The country, saddled with trillions in debt and deficits, desperately needs what Elon Musk is doing with DOGE. But On The Money has learned that many shareholders of the company he runs, that would be the big EV-maker Tesla, are saying enough!
That’s right. The man who is known to be able to juggle everything and anything – from revolutionizing the electric vehicle market, to helping people around the world gain access to high-speed broadband, to building devices to possibly cure paralysis – has been accused of getting distracted by spending too much time in the White House these days, hanging with President Trump as part of the Department of Government Efficiency, aka DOGE.
In fact, during the past month that Musk has been DOGE-ing, Tesla shares are down more than 17%. The S&P is up a tad during that time. When I asked one hedge fund manager if he thought Musk was too distracted to properly run Tesla, he remarked “indeed.”
Of course, a month is just a month, and Tesla has been a market darling for years. In recent days, shares have bounced back a bit; they’re just below 2% over the past week. And no matter what you hear from his haters, most people (me included) love what Elon is doing.
Exposing the waste of US taxpayer money on transgender dance festivals in Bangladesh is long overdue when you’re running a deficit of nearly $2 trillion annually and amassing $36 billion in debt.
But I don’t own shares of Tesla. And plenty of the people who do would love Musk to turn in his White House pass and focus more of his time running the company that made them rich, and quite frankly, made Musk the world’s richest person.
That’s because a lot is at stake, they say. Tesla isn’t just any old EV company. It has a market cap of more than $1 trillion, making it one of the most valuable companies in the world.
Shares are up nearly 500% over the past five years. The S&P barely cracked above 80% in appreciation during that time. The Tesla windfall allowed Musk to buy Twitter, rename it X and become a modern-day media baron.
Investors also have a short memory, and there’s palpable concern he’s leaving Tesla for last by spending so much time on X touting his latest DOGE outrage. On top of that, cutting the welfare state may cost Tesla some of its-tree-hugging, Trump-hating customers who love EVs. Singer Sheryl Crow made some recent headlines, announcing she’s trading in her Tesla because of her distaste for DOGE.
I noticed these fears firsthand last week when I reported some of Musk’s DOGE plans. He said he wants to slash $2 trillion from the government. I thought that was a good thing; Tesla’s investors didn’t. They focused on the other part of my report that Musk is obsessed with DOGE, working night and day – and sleeping on the floor of his White House office.
And he expects to be doing this for the next four months, which means less time for Tesla. Shares promptly tanked.
Yet there are smart Wall Street types who are skeptical of the Musk skeptics, including noted Tesla analyst Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities. Musk helped Tesla survive near-bankruptcy in 2018 by sleeping on the floor of his office to fix production issues that nearly doomed the company, Ives reminds me.
Ives also points to new Tesla models coming soon, and technological advances in EV battery production. But more than that, Musk has proven the naysayers wrong in the past. The Trump relationship could actually help Tesla more than hurt, Ives says.
Trump wants to tariff China into oblivion. It’s a global economic and military competitor. Tesla has some big factories there and the mainland is a big market for his EVs. Ives expects Musk to get some tariff-related carve-outs thanks to his proximity to The Donald.
In other words, it might be time to buy on the dip as some investors appear to be doing.
