TSLA exposure is a call option on Musk succeeding (with success criteria being "TSLA price go up") regardless of reality. SpaceX is buying up Cybertrucks; is it illegal? Will anyone do anything about it? That sort of success (quasi fraud). The product is the stock and the hope there is a greater fool who will buy it eventually.

SpaceX Buys over 1000 Cybertrucks - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46405984 - December 2025

Last week: Elon Musk's SpaceX bought tens of millions worth of Cybertrucks Tesla can't sell - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46317462 - December 2025 (6 comments)

Elon Musk's SpaceX and XAI Are Buying Tesla's Unsold Cybertrucks - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45572152 - October 2025 (8 comments)

Tesla's European Sales Plunge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46391352 - December 2025 (3 comments)

Tesla US sales drop to nearly 4-year low in November - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46248803 - December 2025 (60 comments)

Tesla looks to reset strategy amid sluggish India sales - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46084554 - November 2025 (2 comments)

Tesla's European sales tumble nearly 50% in October - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46063634 - November 2025 (57 comments)

Tesla sees worst sales performance in China in years - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45881302 - November 2025 (1 comment)

BYD Pulls Ahead of Tesla in UK, Closes Sales Gap in Germany - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45859618 - November 2025 (35 comments)

Tesla's German car sales more than halve in October as wider EV sales jump - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45827314 - November 2025 (135 comments)

[Flagged] Tesla sales in Germany have cratered from last year, data shows - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45826384 - November 2025 (28 comments)

Study: The Musk Partisan Effect on Tesla Sales - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45825382 - November 2025 (2 comments) ("Without the Musk partisan effect, Tesla sales between October 2022 and April 2025 would have been 67-83% higher, equivalent to 1-1.26 million more vehicles. Musk’s partisan activities also increased the sales of other automakers' electric and hybrid vehicles 17-22% because of substitution, and undermined California’s progress in meeting its zero-emissions vehicle target.")

Tesla Cybertruck sales are flatlining - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45573985 - October 2025 (17 comments)

Tesla Pivots to Robots as Investors Question Sales and Soaring Valuation - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45228566 - September 2025 (3 comments)

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coliveira 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The "new economy" is full of self-dealing. That's the result of loose (or non-existing) regulations on monopolies. It all starts with Wall Street controlling stocks on thousands of large companies that are ultimately owned by small groups of the same shareholders. Now it's evolving to large sectors owned by fewer and fewer people.

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toomuchtodo 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That is certainly a contributing factor, which Matt Stoller has documented robustly in his newsletter "Big" [1] [2], as well as the More Perfect Union org [3] [4].

[1] https://www.thebignewsletter.com/

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=thebignewsletter.com

[3] https://perfectunion.us/

[4] https://substack.perfectunion.us/

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stocksinsmocks 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I don’t think self-dealing is new. Although it was eye-opening, when I learned that BlackRock, Vanguard, and Fidelity all own 5-10% of every company and competition between the companies they hold is not meaningful. Everyone just has to have nice steady predictable returns and nobody is allowed to innovate too far ahead of anyone else for fear of devaluing the real bosses’ other assets.

I don’t even know what to call the kind of system we have.

	▲	coliveira 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		As I said, BlackRock and their friends were just the beginning. NVdia is trying to own a huge chunk of the AI space using their profits. Other tech companies are using a similar playbook. And of course they're all owned by Wall Street. The competition is highly controlled so the winners are all part of the same club.

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SoftTalker 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

All BEV sales, not just Tesla, are tanking, at least in the USA. Ford and and others have retreated on their plans as well. Tesla may be worse off because of Musk's extracurricular antics but BEVs are not selling well.

	▲	toomuchtodo 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		In the US, which is due to policy, which is temporary. The rest of the world remains very hungry for affordable electric vehicles [1], which only China seems interested in producing at scale. Once that manufacturing capacity and distribution systems are spun up (BYD has its own car carrier for exports, the BYD Shenzhen, for example [2]), it will remain in production. "Can Tesla survive until regime change?" is an important question for those with economic exposure to it. Ironically, its peril is entirely self inflicted. > BYD announced in 2022 its plans to launch a fleet of car carriers to build what it calls a “maritime bridge” to support its global sales growth and supply chain. The company said it would invest about $687 million to develop a fleet of eight car carriers. The first of the vessels, BYD Explorer No. 1 was delivered in January 2024 followed by BYD Changzhou in December 2024, and BYD Hefei, which was the company’s first owned PCTC. Each of the first three vessels has a capacity of 7,000 units. [My note: current BYD vertical integration marine fleet capacity is ~30k units when including the Shenzhen vessel mentioned above, but does not include capacity through third party charters] [1] China EV Exports Worldwide Rise 87% Year over Year to 199,836 in November [2025] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-29/china-ev-... \| https://archive.today/Q80Zs - December 29, 2025 [2] Chinese EV Manufacturer BYD Takes Delivery of [World's] Largest Capacity Car Carrier - https://maritime-executive.com/article/chinese-ev-manufactur... - April 24th, 2025 (think in systems; US light vehicle TAM is ~18M units/year, global TAM is ~90M units/year; Tesla US sales will finalize at ~600k units for 2025)
	▲	stefan_ 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		It feels like you already lost the whole point of this thread. Then why is the stock up?