Stock prices are not a perfect reflection of real value. The price can easily be distorted by the beliefs of people with money, who can spend that money on Tesla stock to own the trans. This doesn't translate to wider market dominance or profitability of Tesla's bad products.

[–] piggy@hexbear.net 25 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

Stock prices are not a perfect reflection of real value. The price can easily be distorted by the beliefs of people with money, who can spend that money on Tesla stock to own the trans. This doesn't translate to wider market dominance or profitability of Tesla's bad products.

This is because capitalism is actually a bad price discovery mechanism for securities. In commodities markets corrections are quick because there's a real input-output happening to the commodity. A security's value is literally greater fool theory. You could rig a commodity market but you effectively need a near monopoly/monospony/cartel to do it over a long period of time. There is no "running out of stocks" because stocks aren't used for anything. So there's effectively no real floor for any security. This is exactly why they were able to do financial fraud for such a long time in 2008. The securities system crashes based on speculation and technicalities not realities, reality can help get it there but it's not guaranteed.