't know me, and he doesn't care about my opinion (or care about ethics for that matter). But there are a lot of people like me who used to respect him and no longer do. He's surrounded himself with fawning sycophants. At some level he's got to know this, and that the people pretending to pay him respect aren't themselves worthy of respect.

[Gud]

Most people don’t dream of having obscene amounts of money.

[AmericanOP]

Status is transformative, and addictive.

[moate]

Money is power. Power corrupts.

Also, dude was raised by terrible rich people and turned out to be...a terrible rich person. Color me shocked!

[SmirkingRevenge]

Musk is probably a clinical narcissist (NPD). If that's the case, no amount of power, status, or riches (or ketamine) will ever be enough

Their motivations are often cartoonishly superficial and... well... stupid. Stupid in ways that are baffling to most people (even most other neurodivergent). The kind of stupid that drives somebody to secretly pay pro-gamers to play games for them so they can pretend to be a pro-level gamer, only to then expose their own fraud by playing the game themselves on a live stream, without knowing how to actually play it. And then pretending to have connection issues when people start noticing.

I have no trouble believing Musk has simply internalized the identity of being the world's richest man and now has a pathological need to maintain that status, no matter what

[scottyah]

It can't and it's just not. People use the word "money" for different things. He's not doing it for another bill or a number on some screens- neither are most employees of those companies. That's just projecting values on someone else.

The things they're trying to accomplish require extreme amounts of capital.

[appplication]

> The things they're trying to accomplish require extreme amounts of capital.

This could really cut either way. Like assume you mean he’s trying to do something good or noble (lmao) but the other obvious way to read this would be that he’s interested in becoming wealthy/powerful enough to bend the will of a nation before him and burn the world for a laugh.

It’s just funny how the markets seem to want to value him as some sort of AI visionary when his companies are not even in the top 5 for AI, despite his endless resources.

[scottyah]

The way I see it, he's already well past the "wealthy/powerful enough to bend the will of a nation before him and burn the world for a laugh" but still needs to keep working to do his (and companies) stated "good or noble" goals. Why do the fervid anti-Elon people not even bring up his many flaws or mistakes and always concoct weird reality-orthogonal situations?

[appplication]

Ok sure I can be more more direct: how does aligning himself to the republican party and taking a detour to unwind as many social programs as possible in any way help his stated goals, corporate or otherwise?

The only answer is the dude is a self-service piece of shit. He has no principles and is not trying to accomplish anything other that exploit for the sake of exploitation.

[davidguetta]

Assuming best intentions, making a colony on mars is gonna require money

[Jtarii]

Not even Elon is delusional enough to truly believe a mars colony is a remote possibility.

[amoss]

I don't think you can describe his beliefs using booleans like that: you have to use a numeric scale. It would be be correct to say: Elon would need a hell of a lot of ketamine to believe a colony on mars is a possibility.

[tavavex]

It's not exactly like Cookie Clicker. Many people definitely like seeing the number going up, but for most people that get to that point of wealth, the goal is power that the money represents. A human being may struggle to relate to them, but they really are motivated by the sole desire to own and control everything.

[carlosjobim]

You cannot get that rich without money being the motivator.

[digitaltrees]

Yes you can. Money is a medium of exchange. Stock is a medium of exchange. But they buy the ability to effectuate your will in the world. If you have a vision of the world money, human capital, political power are not the measure of success or the goal. They are the instruments of executing a vision.

Some people aren't motivated by money, they are motivated by reputation, or pathology.

[burnte]

> it's pretty transparent that he's just trying to ball-of-mud together everything he can to hit that target and grab the bag.

I agree, and most people do too, yet he'll get away with it. We're in the kleptocracy phase of the fall.

[testing22321]

His award is also tied to numbers of vehicles and robots sold.

So just increasing market cap won’t do it alone.

Even if he merged them, they still have to produce WAY more than they are now.

[rlt]

That’s not how it works. There’s provisions to adjust the targets if there’s M&A.

[HerbManic]

Yep, bundle it all together, rename the whole company X (for added confusion), get a few final pay outs in the hundred of billions if not trillions and then Elon flees to Argentina as the whole house of cards crumbles.

[plaidfuji]

Does anyone really believe he’s doing all of this just to sell out and live on a beach somewhere? This dude sleeps at his own factories. He literally works like 24/7 and has no personal life. If this was all a cash grab he’s had dozens of opportunities to cut and run with well beyond F U money. If you wanted to scam people there are a lot easier ways to do it than repeatedly founding revolutionary technology companies.

I’m not denying that his companies are awash in zany financials, but I don’t think that’s ever been the point

[HerbManic]

The optimistic take is that he is doing all this to achieve his space goals, that the ends are justification of the means.

But when he is interested in actively interfering with elections the world over and probably spends more time on twitter than anything else, I am not so sure.

The thing with the sell out routine is that they think it is all working until it suddenly isn't. The money isn't about living the high life it is about having the high score. Bezos is probably trying to figure out how he can take the No 1 spot right now. If Elon is smart, we will cash out right before the fall.

[JohnMakin]

gamblers who like to martingale bet strategies often run up huge sums without ever doing the sane thing and cashing out

[seanclayton]

Elon's not going to work 24/7 through the upcoming depression

[QuaternionsBhop]

Elon flees to Mars*

[cryptos]

Everything will be folded in "X" eventually, anyway.

[madaxe_again]

Yup - given that it’s $60bn of stock, now is an excellent time to do it, as the current valuation isn’t even irrational. And I say that as someone who believes they have great long term prospects.

[locknitpicker]

> They’re spending Monopoly money.

They also seem to be desperate to buy their way into a monopoly, even though the company itself has a long track record of failing to deliver anything noteworthy.

[Cthulhu_]

FOMO; Apple grew to one of the biggest companies over time and people were like "h*ck I should've bought it years ago". Tesla then seemed somewhat similar - also 5 years ahead of the curve for EVs, even if they reinvented things that didn't need to and their construction was substandard, so one group of investors bought and boosted the stock to impossible heights. Now SpaceX is the next one, and people want to get on board.

I don't think anybody actually believes SpaceX will be worth it. I think some still believed Tesla would be, but their competition has caught up. Everybody is just there to ride the wave of mass hype and FOMO, thinking everybody else is an idiot.

This has been coming in a few waves over the years in Tesla, cryptocurrencies, the Everything Bubble, etc.

[AbstractH24]

> Stock that may very well be near its zenith when this closes (or maybe not. This is so far past fundamentals it’s impossible to tell).

Nah, not in a bubble or anything at all.

[slfnflctd]

"The market can remain irrational..."

I called bubble on Tesla and Bitcoin both over 10 years ago.

Still going strong.

It's a whole lotta chaos, fueling some pretty messed up stuff. It is hard to watch.

[AbstractH24]

Great quote.

It's easy to predict what will happen. It's hard to predict when or the second and third-order effects.

[joering2]

> It’s all in a stock that may very well be near its zenith when this closes

No, it is not. This is not legal or financial advice, but I believe the stock could easily rise 2.5x - not because of its current or future financial condition, but because it is run by what may be the most skilled fraudster our planet has ever breed. Charles Ponzi himself couldn't have pulled this off. While most CEOs are careful about what they publicly say or "predict," Musk's companies are fueled by increasingly fantastical projections. The consequences have amounted to some $1.5 million in SEC fines that, relative to the value created, were negligible - and that was under the previous administration. The current one won't be any more aggressive. The closest comparison I can think of is Trevor Milton and his famous "electric" truck that was filmed rolling downhill under its own momentum. He went to prison for that, although he was later pardoned by Trump. Many people have lost fortunes betting against Tesla based on fundamentals. SpaceX's shareholder list includes so many influential and powerful names, including people closely connected to the current administration, that I find it hard to imagine the stock being allowed to fail in any meaningful percentage. Obviously I'm exaggerating when I say the government would send agents door-to-door to collect valuables from American households to plug any hole in the balance sheet before allowing the stock to fall significantly. But that's honestly closer to how protected I think the company is than what traditional financial analysis would suggest. I'm nobody special, just someone with about $1.8 million in a stock portfolio. Yet this thing called SpaceX stock gives ordinary investors like me a chance to ride alongside the biggest players on their way to even larger fortunes. They are guaranteed not to lose money, and to me its not personal.

[keeda]

I mostly agree but it still seems like a huge risk to play along with the memestock-ery. I have no idea how long this can be sustained. Like, would the upcoming elections going a certain way cause things to unravel? Or, say, the Anthropic IPO tanking and shaking investor confidence (highly doubtful, but a relevant example.) Or would some other unrelated event essentially cause a gigantic rug-pull?

And this is before getting to worrying about what kind of large-scale market manipulations we're up against (e.g. relevant example: https://www.forbes.com/sites/hershshefrin/2025/04/05/signifi...) Compounding this is the fear that even the indexes seem to be compromised (fast-tracking SpaceX etc.) I'm paranoid but at times the entire US stock market looks like a gigantic pump-and-dump. (Seriously, some of the stocks, like NET, rise and fall with highly predictable regularity.)

I can't tell, and I know I'm not nearly smart enough, attentive enough, and definitely not well-connected enough to have the perfect timing required to survive a sudden shift or whatever game it is the big players are playing, so I'm just trying to play it safe (which is also hard, because everything is impacted at this scale!)