Category: Stock Market

Portfolio 027 – Elon Musk’s Tesla Rocket

SAMI J. KARAM

This article is published at National Review.

What it will take for Tesla’s stunning rise to end with a successful landing.

“Wow, Elon Musk!”

That was the cathartic cheer and cry of relief in millions of American homes on May 30, after two months of forced confinement, when the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon Capsule lifted off from Cape Canaveral carrying two American astronauts bound for the International Space Station. It was the first ever manned SpaceX mission and the first time since 2011 that an American-made rocket had taken Americans into space. SpaceX is of course one of Elon Musk’s companies.

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As if on cue on the very next day, Musk’s other monster rocket, Tesla stock, blasted off again and shot out of its range, adding nearly 8 percent to reach $898.10, a level that was more than double its March low of $361.20. Days later, the boosters fired again and lifted the stock above $1,000 and then once more, after a two-week pause, to $1,500, where it is now taking a brief respite in the orbit of companies valued at $300 billion.

There in the stratosphere, the stillness of space envelops the investor as it does the astronaut. Escape velocity has been achieved for shareholders, some with many, many millions in profits, leaving the earthbound shorts (people who bet against the stock) but a small and distant memory to be mockingly blotted out of view.

These shorts, hopelessly weighed down by what’s left of traditional investment discipline, have (so far) lost a cumulative $18 billion in vain expectation that the Tesla rocket would reverse, crash, and burn. All they can do now is stare at their screens and argue to whomever will still listen that this stock rocket will eventually come back to Earth.

Not necessarily. Consider Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, launched long ago and now heading deeper and deeper into the trillion dollar galaxy.

The question then is whether Tesla, though much smaller today, can one day join the outer reaches traveled by these companies, or whether it will crash as so many hot stocks have in the past. Tesla bulls are confident that it can maintain its current trajectory, a belief that is owed in no small part to the faith that they have in Elon Musk. Read the rest at National Review.

Ratio of Gold to S&P 500

Editors

(Chart updated on 30 November 2015 with ratio at 0.51)

The ratio of the price of gold to the S&P 500 shows two notable extremes that are clearly visible in the log-scale chart below. The first was a reading of 6.1 in January 1980 when gold spiked up to $850 per ounce and the S&P 500 was struggling to shake off the 1970s syndrome of “death of equities”, “misery index” and “malaise”. The second was 0.19 in July 1999 and subsequent months when gold hit a multi-decade low of $252.8 while the S&P 500 soared on the wings of the Nasdaq bubble.

A more recent high of 1.5 was in September 2011 when gold reached an all-time high of $1,895. The ratio has since retreated to 0.56 today which is a level not seen since the stock market highs of 2007.

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It should be noted that the average for the ratio, since gold started trading freely in 1968, is 1.18, which means that it is now well below the average. Reversion to the mean here would mean the S&P 500 falling by half or gold doubling, or various combinations such as for example the S&P 500 falling by 35% while gold rises 35%.

There is no doubt that there is some exuberance in the stock market, but it does not necessarily follow that the ratio should quickly revert to its long-term average. After all, one may ask, why is this ratio even relevant? It is a question that is justified if you believe that gold should only reflect inflation expectations. Then it would rise or fall with inflation fears.

But in reality, there is more complexity in what drives the price of gold. Inflation numbers were similar in the 1990s and 2000s but gold fell in one decade and rose in the other. Therefore, inflation alone is not enough to explain its behavior.

What drives the price of gold will be the subject of another post. But here it is enough to say that it is driven in part by several factors which are the inverses of those that drive the S&P 500. It makes sense therefore to keep an eye on the ratio.