Ramping up for some Tesla posts

Musk and the Musk adjacent stories have started to appear on the horizon so I thought I'd open the week with some appropriate tweets.

u can’t sell houses u don’t own
u can’t sell cars u don’t own
but
u *can* sell stock u don’t own!?
this is bs – shorting is a scam
legal only for vestigial reasons

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 28, 2021

1,184 days ago $TSLA started taking $250,000 deposits for the Roadster II. It still doesn't exist.

— TC (@TESLAcharts) February 12, 2021

 

Non-enforcement of regulations is a very big story across the economy. Tesla figures prominently.

The sad truth is that no person genuinely interested in corporate accountability would hold the stock of a company recently charged with securities fraud, and no other. $TSLA https://t.co/U8YmbYep8j

— PlainSite (@PlainSite) February 13, 2021

Russ Mitchell hit on this as well/

"Musk’s espousal of bitcoin exhibits very questionable judgment. It is hard to see how shares in Tesla can remain in any green portfolio while the company is investing in bitcoin."

Apart from being a terrible speculative bet for shareholders.$TSLA $TSLAQhttps://t.co/w6iNYQuRgq

— Wolfgang Pipperger (@WPipperger) February 14, 2021

When Musk goes off script like this he delights his fans and no doubt horrifies his (real) engineers.

The absolute GOAT of stock promotion. No one will ever compare.

"I thought like maybe we could make it hover but, like, not too high, so like maybe it can hover like a meter above the ground or something like that,”https://t.co/brUVgrG83S pic.twitter.com/NCQJaQOBu7

— Kevin Muir (@kevinmuir) February 12, 2021

ARK has also been an interesting player in this saga.

Is anyone else a little sketched out by the backgrounds on some of the @ARKInvest analysts. As someone that works in the fund/asset mgmt industry, you typically see people with real investing experience on their resume. I'll start with the top and work my way down 1/7

— P̶e̶r̶m̶a̶ B̶e̶a̶r̶ Mega Bear (@perma_bear) February 12, 2021

Since he's no longer taking calls from Trump, he has some time free.

"It Would Be A Great Honor To Speak To You": Musk Seeks To Speak To Putin https://t.co/x2n67Z9W4B

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) February 13, 2021

 

 This last one hits what might be the most telling metric of all. Despite having by far the biggest market cap and claiming much more ambitious technological goals, Tesla has a fraction of the research and development budget of VW or GM or any of the other major car companies. They aren't even trying.

Tesla is making a $1.5-billion investment in Bitcoin. That's more than Tesla has spent on R&D in any of the last three years.

From columnist @hiltzikm: https://t.co/SbfHlyyQdV

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) February 10, 2021