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The Almighty Buck Businesses Facebook Technology

Elon Musk Passes Mark Zuckerberg To Become Third-Richest Person In the World (yahoo.com) 133

Elon Musk is now the third-richest person in the world. Musk passed Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg Monday as shares of Tesla continued their unrelenting rally after undergoing a forward stock split. Musk is now worth $115.4 billion compared with $110.8 billion for Zuckerberg. Yahoo Finance reports: Also Monday, Jeff Bezos's ex-wife MacKenzie Scott became the world's richest woman, passing L'Oreal SA heiress Francoise Bettencourt Meyers. Scott, 50, who received a 4% stake in Amazon.com Inc. as part of her divorce from founder Bezos, is now worth $66.4 billion. Musk, 49, has seen a meteoric rise in his wealth, with his net worth growing by $87.8 billion this year as Tesla shares surged almost 500%. Also helpful: an audacious pay package -- the largest corporate pay deal ever struck between a chief executive officer and a board of directors -- that could yield him more than $50 billion if all goals are met. Tesla's $464 billion market value now exceeds that of retail behemoth Walmart Inc., the largest company in the U.S. by revenue. Last week, Musk joined Zuckerberg, Bezos and Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates in the rarefied centibillionaire club as tech stocks rose.
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Elon Musk Passes Mark Zuckerberg To Become Third-Richest Person In the World

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  • I like Tesla cars (Score:5, Insightful)

    by OrangeTide ( 124937 ) on Monday August 31, 2020 @09:31PM (#60460560) Homepage Journal

    I think they're pretty cool and have great tech in them, and are just what the American auto industry needs to kick their complancy in the rear end.

    But in terms of economic value, there are numerous other companies that should have much better long term value. The stock price is made up by stoners doing bong hits, and middle class retirements are going to bear the brunt of this misvaluation.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by OMBad ( 6965950 )
      Tesla is valued more than the top 5 auto companies combined. It is valued more than Visa, Inc. I mean, they have sold over 900,000 cars since they were created, so it makes sense.
      • You should look up short selling

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Gimric ( 110667 )

          The market can stay irrational longer than an individual investor can hold out.

        • Shorting is a bad investment methodology.
          Stock Prices on the average will go up. They may spike and drop/correct but timing it right is a large gamble.

          Do I think Tesla stock is overvalued, Yes, but do I want to invest into shorting it? No because it could double again, then correct down 25% and stay flat for 5 years, then go up again, as the company grew to fit its stock price.

          Also Stock Prices seem to be disconnected from business reality at the moment. As people are buying stock with their extra money, b

          • Two things mystify me about how people still react to this company.

            First, for years just stories here on Slashdot have had people arguing against shorting Tesla. Almost every month they've been going up - more frequently after the Tesla 3 launched. This year the acceleration is astonishing. I think it's a bit insane and I'm a big fan of the battery tech, cars, and company. How many stories must there be about investors getting burned shorting Tesla stock before realizing that it really is a losing game

      • "Is valued" is different from "has a value of" in the craptastic world of financial speculation.

      • I mean, they have sold over 900,000 cars since they were created, so it makes sense.

        GM sold 2,887,046 cars in 2019 (revenue $137B). Should Tesla's 900k cars (revenue $6.04B) make it worth be more, less, or about the same as GM? Let alone make it worth more than Ford + GM combined.

        Short sellers will get screwed because they won't be able to predict the correction. Long term investors will get screwed because they'll have to ride TSLA all the way to the sudden end.

        • by Rei ( 128717 ) on Tuesday September 01, 2020 @05:01AM (#60461008) Homepage

          Believe it or not, the stock market is not a lifetime achievement award. Nor is a market cap a count of how many widgets you make. Apple isn't sitting atop a veritable mountain of cash because they make the most smartphones. They make high ASP, high margin smartphones.

          If Company A makes 10 million widgets per year at an ASP of $10k per widget and margins of 1%, and Company B makes 100k widgets per year, but at an ASP of $100k per widget and 20% margins, and all else is equal in the companies, guess what? Company B should be worth twice as much as Company A, even though it makes 100 times as many widgets.

          All is of course not equal. And among other things is trajectory. If Company A appears to be circling the drain, heavily loaded in debt and keeps unveiling offerings that prove unable to compete, while Company B is growing at an average annualized rate of 50% per year and shows the repeated ability to dominate new and emerging markets as old markets die off... guess whose stock the market wants to own? Nobody wants to own a dying company.

          And in the case of Tesla (whose automaker usually has 20-25% margins inclusive of credits, 15-20% without them), it's not "an automaker". Cars aren't even its fastest growing business; that's its energy division. Grid-scale storage alone is restructuring the way power grids are built, and it seems every year lately utilities are launching projects to build storage facilities an order of magnitude larger than the previous year's projects. And solar roofing, while new and immature, by virtue of being significantly cheaper than building a roof and then subsequently installing panels on it, has the potential to change how all new homes are built in many areas, in an area of increasing drives for solar mandates. And while I'm not a near-term Robotaxi optimist, that is another multi-trillion-dollar market. Tesla is highly vertically integrated and controls the profits from each step of their production. They even own the "gas stations" of the new world they're building. They'll never dominate 100% of the global transportation or energy markets, or any figure even remotely close to that - but the "global transportation and energy markets" are staggeringly large, and one company owning any meaningful minority of it would be staggeringly valuable. Easily a multi-trillion dollar market cap.

          But none of this is why Tesla is exploding right now. First, Tesla had been artificially tamped down for years by "bankwuptcy" FUD which the market now accepts is BS, and was heavily shorted, driving down the stock price - while the company continued to grow. So they set up a loaded spring, coiled further and further every year. In particular, S&P 500 fund holders discounted the potential of any near-term Tesla inclusion, and generally held little Tesla stock. Tesla's posting of four subsequent profits however now makes it eligible. Since Tesla wasn't previously in the S&P 400 mid-cap - which most new S&P entrants are before inclusion - they cannot just simply transfer existing holdings from the 400 to the 500 - they have to buy them, at whatever price the market will bear, a huge chunk of the float. The same "at any price the market will bear" applies to shorts being squeezed out of their positions". Combine this with an overall macro environment being fueled by easy money, AND an environment where "disruptors" are now the focus of investors... and this is what you get.

          Whatever anyone invests in, I don't recommend trying to time the market in the short-term. If the short-term could be predicted, it'd be instantly and any arbitrage ability priced out. What matters is the long-term thesis. Time-in-the-market is far more important than timing-the-market.

          But let's reiterate the initial point: rating companies by "how many widgets they made" is beyond dumb. In 1906, Durant-Dort Carriage Company was making nearly 200 thousand horse-drawn buggies per year - the largest manufacturer in the US. In 1917, they were making zero. They tried a belated pivot to motor cars, but couldn't keep up with the newcomers, despite all their experience at "making vehicles". They went bankrupt in 1924.

          • by Rei ( 128717 )

            *in an era of
            *be instantly exploited
            *witchcraft

          • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            It's basically a gamble that one of Tesla's products will become extremely valuable one day. Very similar to the dot-com bubble.

            Their battery tech is in partnership with Panasonic and isn't all that great. They have had a lot of problems with premature degradation and their costs are still high compared to the competition.

            Their self driving tech has been overtaken by others and will probably never achieve what they claimed it would back in 2016 when it only a year away from launch. Their USP was using cheap

            • Re:I like Tesla cars (Score:4, Informative)

              by Rei ( 128717 ) on Tuesday September 01, 2020 @11:12AM (#60461744) Homepage

              Their battery tech is in partnership with Panasonic

              Tesla's past battery tech is in partnership formerly with just Panasonic, now (to lesser degrees) with LG and CATL, with Tesla responsible for raw materials (incl. anode / cathode powders), Panasonic for cell assembly, and Tesla for pack assembly.

              Past battery tech.

              and isn't all that great.

              Tesla's NMC / NCA is the lowest cobalt in the industry and are widely recognized as among the most energy dense on the market. And while cell production costs are always trade secrets, Tesla also demonstrably has the lowest production costs on the market, earning large margins on aggressively priced large-pack EVs which, for other manufacturers are low margin or - far more often - loss leaders (compliance cars).

              Again, however, this is Tesla's past battery tech being discussed. Tesla's new battery tech, codenamed "Roadrunner", will be unveiled in a couple weeks at their new production line on Cato Road. This is 100% Tesla owned, and is the result of both internal development and acquisitions over the past several years. While the unveiling hasn't happened yet, it's considered likely to involve some mix of the following:

              * Dry manufacturing. Dry manufacturing is considered the future of li-ion cells, but has not yet hit the mainstream. Tesla acquired Maxwell Technologies for their dry manufacturing process. Dry manufacturing eliminates the need for football field-sized vacuum ovens and solvent recovery systems, which represent not just a huge capital cost, but most of the energy involved in cell production. It also produces higher-quality electrodes.

              * Single-crystal cathode materials. Single-crystal cathode materials have superior diffusion and expansion properties than polycrystalline or amorphous materials, and are much more resistant to crack-related degradation.

              * "Tabless" electrodes. A traditional cylindrical li-ion cell has the cathode tap on the exterior and the anode tap at the core, with current flow paths having to spiral the entire way through the cell to be closed, and due to the highest currents being near the taps, leads to high I2R heating at the core. Tabless cells reverse this, with a top/bottom flow path. This vastly shorter path leads to vastly lower internal resistance and simplifies cooling. This opens the door to high performance, larger-format (higher energy density) cells.

              * Possible "octovalve"-style multi-cell manufacturing. A cryptic patent from Tesla from last year is suggestive that Tesla may be taking the approach they used with the octovalve into cell/pack manufacture - effectively creating a new type of hybrid cell/pack.

              To elaborate on the latter, one needs to explain what the octovalve is. An EV has complex heat flow needs. A battery pack may need to be colder or hotter, produces heat, and is glycol-cooled. The cabin may need to be colder or hotter, and when heating, needs high-grade heat. Inverters and motors both produce heat during operation, and inverters can be made to deliberately produce excess waste heat if desired. A heat pump (reversible or not) moves heat between a hot reservoir and a cold reservoir, in a loop of non-glycol refrigerant. A radiator loses excess heat to the outside world. Heat exchangers move heat between loops, and pumps drive the flow of fluids. Tubing may be polymer or metallic, depending on fluids and temperatures, and a wide variety of valves and fittings are needed.

              One can take naive means to implement this, giving each component its own heating and cooling systems, but a more efficient, and cost effective, design tightly integrates the inflows and outflows of each component. Tesla has long gone way above and beyond other EVs in this regard - even in 2017 they had entirely eliminated the use of pack heaters, for example, via routing on-demand inverter heat to the pack. But starting with the Model Y (and migrating to the 3), they're now doing it all

              • Re:I like Tesla cars (Score:4, Informative)

                by Rei ( 128717 ) on Tuesday September 01, 2020 @11:20AM (#60461788) Homepage

                Oh, one more to the above re: Roadrunner speculation:

                * Ethylene carbonate reduction or elimination. EC is responsible for forming an excellent anode SEI, so it's normally always used but it's also been shown to encourage dendrite formation. Tesla's material filing for the Cato Road facility contains vinylene carbonate (normally part of a mix with EC), but no EC. It also contains materials suggestive of potentially forming a titanate-based "artificial SEI" on the anode. But there's a lot of ways this data can be interpreted.

                Things it doesn't appear to be:

                * Cobalt-free. Cobalt sulfate is listed on the materials filing.

                * Silicon nanowire or lithium metal anodes. Musk has denied silicon nanowires, and stated that anodes will be a carbon-silicon mix (more conventional, although the devil is in the details)

              • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

                If Tesla's batteries are so cheap why do they charge you more for a Model 3 with a smaller battery than say Hyundai do for a Kona with larger battery?

                Cars with LG Chem batteries are consistently cheaper and have better range.

                • If Tesla's batteries are so cheap why do they charge you more for a Model 3 with a smaller battery than say Hyundai do for a Kona with larger battery?

                  Because there's more to the price of a car than the size of its fuel tank?
                  That has got to be one of the dumbest rhetorical questions I have ever seen.

                  • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

                    Batteries are a significant part of the cost of an EV.

                    Anyway there is no need to guess. Tesla batteries cost more because they are higher performance. Shaving a free minutes of the charging and a second or two off the 0-60 means no pouch cells, which means more expense. Also the packs are more complex, and they need higher cost inverters etc.

                    • And why does BMW charge more for a headlight than Hyundai?
                      Be it as it may, whether the batteries are more expensive or not- there's hardly some 1:1 relationship between the price of a vehicle and the price of its batteries.
                      Hyundai, even if they had more expensive batteries, would *still* make a vehicle cheaper than the Model 3.

                      The Model 3 has an estimated between 32-35% profit margin per unit, with the more expensive models with more expensive batteries on the higher end of that scale.
                      That's pretty muc
                    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

                      I doubt the profit on a base Model 3 is anything like that. If it was they could have met their $35k promise.

          • I was only talking about 2019. Historic comparison doesn't even make sense here, GM in its current form has only been around for a short time, since the 2009 restructuring. And I did include both volume and revenue in my response. I'm skeptical of the idea that having a fraction of the revenue makes you potentially worth many times more than your nearest competitors.

            You don't get to measure the slope of the line and trace it linearly up to infinity, there is a limit the growth. Historically these sorts of t

          • Using product sales volume as a key input to valuation is anything but "beyond dumb". You're referring to a very specific example of a company's entire product line becoming obsolete, and assuming the same scenario will apply to TSLA. All other things considered, higher sales volume *IS* more valuable. Consider two companies, each making $100 a year, one by selling 100 widgets for $1 each, and another that sells 2 for $500 each. Isn't the one you would prefer to own, and thus more valuable, very clear?
        • by mspohr ( 589790 )

          The stock market is all about the future, not the present. Tesla's electric cars are the future. ICE cars have no future. GM has no future unless it starts making as many electric cars as Tesla. So far, GM is clueless, has been unable to make a competitive electric car and will eventually go out of business.

        • GM sold 2,887,046 cars in 2019 (revenue $137B). Should Tesla's 900k cars (revenue $6.04B) make it worth be more, less, or about the same as GM? Let alone make it worth more than Ford + GM combined.

          That isn't how stock valuations are determined. If it were, not only would Tesla be impacted but so would many thousands of other companies. Amazon wouldn't even exist in its current form, since they'd have had to pay people to take their IPO shares.

          We wouldn't need a stock market at all since there would be no bids or asks. Stocks could be bought and sold only the day after quarterly earnings reports, at a price determined by a guy who typed each reporting company's top line into a 386 desktop and waite

          • Amazon wouldn't even exist in its current form, since they'd have had to pay people to take their IPO shares.

            I think you missed something important. Tesla is 10 years past its IPO.

            We wouldn't need a stock market at all since there would be no bids or asks.

            You need to look at claim of huge potential growth pretty carefully if you don't want to get burned. There are many metrics you can use to compare one company to peers in its sector.

            And let me be clear, I can't explain stock valuation in a single sentence and still have it be consistent enough to be applicable to a real market. It's a complex subject.

            We wouldn't need a stock market at all since there would be no bids or asks.

            I accept that this is how we raise capital in our current system. I'm not sugges

            • There are many metrics you can use to compare one company to peers in its sector.

              Thanks for reiterating, that was the entire point of my reply. You'd chosen revenue and implied that Tesla's did not justify its market cap and I pointed out that buyers and sellers often consider factors beyond revenue.

    • Stoners and bong hits are not rich enough to cause this much of a rally. It is caused by systemic bias in pricing long term call option contracts that have been sold at very low prices. The marker makers botched it. Even the market markers drank the shorties tale and sold way out of money call options at unrealistically low prices. They are forced to buy stock to remain neutral. It is causing gamma delta squeeze.
      • Stoners and bong hits are not rich enough to cause this much of a rally. [...] The marker makers botched it.

        Good point, it's lines not bong hits.

      • by dj245 ( 732906 )

        Stoners and bong hits are not rich enough to cause this much of a rally. It is caused by systemic bias in pricing long term call option contracts that have been sold at very low prices. The marker makers botched it. Even the market markers drank the shorties tale and sold way out of money call options at unrealistically low prices. They are forced to buy stock to remain neutral. It is causing gamma delta squeeze.

        I understand that some of those words are words.

    • I think they're pretty cool and have great tech in them, and are just what the American auto industry needs to kick their complancy in the rear end.

      Tesla is only just getting started. Wait 'til the cybertruck takes off, then you'll see some howls from all the others.

      nb. Elon has a couple of other companies as well.

      • I'll probably buy a Cybertruck. Which should be a red flag for investors. I have very poor taste and never seem to pick the mainstream choice. Sadly a Cybertruck is no Pinz [wikipedia.org].

        • I plan to upgrade my 2012 Prius C to a Cybertruck.

          The Cybertruck design makes me think of the Geeky kid in Grade School, who went to the gym and got big and strong, as well kept their smarts. So the bullies (rolling coal drivers) still want to bully the kid, but now are really scard of them.

          I may have some childhood issues. But living in a rural area, I will take satisfaction zooming by in a bigger car, that is all electric to a rolling coal Pickup truck.

      • by q_e_t ( 5104099 )

        Wait 'til the cybertruck takes off

        Finally! My flying car, even if it's a truck.

    • by vlad30 ( 44644 )
      At least Musk is building things and those cars are changing the world for the better, FAcebook pretty much just wastes everyone's time.
      • Cars don't change the world for the better. They embody a tremendously inefficient ratio of resources expended per person transported per unit distance. The manner in which they're powered or piloted does not alter this.

        • before covid: "stop driving cars, take public!"

          after covid: ""

          I'm glad I have my car and am not left to public transportation in what's now known as donald trump's america, where nearly 200k people have died and more are on the way..

          no, cars are not going away; and this pandemic showed us (thankfully) that personal safe space is a good and useful thing.

          oh, and the teslas are generally safer, too (ob disc, I own a model3). also ob disc: I hate the company with a passion, I mostly like the car, but I believe

          • Also during Covid a lot of people are working from homes, So we don't have miles of traffic jamming up the roadways.
            The Automobile was an ecological improvement when it was released. Compared to the bio disaster of horses as a key transportation method in cities.
            However over time nearly every American got one and started to drive further than before. When I had to drive to work. I drove 30 miles to work. 50 years ago. That would be a really long trip. But it is rather standard.

            • by tsqr ( 808554 )

              Also during Covid a lot of people are working from homes, So we don't have miles of traffic jamming up the roadways. The Automobile was an ecological improvement when it was released. Compared to the bio disaster of horses as a key transportation method in cities. However over time nearly every American got one and started to drive further than before. When I had to drive to work. I drove 30 miles to work. 50 years ago. That would be a really long trip. But it is rather standard.

              I got a new car on March 1 of this year. Two weeks later I started working from home, and there's literally no end in sight -- 75% of the employees at my company are working from home, and the CEO has said he sees no reason why we can't continue that indefinitely, even when (if?) the pandemic is history.

              Today marks the 6-month anniversary for the new car. It has 2560 miles on it, and it's that high only because once it became clear we were going to be house-bound for a long time, the wife and I decided to g

      • by dbialac ( 320955 )

        > those cars are changing the world for the better

        No they're not. There's nothing 'eco' about a car who's fuel storage component becomes toxic waste when you're done with it because it can't be economically recycled. There's nothing eco about something that requires massive CO2 emissions to mine (lithium). Changing the world for the better would involve something like Boeing's ethanol source that they grow on previously barren lands and turn dead areas into green ones, while absorbing CO2 from the atmosp

    • Well the thing with Tesla it is more than Cars.
      They have their hand in Power Generation, Charging Infrastructure, Self Driving Technology, Solar Power. They are thinking on going to HVAC.

      They are kicking a lot of industries in the rear end. And currently have a good head start.

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        How much is that stuff worth though? Their chargers only work with Tesla cars so their market will only ever be the number of Teslas on the road. Other networks have overtaken them in parts of Europe now anyway.

        Solar is lagging behind others now, they never really offered anything unique. Lots of others doing solar roof tiles before they came along, you can get cheaper "powerwall" batteries. It's an okay business but not doing great.

        Their self driving tech is a huge liability. When it fails to deliver they

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Musk may soon be the richest man.

    Think how that would affect Amazon's Jeff Bezos. Should we each send Bezos a dollar so that he doesn't lose his position as richest?
    • Via PayPal, of course.
    • That's why you never get married!

      That's why I don't have to worry about ever becoming only the second richest man in the world.

    • by amorsen ( 7485 )

      Think how that would affect Amazon's Jeff Bezos. Should we each send Bezos a dollar so that he doesn't lose his position as richest?

      If the entire world population sends Jeff Bezos one dollar each, it will not materially affect his finances.

    • Should we each send Bezos a dollar so that he doesn't lose his position as richest?

      The fucked up part of that, is that much money is precisely dick to him.

  • by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Monday August 31, 2020 @10:47PM (#60460646) Journal
    Market makers should remain neutral. But somehow they botched it, started believing the short thesis and under priced the call options. They thought the stock is never going to go that high and sold way out of money call options, with strike price 3 to 4 times the market price one/two/three years out. Company is going to go bankrupt any one wanting to buy call option is an deluded fool to be milked dry. That was their reasoning

    They realized their mistake by 2018.And brought heavy guns to bear. Planted unfair and negative stories in finance news media. Manipulated opening prices, reaction to any negative news etc etc. And they nearly brought the company down in May 2018. What did not kill Tesla made it stronger. Now the market makers are stuck with call options that they have to make good, so they are forced to buy the stock. Its what they are calling gamma hedge. That act of buying raises the stock price, and that raises the probability of call options coming through, forcing them to buy again. And again and again.

    All the negative stories of Tesla in 2018 is not the doing of fossil fuel companies, not ICEV makers, not dealerships, not anti-greens. Its the market makers putting their thumb on the scale to extricate themselves from the deep shit they got themselves embroiled into.

    Clearly this price is not based on any realistic valuation, but some squeeze due to imperfect pricing models of the market. It will correct itself and fall back to reasonable levels. But before that many short sellers and call option writers are going to go bankrupt.

    • There is now no question that Telsa will survive and be a major player.

      But bigger than the likes of Toyota in terms of sales? Seems very unlikely. As they grow into mass market they will have the mass market low margin problems just like everyone else.

      Telsa may be ahead on electrics, but they are not the only player. And they are behind on mass market production -- they have not done it yet.

      I predict the shares will come down substantially once the hype dies down. But then again, I predicted the same fo

      • The difference between Apple and Tesla... Apple actually makes significant amounts of money to (nearly) justify its valuation.

        Tesla is pure speculation that they will eventually do so. P/E of AAPL is right now around 40 - so basically think of a 2.5% return on investment if nothing changes (I know, things always change, but they are still growing their profits...). High, but not really overly so by tech standards (and this is recent, for most of the last 10 years it has been under 20 while still having lar

    • by dargaud ( 518470 )
      Which is to show that the whole system of options on options and such is crooked and counter-productive. We need things like a tax on short-term sells and other similar things pushed by some countries, but of course it cannot work if not adopted globally, and the countries who don't adopt it would benefit (at least at first).
  • I'm happy to live in a rich world
  • I despise Bezos but what did his wife do to deserve to be the 13th wealthiest known person on the planet?
    • by Pascoea ( 968200 )

      but what did his wife do to deserve to be the 13th wealthiest known person on the planet

      Put up with Bezos for X years. I can't imagine living with that kind of personality to be an easy task.

    • She screwed over a rich fuck. That's gotta be worth a prize.

    • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      Much the same stuff as Bezos did. If I understand correctly she's been involved in Amazon from the beginning, including packing parcels in an apartment.

    • Why don't you google it instead of engaging in cryto-sexist whining.

      Almost all the wealth was generated after they were married. Despite Bezos being a dickhead they actually managed to settle it like functioning adults and reach an amicable split.

      • I don't now if that is considered sexist, but after reading that Wikipedia page I must say that it is pretty depressing to learn that the richest woman in the world's chief merit is "she was an OK writer, and then she married a rich dude". It feels like living the middle age.
        • I don't now if that is considered sexist, but after reading that Wikipedia page I must say that it is pretty depressing to learn that the richest woman in the world's chief merit is "she was an OK writer, and then she married a rich dude". It feels like living the middle age.

          You need to learn to read.

          Was she an OK writer? I can't make a call on if she was better having not read her books.

          She married another middling dude, he founded a company, she supported him (earning money) before amazon was off the grou

          • by Jarwulf ( 530523 )
            He was a Princeton grad, and fairly high level executive and senior vice president before and around the time of his marriage far higher in status than she was. I know its a popular conceit that every woman deserves the full package where a guy is a genius, loaded, and ripped with a 10 inch cock but he was hardly just some loser fiddling around with bookstacks back in the day.
          • That is not what the Wikipedia page says, though. It only says she worked as a research associate (a pretty low-level role that does not include contract negotiation as far as I understand) under Bezos at another company (not one of the those founded by Bezos). There is no mention of her supporting him.
    • Hulk Hogan and Paul Paul McCartney's ex-wives are prime examples. Hulk Hogan destroyed his body wrestling and his wife used to work in a nail salon. Somehow she felt entitled to huge sums of his wages. Bitch you weren't picking up Andre The Giant. How many songs did Heather Mills get a writing credit on? Zero. We can't leave Tiger Woods off this list too.

    • Why would you think Wealthy people are of good moral character?

      Heck in the bible (especially in the new testimate (the part about Jesus)) there is a lot of talk on how the rich and powerful are often more corrupt and need to give up a lot more to be considered a good person in Gods eyes.

  • great for him, why the fuck would I even remotely give a shit ... some obscenely rich dick hole gained a notch on the list of the obscenely rich dick hole list.

  • Check out Reddit's /r/wallstreetbets. You have people who've been buying TSLA calls every single week and have managed to turn $10K into $1 million dollars in one month.
  • Centibillionaire (Score:5, Informative)

    by tricorn ( 199664 ) <sep@shout.net> on Tuesday September 01, 2020 @01:54AM (#60460838) Journal

    the rarefied centibillionaire club

    "Centibillionaire" is 10 million. The correct word is hectobillionaire. I've seen this specific use more than once, it's not just Yahoo.

  • Proof positive (Score:4, Informative)

    by DerekLyons ( 302214 ) <fairwater@gmaLISPil.com minus language> on Tuesday September 01, 2020 @02:55AM (#60460898) Homepage

    Tesla's $464 billion market value now exceeds that of retail behemoth Walmart Inc

    Proof positive that the stock market, and Musk fanbois in particular, are utterly insane. When this bubble pops, it's gonna be ugly. And it's gonna pop, the only question is when - and how badly it damages the economy.

    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      by Fly Swatter ( 30498 )
      Can't remember where, but on some random forum a poster equated this stock acting more like a bitcoin commodity than a stock.

      When the sell off occurs, I don't think it will hurt the economy as it will free up a lot of money that will be moved to an arguably more useful location. Bag holders won't be happy, but they knew the risks, right?
    • by eepok ( 545733 )

      The stock market isn't insane. It has been 100% predictable. Here's how it has worked this far:

      1. The Federal Reserve has kept interest rates extremely low-- low enough to make reliable bonds money losers as compared to inflation and make money very cheap to borrow.
      2. Bigger investors use that cheap money to invest in stocks. (People are gambling with other peoples' money)
      3. Retirement investors see the stock market jumping and follow the bigger investors.
      4. Somethings happens (change in law/policy, some di

    • by marktoml ( 48712 ) *

      The stock market was literally intended as a mechanism to fund long-term growth in great ideas.
      If they work out great and if not they go bust.

      The fact that Tesla is inspiring people to invest their money is pretty much the entire point.

      • The stock market was literally intended as a mechanism to fund long-term growth in great ideas.

        Partly true, partly not. IPO's allow people invest in corporations. But the vast majority of the transactions on the market aren't IPO's. Most of the stock market is a secondary market - buying and selling of shares of stocks between existing owners of existing stock.

        Companies don't see a thin dime of this money.

        The fact that Tesla is inspiring people to invest their money is pretty much the entire poin

  • The real richest people aren't on those lists. In fact believing those lists keeps people from seeing the reality we live in. The richest people own countries. They manipulate whole economies. They make bets on entire large industries. We can't do anything about that, but enforcing anti-trust legislation will let us start to make progress.
    • The people on the list are paupers compared to Emperor Xi, Czar Putin, King Saud, Daddy Kim, etc.

  • "Centibillion" is 10 million. Should be "hectobillion".
  • In the back and forth in Wednesday night's presidential debate over tax breaks to energy companies, Republican nominee Mitt Romney argued that President Obama's grants and tax breaks to renewable energy companies equalled 50 years of the tax breaks to gas companies.

    Romney then name-dropped a few beneficiaries including the bankrupt solar panel maker Solyndra and Tesla Motors, the car maker that has gotten a $465 million loan from the Department of Energy, which it is paying off.

    Romney then quipped that

  • Personally, I prefer people who make a lot of money on something tangible that people want to buy rather than fluff like advertising.

  • If you start out with Daddy's blood diamond money, you can become absurdly wealthy! What a self-made man, what a job creator!

"It's the best thing since professional golfers on 'ludes." -- Rick Obidiah

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