Good morning. Hallam Bullock here, writing to you from London while Dan is on parental leave until May.
Do you have a bad boss? From the narcissist to the micromanager, experts outlined four types of poor leaders — and shared tips with BI on how to work with each one.
In today’s big story, with Tesla’s stock cut in half, investors want their CEO back.
What’s on deck
Markets: The stock market has a $1 trillion weapon to fight further price declines: stock buybacks.
Tech: An Amazon VP who oversaw the company’s flagship AI product is leaving.
Business: Target’s ideological identity crisis is putting its business in peril.
But first, Elon Musk seems a little distracted.
If this was forwarded to you, sign up here.
The big story
Musk’s split focus
Andrew Harnik/Getty Images; LIONEL BONAVENTURE/AFP via Getty Images; Chelsea Jia Feng/BI
The damage is stunning, BI’s Matthew Fox writes. Tesla’s stock price has plummeted 55% from its mid-December highs, Elon Musk’s net worth is down $132 billion this year, and a wave of anti-Tesla vandalism has intensified from graffiti to gunshots and Molotov cocktails; images show the aftermath of a Tesla showroom that was recently shot up after hours.
While this has been unfolding, Musk has been in Washington, DC, overseeing DOGE’s cost-cutting government overhaul — and Tesla investors aren’t thrilled about it. “We think shareholders have legitimate concerns about Elon Musk being spread too thin,” one analyst told BI. “It’s become clear he’s now spending more time on DOGE than anything else.”
Musk himself appears to have acknowledged this precarious balancing act. During an interview that aired just yesterday, Musk was asked by Fox Business how he’s running his other businesses while also working closely with the White House. His response? “With great difficulty.”
Needless to say, Musk’s answer is unlikely to calm investors’ nerves. Especially when yesterday alone saw Tesla’s stock plunge 15%, its largest single-day drop since 2020.
Tesla no longer seems to be part of the so-called Musk trade, with all of its postelection gains now erased.
The company’s EV sales have been struggling, BI’s Jennifer Sor writes. Car sales plummeted in several countries last month, and Wall Street is juggling concerns about Tesla’s Full Self-Driving software. Meanwhile, the competition in China is growing stronger.
There now may be more riding on Tesla’s long-promised cheaper EV, which is supposed to begin production in June at the latest. With Tesla’s stock facing choppy waters, analysts told BI the launch was “crucial” and a “necessity.”
Musk needs to turn more people into Tesla customers. But since he’s been in Washington, he’s turned some people off the company entirely. An angel investor told BI she’s among the cohort of Americans ditching their Teslas over Musk’s DOGE initiative. At the same time, “Tesla takedown” protests have sprung up in cities across the US, and some Tesla owners have seen their vehicles vandalized — you can take a closer look here.
Meanwhile, one business is booming amid Tesla’s woes: An aquarium worker who sells anti-Elon Musk stickers online as a side hustle told BI he had been selling 400 to 500 stickers a day in recent weeks — up from a handful in the past.
The stakes are high for the company at the moment, but as Investing.com’s Thomas Monteiro told BI: “Tesla has a history of delivering when the odds are stacked against it.”
News brief
3 things in markets
PhonlamaiPhoto/Getty, mbbirdy/Getty, Richard Darko/Getty, Tyler Le/BI
1. The Magnificent 7’s terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day. All seven tech darlings — Tesla, Meta, Alphabet, Nvidia, Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft — slid deeper into the red Monday, dragging the Nasdaq 100 down 3.8% in its biggest decline since October 2022. The amount of market value wiped out in the index exceeded $1 trillion at lows. The S&P 500, fresh off its worst week in six months thanks to tariff-related uncertainty, lost another 2.7%.
2. The stock market’s secret weapon to fighting further price declines. As the stock market struggles, Citi analysts noted it could be a great time for companies to buy back their stock at discounted levels — which has historically been an ace in the hole for companies looking to engineer stock gains during lean times. The bank is already expecting more repurchase activity, forecasting $1 trillion in 2025, up 11% from the previous year.
3. Nvidia’s sliding stock is currently cheaper than when ChatGPT launched — at least by one metric. Following Monday’s market wipeout, the chip giant’s P/E ratio dropped to 36.4 times, the lowest since 2019, and is down 30% from its intraday record high.
3 things in tech
CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP via Getty Images; Patrick Pleul/picture alliance via Getty Images; ALLISON ROBBERT/AFP via Getty Images; Chelsea Jia Feng/BI
1. The godfather of DOGE. Behind President Trump’s first month back in office lies a sweeping political vision set by tech billionaire Peter Thiel. In a 2009 essay for the Cato Institute, Thiel argued for the end of all government — even democracy — and for tech entrepreneurs to steer the future. From gutting government agencies to putting a stop to diversity, Trump and his followers are now putting Thiel’s vision into practice.
2. Zuck’s favorite president. Mark Zuckerberg told an employee in 2014 he thought Andrew Jackson was the greatest US president. The Meta CEO said he admired Jackson for his ruthlessness, and being a populist who “got stuff done,” former Facebook executive Sarah Wynn-Williams, wrote in her recently published memoir, “Careless People.”
3. The Amazon VP in charge of its flagship AI product is out. Baskar Sridharan, AWS’s VP of AI/ML services, is stepping down a year after joining the company following a major reorg, according to people familiar with the matter. Sridharan oversaw the direction and development of AWS’s major AI products, including its main horse in the AI race, Bedrock.
3 things in business
Getty Images; Jenny Chang-Rodriguez/BI
1. How Target went from woke to joke. Target can’t figure out what it stands for, particularly when it comes to diversity. That’s a bad position for a brand with cultural relevancy baked into the business model. The result is a stock price down 30% this year and an unenviable place at the center of America’s culture wars.
2. The Washington Post faces another newsroom shake-up. In an effort to sharpen the Post’s mission and cater to new readers’ evolving habits, executive editor Matt Murray detailed a substantial newsroom reorganization on Monday. The changes, which include several new leadership roles and reorganized teams, come after owner Jeff Bezos overhauled the paper’s opinion pages last month. Read the memo Murray sent to WaPo staff.
3. Jamie Dimon knows who the biggest proponent of remote work is. When it comes to RTO, the JPMorgan Chase CEO said it’s often the “people in the middle who complain a lot about it.” That is, white-collar workers who generally have more freedom when it comes to where they work than frontline workers. Dimon, a longtime advocate for RTO, recently spoke at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he discussed his own bank’s plans to go in-person.
In other news
What’s happening today
- Business Roundtable’s quarterly CEO economic outlook survey released.
- Greenland holds parliamentary elections.
- Volkswagen announces annual earnings.
The Insider Today team: Dan DeFrancesco, deputy editor and anchor, in New York (on parental leave). Grace Lett, editor, in Chicago. Ella Hopkins, associate editor, in London. Hallam Bullock, senior editor, in London. Amanda Yen, associate editor, in New York. Elizabeth Casolo, fellow, in Chicago. Lisa Ryan, executive editor, New York.
