Chapter 52
Chapter 52
Black-Haired Investor Awakened as a Superman, Episode 052
==========
'Tesla's stock price is too high?'
'Is this what the CEO of Tesla should be saying?'
I couldn't help but feel bewildered.
'Someone who can't possibly be unaware of the impact of their words on the market...'
The situation instantly descended into chaos.
└ What CEO in their right mind would do this to shareholders? I used to think you were a genius, but now I know for sure. Elon, you're a crazy son of a bitch. And I'm an even bigger idiot for deciding to invest in a guy like you.
└ How can a CEO badmouth their own company's stock?
└ If it's really Elon and not a hack, I'm selling all my Tesla stock and never looking back. I'm canceling my Cyber Truck order too.
└ Elon! We're not rich like you. What the hell is wrong with you? Now I'm about to get kicked out of my apartment. Is that what you wanted?
A torrent of crude insults and accusations poured out.
└ Typical Elon. It takes just one second to go from genius CEO to crazy person.
└ Epic trolling lol
└ Volkswagen liked this post.
└ This guy is supposed to be the next Steve Jobs???
└ Anyone who's played Dungeons & Dragons knows that intelligence and wisdom are completely separate stats.
Mockery exploded.
└ This can't be real. You're not usually this irresponsible, Elon...
└ I invested in Tesla because I respect you. But this is a betrayal of everyone who admires you. Please reconsider.
└ Delete this tweet right now and say you were hacked. Please, I'm begging you. My family's retirement fund is invested in your company.
Desperate pleas were mixed in haphazardly.
And this comment even made me nod in agreement.
└ I completely agree. Tesla's stock is too high, especially for a company with a lunatic like Elon as CEO.
The scene unfolding before my eyes was the perfect example of owner risk.
With that one tweet, my account value...
Vanished by more than $400 million.
'Elon Musk... that bastard. Is he really on drugs?'
* * *
[ AK (Offshore Account)
• Investment Capital: $100 million
• Investment Size: $1 billion
(10x Leverage)
• Holdings: Tesla
• Shares Held: 2,339,181
• Purchase Price: $427.5
• Current Price: $701.25
• Valuation: $1,640,345,711
• Profit/Loss: +$640,345,811
• Return: +640% ]
For this position to collapse, Tesla's stock price would have to plummet by another 45.13% from its current level, down to $384.
But I couldn't afford to be complacent.
This was someone who had already demonstrated a willingness to do things that everyone else would consider insane.
Who could guarantee that he wouldn't do something even more outrageous?
Frankly speaking.
Even just one more tweet saying that Tesla's future looked bleak would have an even more explosive impact than what we're seeing now.
In that case, there would be a very real chance of my position being wiped out.
Even my personal account, which was far from the liquidation price, was in this situation. The AlphaHelp account, which had just entered the market recently, was even worse.
[ AlphaHelp (Non-profit Welfare Foundation)
• Investment Capital: $1.64 billion
• Investment Size: $4.92 billion
(3x Leverage)
• Investment Progress (51.75%):
$2,546,106,959
• Investment Balance (48.25%):
$2,373,893,041 ]
[ AlphaHelp (Non-profit Welfare Foundation)
• Holdings: Tesla
• Shares Held: 3,344,191
• Purchase Price: $761.37
• Current Price: $691.2
• Valuation: $2,345,113,986
• Profit/Loss: -$200,993,961
• Return: -23.67% ]
This position would be liquidated if Tesla's stock price fell to $507.58.
Just a 26.57% drop from the current price, and it's over.
Of course, there was still room to raise the liquidation price with the remaining funds.
But the reason I was so infuriated was the fact that over a billion dollars of my money was hanging on someone else's damn finger-wagging.
Even with this superhumanly Awakened brain, I couldn't analyze human madness.
I had anticipated some owner risk with Tesla.
But I couldn't have calculated this level of insanity.
This was truly insane.
The kind of insane thing that only a company's CEO could pull off.
It wasn't just the shareholders who suffered significant losses; Elon Musk himself, who held 17% of Tesla's shares, saw his net worth plummet by $2.4 billion as a result of this crash.
All for one flick of the finger.
But he wouldn't have done something this crazy without a reason.
* * *
As it happened, I had received a call from Tesla's IR team yesterday.
There was no way internal government information had been leaked.
Nevertheless, they were aware of AlphaHelp's accumulation. It was clear that they had obtained the information through unofficial channels.
But wasn't checking for trends in shareholding changes a major part of IR teams' jobs in the first place?
Crossing the line between legal and illegal in that process was a common practice that everyone turned a blind eye to.
So I had simply given them a warning and hadn't made a big deal out of it.
However, the fact that they were reacting so sensitively to the shareholding changes that they contacted me directly made me realize that Tesla's shareholder meeting was coming up soon.
Sure enough.
I checked the email that had come to AK, the paper company I was using for my personal account, and there was a letter to shareholders from Tesla dated April 17th.
「 Tesla, Letter to Shareholders
• Shareholder Meeting Date: June 13, 2020
• Shareholder Meeting Location: Tesla Factory, 45500 Fremont Blvd, Fremont, CA 94538, USA
• Key Agenda Items:
1. Re-approval of CEO Elon Musk's Performance-Based Compensation Plan
2. Relocation of Tesla's Incorporation from Delaware to Texas 」
I knew it.
It was this. There was a reason for the madness.
Re-approval of the performance-based compensation plan according to 12 stages.
1.69 million Stock Options would be rewarded per performance stage, for a total of 20.8 million shares.
According to the performance-based compensation plan, Elon had already broken through the first stage of performance.
He would be able to acquire 690,000 Stock Options at $350.02 per share.
That's a simple market profit of $576,594,200.
Moreover, if he achieved all 12 stages of performance, it would be $6,919,130,400.
Nearly $7 billion.
And Elon must have been confident that he would break through all the stages.
That's how it seemed to me too.
Even calculated with the current stock price, which hadn't even spread its wings yet, it was that much.
But what would the value be when it really soared to those heights with wings burning with madness?
'Even if it soars tenfold, that's $70 billion.'
So for Elon, this shareholder meeting was a matter of at least $70 billion.
Why wouldn't it be?
He had to get this performance-based compensation plan passed at the shareholder meeting.
And he seemed confident that it could be passed if I didn't interfere.
Otherwise, he couldn't have gone this far while being called a madman.
'So Elon's madness this time is...'
A warning specifically directed at me.
To get my hands off it if I didn't want to die together.
* * *
Mutually Assured Destruction.
It was a term used during the Cold War with nuclear war in mind.
But there was no other word that could better describe the current situation.
If AlphaHelp accumulated more Tesla, Elon would once again do something even more insane that no one could imagine, causing the stock price to plummet.
Then my AK and AlphaHelp would be destroyed.
Elon himself would also have his remaining life destroyed by all sorts of lawsuits, in addition to the loss of asset value.
But seeing him today, Elon was definitely capable of doing that.
Perhaps because he had been driven to the edge of the cliff once before, his determination to see things through to the end was sharpened to a razor's edge.
"Ah... oh... why are you doing this to me too?"
The emotions I had been suppressing leaked out between my lips.
At first, I was furious. Then, I was crushed by annoyance.
The opponent had started a fight, but the problem was the way they were fighting.
'To fight as if we're betting our lives on it.'
Without any threats or negotiations, he had decided from the start that the end of this fight would be destruction.
That's what he was asking me.
'How much am I prepared to risk...'
Tesla may be worth everything to Elon, but to me, Tesla was simply for the purpose of market profits.
Because of that clear difference, this fight was unfair from the start. It was a fight that I had no choice but to concede.
That's what made me resentful and annoyed.
But what could I do? I had no choice but to avoid a madman who was dripping blood and rushing at me with his life on the line.
There was nothing to gain from fighting.
I figured that if I was going to concede anyway, I might as well make it clear.
I sent a direct message.
[ @AlphaMind_1999: AlphaHelp's Tesla accumulation is for pure investment purposes. There are no plans to exercise voting rights or interfere in management at the upcoming shareholder meeting. ]
The reply came back immediately.
[ @elonmusk : Yet? ]
I was the one who could hinder Elon from acquiring at least $70 billion worth of Tesla shares.
Even if I was going to concede, I had to get something in return.
I pressed each letter carefully and sent it again.
[ @AlphaMind_1999: Instead, I want to participate in OpenAI. ]
* * *
Right now, people's attention is entirely focused on the coronavirus.
There's no cure, and even the first phase of vaccine clinical trials hasn't been completed, and the economy is plummeting day by day.
All people want is the end of the coronavirus and the recovery of the economy.
In this situation where immediate survival is urgent, who can look beyond the end of the pandemic?
Who can be interested in artificial intelligence?
But there is one in California.
In this situation where everyone is focused on the economic recession and responding to the virus, there was a research group silently dedicated to AI development.
When people think of AI, they only think of Google DeepMind's AlphaGo.
But in my opinion, if a true AI shock were to begin, its origin would be right here.
A name that is still unfamiliar to most people—
OpenAI.
That's not to say that no one had noticed the potential of OpenAI.
OpenAI had a glamorous start from the beginning.
Even excluding Elon.
Y Combinator, which had produced mega-startups such as Dropbox, Airbnb, and Stripe, and its chairman, Sam Altman.
And since a large number of Silicon Valley's core figures, known as the PayPal Mafia, had participated, it was natural that the industry's attention was focused on it.
In addition to that.
Last year, Microsoft announced a $1 billion investment, effectively boarding the last train.
It was really only now.
If it wasn't now, while Elon's influence was still somewhat present, the path for me to participate in OpenAI might be blocked forever.
Only now, when everything has been turned upside down by the coronavirus.