this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2025
231 points (98.3% liked)
Hacker News
1929 readers
445 users here now
Posts from the RSS Feed of HackerNews.
The feed sometimes contains ads and posts that have been removed by the mod team at HN.
founded 9 months ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
A P/E ratio that's high indicates that investors think something is a growth stock. A typical mature but growing tech company has a P/E ratio of 20ish. Tesla's P/E ratio is currently 182.
Now, there's a saying "the markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent", but TSLA is poised for a huge collapse. It was already way overvalued even a year ago when Musk was just this right-wing asshole who bought Twitter and ruined it. Everything since then has destroyed his image and made it so nobody wants to buy his cars. He's pissed off Democrats, and now he's pissed off MAGA Republicans. And, most importantly, Tesla is clearly no longer a growth stock. Sales are declining year after year.
If Tesla were a normal, boring car company that was competently run by someone nobody hated, it might have a P/E ratio similar to Toyota: 7. To get there from here, TSLA would have to shed 96% of its value. Keep in mind, that's not what the price should be. That's what the price should be if nobody hated the brand and it was a normal well-run car company.
Somebody is going to make absolute bags of money shorting TSLA. If I were rich I'd do it. But, as I'm not rich, the downside of the market remaining irrational is too big a risk. But, IMO, it's just a matter of time.