Last night's Tesla earnings would have, you'd think, cut the stock in half.

Tesla is of course a car company.  Elon would love to claim its a bunch of other things, but none of them have been deliverable over the firm's life in meaningful ways.  This includes all of the "revolutionary" lines of business he has tried to argue he'd have sewn up -- the most-intriguing, of course, being driverless cars that entirely change the paradigm of personal transportation.

Being able to buy such a vehicle means you can immediately (subject to various legal constraints, of course) now own a taxi that can take people from here to there when you're not using it, wildly increasing utilization and generating income that offsets its expense.  Said vehicle could be programmed that "I have go to the store at 3:00 PM" and thus it would return and charge with time to do that, but from 2:00 AM when the bars close until then it might run around as "summoned" to various people and take them wherever.

In addition it is a huge mobility boost in that anyone currently unable to drive for medical or age-related reasons, or those who wish to go somewhere but are intoxicated, now can do so without constraint -- if you buy such a vehicle.  Of course the problem with it in the EV space is range (which means in an ICE context its even more valuable as now I can, for example, crawl in the back with a sleeping bag, sixpack of beer and punch in a destination over a thousand miles away and do whatever., having to intervene only to put more fuel in the tank.)

This both opens up the commuter space and intermediate-range (under 500 mile) business travel in ways that today are simply unreasonable, particularly until you get into the realm of private aviation making economic sense -- which for nearly everyone it doesn't.

It also immediately shifts all liability -- and thus insurance -- off you as the owner and to the company that makes it.  The earthquake-level implications of this are obvious but Musk has claimed that it would be available "imminently" -- within a year -- now since 2019 and yet no such advancement from the original capability, in legal and operational terms, has occurred.

You'd think that at some point running this "blue sky" nonsense would fold back on him -- but so far it hasn't.

The latest round of this nonsense included even more ludicrous claims, but follows a pattern seen in all the other big market blow-ups.  Now the word is "AI" and of course Tesla is supposed to be an "AI Company."  Except it isn't, of course, although somehow Elon spun this idea that it shall buy many more Nvidia AI "chip stacks" and by doing so become one, never mind solving the driving problem.  Musk even alluded to literally using the "excess" CPU power (and the energy to run it!) in customer vehicles without any indication the owner would be paid for it!

Many of you don't remember 1999, but I do.  I was in the middle of the 1990s.  The number of times I heard phantasm-invoking nonsense out of CEOs on earnings calls couldn't be counted.  It all ended in tears, and this time it will as well.

Tesla, on an annualized earnings basis of the reported "45 cents", which incidentally is bogus because that's non-GAAP earnings, sells at ninety times an annualized run-rate of $1.80.  At the same time the firm now is showing negative free cash flow, which is a change -- it was at least cash-flow positive before, even though much of it was tax farming of various sorts.  Nonetheless money is money and now the company is bleeding it at an arterial level, and it appears he's stretching payment times to vendors too, which makes the books look better for a while because the cash isn't flowing out as quickly.

This fever, like the one in 1999, will break.

Probably not today, but break it will, and when it does all of those who have repeatedly managed to sucker people into buying a hope and a dream will be faced with the reality that said dreams are and will be unrealized -- and what will be left is whatever can actually generated in operating income from actual products and services sold to actual customers.

Don't be the guy who's long stocks when that day comes.

Sigh....

Yeah, they say, it's all angry white men doing all the murdering.

Uh, no.

75% of the American population is white by last count, ~12.5% Hispanic, ~12.3% black and 3.6% Asian, roughly.  Those are the major represented groups.

So it lines up like this:

75% of the population committed 3,308 murders.

12.5% of the population committed 1,576 murders.

And finally, 12.3% of the population committed 6,318 murders.

Adjusting for population the absolute murder ratios (lower is less-likely to murder) were 4,410.67, 12,608 and 51,365.

Taking the lowest likelihood to murder as the "baseline" (white people) as "1" if you're Hispanic you're 2.86 times more likely to murder and if you're black you're 11.65 times more-likely to do so.

This ignores the "unknown" (unsolved) murders, of which there are many.  But it is a pretty good bet that the division doesn't change much in that regard.

For sex you're 7.14 times more likely to murder if you're male than female. Big shock.

Cut the crap folks -- right now -- when it comes to the "nasty white dude" nonsense.

It simply is not true -- not even close.

Then there's weapons.

6,603 murders by pistol, 297 by rifle, 235 by shotgun and 3,130 by gun but type not specified.

However, 1,515 were by knife and 672 by hands, feet, and other human instruments (e.g. pushed off bridge)

In other words before you ban "nasty black rifles" you need to ban both knives and fists.

Incidentally you'd think that if you don't want to be murdered stay out of the cities.  All but 3,268 murders were committed in one.  If you stay out of non-suburban cities as well then there are only 684 murders left.  Roughly 16.4 million people live there however -- and when you adjust for population the risk isn't that much lower.

In other words "diversity" matters much more than location.  Another inconvenient truth.

None of this fits the narrative, of course..... so you can expect the slime to ignore it.

But facts just are, and since it's your ass maybe you shouldn't ignore it.