Elon Musk has become the first person to reach a net worth of $500bn, bringing the Tesla chief executive halfway to trillionaire status.

Musk’s wealth temporarily crossed the half-trillion mark on Wednesday before retreating to $499bn, according to the Forbes billionaires list.

Musk owns 12% of Tesla, which is worth more than $1.5tn, and his wealth has been boosted this year by surge in the electric carmaker’s share price.

  • makeshiftreaper@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    I’ve maintained that the stock market divorced itself from reality a long time ago. As of making this comment by market cap Toyota, BYD, Ferrari, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, GM, Volkswagen, Ford, and Porsche COMBINED are worth $100 billion less than HALF of Tesla. Is there anyone out there that would choose a minority stake in Tesla vs owning 9 of the biggest auto manufacturers on the planet outright?

    Point being I don’t see stock valuation as a measure of how successful companies are. How high were stocks in the dot com boom? In 2008?

    • flamingo_pinyata@sopuli.xyz
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      1 day ago

      Stocks are basically the same as crypto at this point. There is no benefit or utility at owning some, the only value is the idea of selling for more at some point.

      • reddig33@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        They could fix this by requiring stocks pay a dividend as a minimum percentage of profit, and prohibiting the sale of a stock until a year after purchase.

    • FlexibleToast@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      The majority of investors now are “retail investors”. Just regular people on apps like Robinhood. These people are investing in memes or making political statements.

      • ℍ𝕂-𝟞𝟝@sopuli.xyz
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        1 day ago

        Tesla is 47.91% owned by institutions, not retail. Add Musk’s 12%, and that leaves retail at most 40%.

        Tesla goes where institutions want it to go, since they are the only organised force on the market anyway.

      • makeshiftreaper@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        I’m not trying to start a fight with you on this but by what metric do you measure that? To my knowledge institutional trading outpaces retail in terms of total dollars invested, number of trades, and total valuation (as in the total market value of the retail traders is more than the net worth of retail investors)

        • FlexibleToast@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          I can’t find the source. I’m recalling a recent episode of TBOY podcast that talked about this. They cite their sources, but I’m not sure which episode it was. So, yeah without actual sources feel free to ignore what I said.