I wouldn't be surprised if Tesla chooses to cook the books.
It will be very strange if numbers aren't in red.

https://www.financecharts.com/compare/TSLA,TM/value/pe-ratio

So uh... Toyota's PE is almost 8, a bit down from its historical average of about 9 or 10.

Tesla's is currently about 115.

Down almost 50% from its highs around 200 during Jan 2025.

If Tesla's actual $$$ stock/share value dropped down to ... lets say a PE of 10... that would be... well ok it is currently still dropping rather rapidly, but lets say rightnnow its $225 per share.

If Tesla 'corrected' to a PE of 10, that's a share value of about $19.57.

About a 91% drop from where it is right now...

... which would wipe out around $700 billion of market cap.

These are ballpark figures based on a hypothetical scenario, this is not financial advice, but yeah, that is a way of looking at how overvalued Tesla is (or could be).

EDIT: Musk himself apparently owns about 410 million Tesla shares, as of Feb 2025.

https://www.investopedia.com/articles/insights/052616/top-4-tesla-shareholders-tsla.asp

So... a 91% reduction of 410m shares * $225 per share...

That would be a personal loss for Musk of about $82 billion, from this exact moment.

That'd put his net worth at about $273b, based on him having a net worth of $355b as of Feb 2025... but his net worth may already be significantly less than $355b, because Tesla has dropped a lot between the date of the source I've found for his net worth, and right now.

EDIT 2

https://www.forbes.com/profile/elon-musk/?list=rtb%2F&sh=7123ba5d7999

Uh wow yeah, ok, between Feb 28 2025 and Mar 18 2025, he's already lost about $34 billion... and is currently at $321 billion.

So... if you take $82 b out of $321, then he's down to around $240 ish.

Sadly... he would be the richest person in the world, even after that, he'd have to get below $210b ish to sink to #2 under Bezos, below about $200b to be #3, also under Zucky boy.

For someone who knows nothing about stocks, what is a P/E ratio?

BuT bUt BuT tHiNk AbOuT tHe MaSsIvE dIvIdEnD pOtEnTiAl WhEn ItS tEcH fUlLy MaTuReS! iT mAkEs Me FeEl LiKe I gEt To OwN sUm SpAcEx ToO!!!

Also consider that if you bought the stock mid December 2020, it's the exact same value today!!!
That's a return to where it was more than 4 years ago. 😋

I am mostly a disciple of Boglehead investing philosophy.

A seminal resource early in my adult life was The Wealthy Barber, which I think still stands up well as a sensible guide to low-stress, long-term investing.

An ETF is basically a thing you buy, like shares of stock, but each share of an ETF is made of a blend of a bunch of stocks. VTI is an ETF run by the brokerage Vanguard that tries to track the entire US stock market, weighted against how large a company is. You should try to find ETFs with a low "expense ratio", which is basically the management fee for a blended fund. VTI is really low, something like 0.03%. So you pay vanguard $3 for every $10,000 gained (I think it works like that, anyway. All I know is it's low and that's good).

I don't endorse playing with Options Contracts unless you have an iron stomach and incredible self discipline. It's legalized gambling in my view (although it has other valid uses, like hedging against losses...but it's an advanced tool and can wreak havoc on savings when used poorly).

I personally will never short anything. I'm not smart enough to do it right, I proved that to myself when I tried to actively invest. Were I to play the market again, if I were pessimistic about a stock, I would opt to buy Put Options to bet against it. Those come with their own risks, including being able to time the market in addition to its direction. I've seen others say you can buy positions in a ticker that tracks the inverse of Tesla, but it insulates you from the worst case of selling short (i.e. theoretical infinite loss, or at least way more loss than you could afford); it can only drop to zero for a 100% loss, but not more. At least, that's my understanding, but I could be wrong. The advice I give myself is to just not play, except in the most boring way.

There's a hole in that theory. musk has secured billions of credit with his Tesla shares. If Tesla goes down, musk goes down