Markets can remain high on LSD longer than you can remain solvent.

I'm not sure there has ever been an earnings call as disastrous as Tesla's three days ago. I'm absolutely certain there has never been one this disastrous that was followed by such an inexplicable reaction. As for the disaster: just over a 70% drop in profits, an enormous—perhaps unprecedented—level of brand damage, and a flagship product they couldn't sell before the CEO became one of the most hated men in the world.

Musk basically dropped the pretense of arguing that the car manufacturing business could ever justify the stock price of his company. Instead, he went all in on robots and robotaxis, despite a report leaked to the press a few days ago revealing that Tesla's own internal auditors had determined the self-driving taxi business would actually be a money loser.

But here's the truly amazing part: the markets responded to this train wreck of dumpster fires—this once-in-a-lifetime chance to see a company absolutely implode—by pushing the stock up 17 points over the next couple of days. The P/E ratio is now an eye-watering 142.83.

Tesla now has the worst of both worlds. Musk said he will continue his involvement with (and being the face of) the toxic DOGE movement, while also spending more time in the office tweeting, playing video games, and randomly rage-firing people.

Edward Niedermeyer, who wrote the definitive book on Tesla, probably does the best job capturing the profound insanity of  the call. Here are a few excepts of his very long thread.

"somehow the car business which generates the majority of the company's revenue doesn't matter" because Tesla will never make enough selling cars to justify its valuation, not even if it sold more than Toyota, VW, Ford, and GM combined. The fact that sales are cratering only highlights what has always been obvious.

Make a mental note of that last one.

As recently as October, his robots required human operators to perform tasks as simple as pouring drinks. 

When Noah Smith and Ezra Klein wax poetic about abundance, remember they're getting their ideas from people like Marc (crypto, WeWork 2.0) Andreessen and Elon Musk.

It looks like the proposal is for a modest geo-fenced version that at best matches what competitors have been offering for years. Not an option you'd go with if you had "a general solution to self-driving, present tense."

I also wouldn't be surprised if this was the last we saw of the Cybercab.

Musk has been promising a million robotaxis on the road next year since 2019.

Because Waymo has waymo advanced technology. 

About that...

God, what a loser.

This next part is fun.

As mentioned many times before, Musk learns most of his engineering lines phonetically. Currently there are a number of conversations on Blue Sky with actual experts trying to figure out the original line he mangled.