During my own lifetime there are been episodes of mass hysteria, none of which actually needed conspiracy, only ignorance and fear of the unknown.
Here are TMC we have tended to be a rational bunch, biased in favor of our passion, to be sure.
Recently we've tended a trifle towards conspiracy visions to justify negative views of TSLA.
We need no conspiracies to understand these views:
1. Auto dealers cannot be expected to be favorably disposed towards a company that does not use them;
2. Petroleum companies might not favor entities which are devoted to excluding use of fossil fuels.
3. Can anybody imagine why an operator of a gasoline vendor would favor an entity that seeks their demise?
4. Should union leaders and advocates favor entities that do not have unionized workforces?
5. Why should rating agencies favor a company that does not issue new ratable securities?
6. Why would investment bankers favor entity that does not regularly issue new securities of any kind?
..and this list goes on.
No conspiracies required. All these and more are entities that are threatened directly by the business model and plans of an entity that thrives by unsetting the status quo.
We really should stop imagining coordinated action and simply understand that many parts of the commercial world are threatened by greater or lesser extent by Tesla, SpaceX and what they represent. They need not coordinate for their common interests are obvious to all of them.
It is transparently obvious that the massive TSLA derivatives are a successful attempt to make money when conventional means will not work. Gullible, ignorant and/or greedy speculators greatly ease their efforts. Importantly institutional investors can 'innocently' engage in securities lending that lets them reduce carrying costs from non-dividend-paying security while incurring little risk.
SO, what do they need to conspire? Obviously, they do not. It's less risky to just understand their shared interests.
Every time we berate volatility, understated that volatility keeps the whole marker thriving, for the major players.
Retail ones can never thrive in this environment, if they try to play the market makers.
OK, throw brickbats! Please, please think!
I don't know how you define conspire, but, looking at my dictionary conspire means: "To be in harmony; to plan secretly an unlawful act; plot."
Now, if we assume that our language is a shared heritage, and in order for it to work we must agree on basic definitions, I will state for the record that I try to use conspire in common everyday language as how my dictionary defines it above.
Example: Curt Renz has shared a video of Jim Cramer telling an interviewer that when he ran a hedge fund, he would at times call up friends at CNBC and tell them to run this or that story to move share prices around that were advantageous to Jim's hedge fund. I ask you, is this not conspiring? It is to me. It is an anti-competitive, presumably unlawful, game for money making. What do you call this?
Another example. When GM exec Bob Lutz would come on the business news and talk crap about Tesla or EVs, would you not consider this conspiring, since both GM and the media outlet gain from the act? GM gets to spread FUD against a competitor on nationwide TV, the news outlet gets paid by GM in advertising dollars. They both win by working together. This in my mind is conspiring.
How about when President Biden gets up on a national stage and tells Mary Barra she led in the EV revolution? Seems to me like conspiracy: Biden gets to signal to his base that he cares about climate change and union jobs, GM gets the positive exposure they deserve since they donated money to Biden's presidential campaign. They both benefit from working in harmony. How is this not conspiracy?
Our presidential elections here in the U.S. are now over a billion dollars each election cycle. Do you mean to say all these powerful, wealthy donors/bribers don't get something in return from paying off politicians? It seems naive to me to think otherwise.
We conspire at all levels of society: grandchildren can conspire to get the grandparents money when they die; big companies have a long history of conspiring to fix prices and engage in anti-competitive practices, that's why we have anti-trust laws; universities pull funding from research labs when those labs find incriminating evidence that a major university donor has been polluting the environment (I know this from personal experience). There is conspiracy everywhere, all around us. I myself have conspired with others to get what I want because it has benefited me financially. I don't know what you've got against conspiracy, but denying it exists doesn't make it go away.
So again, I ask you: how do you define "conspiracy"?
