I find myself confused about the purpose of stock markets. How can we arrange our society around a system that is so massively irrational? A few years ago Tesla was worth as much as the rest of the car industry put together. Even if you believed Tesla was going to become a perfect monopoly, its valuation still would not have been justified. Now people are acting like the sky is falling when this pipsqueak manufacturer is still (supposedly) worth twice as much as Toyota.
The most spectacular failure I know of is the case of Twitter. We knew the value of the stock to the penny starting in April of last year, but for months it traded at over a 25% discount. Why do we pretend this system of price discovery works when it can't even discover a price that has been printed in newspapers?
I don't understand the thesis that Musk is somehow pro-Russia. Generally his ventures are against Russia interests:
SpaceX, launched in the aftermath of Russia being uninterested in selling a leftover rocket to Musk, now dominates the launch industry to the detriment of Russia, among other things halting the cash flow from NASA to Russia to carry astronauts to ISS.
Tesla and former-SolarCity, reducing use of oil, while Russia is a major oil producer.
Starlink provides communications capability to the country Russia is attacking.
However, a likely macroeconomic slump in (electric and other) vehicle demand and Musk’s erratic way of running Twitter are real problems. I think these get the blame for stock issues, rather than the bizarre Russian thing.
"I think the President and a small group of people know exactly what he meant."