Often discussed outside HN, but almost never heard here: Many are investing in his relationship with President Trump. At least two major investment banks [0][1][2] advised their clients of it and many other observers and investors think so too. [3][4] Again, outside HN it's not an uncommon idea; just search a news aggregator for "musk trump".
EDIT: It's a very serious problem if we lose free market competition, and instead success depends - or even appears to depend - on politics and corruption. Even the appearance will encourage others to take that course, and normalize it. Corruption always exists to a degree, the market is never perfect, but that doesn't mean it's not serious. What happens to startups if success depends on access to politicians?
The surge in Tesla's market capitalization corresponds with Musk's public support for Trump, though the stock market in general has recently. Here's the data on Tesla; I recommend just looking at the graphic, which will tell you more:
* It's now at it's all-time high (give or take a buck or two), $294
* Generally, around Election Day it was stable around $190, on Dec 2 it hit bottom at ~181, then it vectored mostly steadily upward to Feb 21 (277), then there was a dip and it stabilized for awhile; now it vectored up again starting ~ March 23. today.
@dang, @mods: I don't care about this one comment, and obviously HN is your forum and you can score things however you want. However, please let us know your policies so that commenters can willingly follow them and so that they don't waste their valuable time contributing things that are unwanted and will be underutilized (and in fairness those contributions are most of HN's value). Please be open about it (whatever 'it' is); we shouldn't have to guess.
When the above comment was posted, it immediately was below 7 other threads and hundreds of comments, and it dropped quickly since then, despite no downvotes. That is odd behavior; usually new comments start at the top, or near it, unless the user is brand new or has some other problem (I'm in neither category AFAIK; most of my other comments seem to behave within the range of normality). I've seen other recent comments exhibit this different behavior. I see nothing that would algorithmically trigger anything; it's not short, it contains no inflammatory words, no all caps, etc.
My guess, based on eyeballing the anecdotal evidence is that mentioning "Trump" is the problem. If you object to it, please just say so. I think it's a bad idea to single him out - his presidency will have a very serious impact on the IT industry, startups, and many broader things that HN readers hold dear. But that's a different issue. Please give us the courtesy of letting us know, whatever it is, Trump or not.
EDIT: You objected previously to something I wrote that mentioned Trump, but I wasn't clear what the objection was - mentioning Trump? something else? I responded and asked, but I think too late to be noticed, so I still don't know. I really have no idea what's going on. The thread with my question is here:
I think the placement has a large degree of randomness. Comments with a lot of Karma will rise to the top, and everything else settles in the middle and bottom.
Tech stocks such as Amazon, Tesla, Facebook, and Google keep going up. ..so much for the myth that Trump is bad for tech. Trump wants the tech community and these tech companies to succeed, as they are American capitalist success stories.
I don't see much support for these claims. He's been in office for two months, so we lack any real data and can't make claims about his impact. Almost certainly, the prior government (President and Congress) has much more impact on current conditions. For example, consider this point in Obama's Presidency, when the Great Recession had begun a couple months before he was elected; conditions on April 3, good or ill, were mostly the responsibility of his predecessor.
The claims about his motives and thinking are speculative; it would be hard to find evidence of them. Even the things he says about himself often turn out to be unreliable. Certainly we can speculate on many other motives and interests, but I don't think that's useful.
EDIT: It's a very serious problem if we lose free market competition, and instead success depends - or even appears to depend - on politics and corruption. Even the appearance will encourage others to take that course, and normalize it. Corruption always exists to a degree, the market is never perfect, but that doesn't mean it's not serious. What happens to startups if success depends on access to politicians?
The surge in Tesla's market capitalization corresponds with Musk's public support for Trump, though the stock market in general has recently. Here's the data on Tesla; I recommend just looking at the graphic, which will tell you more:
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/TSLA?p=TSLA
* It's now at it's all-time high (give or take a buck or two), $294
* Generally, around Election Day it was stable around $190, on Dec 2 it hit bottom at ~181, then it vectored mostly steadily upward to Feb 21 (277), then there was a dip and it stabilized for awhile; now it vectored up again starting ~ March 23. today.
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[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/26/business/elon-musk-donald...
[1] http://money.cnn.com/2017/01/20/technology/elon-musk-trump/
[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/16/ubs-analyst-says-he-cant-und...
[3] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-26/musk-s-su...
[4] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/02/elon-...