Downside at Palantir
Cult stocks and massive insider selling.
“3 months maybe, 6 months definitely.”
—Elon Musk, 7 years ago.
This post is a part of the Downside at Philo series, with pieces written on Apple, Microsoft, Moderna, Nvidia and others.
Misaligned Incentives & SBC
Many early investors in Tesla talk about how they invested in ELON and not the company, and that’s why they made a killing. Well…that’s only half true!
Elon created an aura around him and captivated the masses like not many could — and he also used Tesla’s gigantic valuation to dump his share-option-gained shares for >$50bln!
7 years on and FSD (full-self driving) is still a mess and Tesla’s shareholders have been stacked with false promises — but until recently that worked just fine.
Now, Tesla is down 55% since November ‘21 and seems to be in a world of hurt going forward.
Its cult-like status means some have made A LOT of money trading it, but none more than its founder Elon Musk.
The problem with cults however is that the investor-cultists actually drink the Kool Aid and could end up losing everything they made when the cult turns.
However today we’re here to discuss another cult stock, that of Palantir Technologies.