Sep 11, 2018

Tesla: When a company isn't investable

Felix Salmon

Illustration: Sarah Grillo / Axios

Tesla has a market value of nearly $48 billion, making it one of the 150 most valuable companies in America. Yet Nomura Instinet analyst Romit Shah today put out research saying that Tesla is "no longer investable."

The reason: What Shah refers to as "the erratic behavior of Elon Musk."

Shah says that Tesla could be a good bet with a different leader, but chaos monkey CEOs aren't the only reason that securities are sometimes considered uninvestable.

  • The S&P 500 won't include unprofitable companies, which is why Tesla isn't in the index.
  • Memories are still raw when it comes to synthetic derivatives, which no one really understood and which therefore no one should have been investing in before the financial crisis.
  • Similar arguments can be and often are made about cryptocurrencies, today.
  • Environmental, social, and governance considerations can also make a stock uninvestable.
  • Many investors won't touch gun manufacturers, for instance, or tobacco companies, or companies like Snap which give shareholders no voting rights.

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Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios

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