Canada

It’s because of the green energy credit swap scheme in the US, which has essentially been a taxpayer giveaway of 10s of billions to Tesla over the years. Tesla itself would have gone bankrupt multiple times over by now, if not for them being able to salvage their balance sheet by selling these credits.

The way it works involves other auto / oil and gas industry companies buying the credits from Tesla, in order to offset their own carbon emissions which otherwise would cost them significantly in terms of pollution fines (and maybe bad PR).

This way, Tesla gets the taxpayers’ house money for free, and can sell it off to these other companies so they can continue polluting just as they always have been. It’s the American neoliberal dream of unchecked corporate greed with a thin veneer of eco-responsible cover so that nobody really has to do anything to improve. Just don’t scratch beneath the surface if you actually give a shit about the environment. Sadly, many don’t.

Last point on this - yes, this means Elon Musk is the biggest welfare queen in America. He rips away any assistance for those who need it (to lower his tax bill) all while gobbling up billions in free subsidies from the government. It’s grotesque.

At the risk of seeming like a jerk, I’ll state the obvious: market prices are set by the intersection of supply and demand.

In theory the fundamental value of a share is the fractional ownership in that company. If the company is successful then shares will have value relating to dividends or if the company is sold, etc.

However in practice the supply and demand of these shares is not required to be rational. People can have irrational preferences for shares, hype men can sell wild fantasies about the future, and so forth.

Back to your your more specific question, the share prices of Tesla have been completely disconnected to the value of the company for quite some time now. This is not opinion, this is plain observation of the valuation of the company relative to its revenues or profits or growth potential.

What is opinion is why that valuation has been irrationally maintained for years. My opinion that Musk has done a successful job in cultivating a cult audience around him of financially-motivated hype men who join him in promoting the prices regardless of their actual value.

Musk and his cult manipulates the media, both mainstream and alternative, with lies and publicity stunts painting a false narrative of future potential. Self driving cars, robotaxis, AI nonsense, and much more.

The regulatory bodies who should be stopping this fraudulent behaviour have responded meekly in the past, and now in Musks home country have been largely dismantled. This further encourages the cultists to continue their cycle of hype, disconnected from reality.

In my opinion, I find it likely many investors are well aware that Tesla is a bubble valuation. However so long as the hype machine continues, Tesla share prices can be a speculative investment as long as you can sell to a “bigger fool” later. No one knows when the bubble will burst, so much like penny stocks or meme coins it can be a gamble worth taking for some.

Back to the article for a second. In no uncertain terms, pension funds or anything of the like should not be gambling their funds on this house of cards.

It’s based on absolutely nothing.

Idk, but I do know that about 45% of its revenue is US gov subsidies. This came up because Elmo was saying NPR (1% funded by US gov) should lose its funding

Tesla is a big part of S&P 500, so any pensions, mutual funds, hedge funds etc. that hold index funds include tesla automatically. that is why it is important for institutional investors to consciously divest from tesla.

besides that, it’s a meme stock popular with musk fans and twitter heads.