Elon Musk Lost His Trillionaire Status as SpaceX Shares Dropped 26%. Are Tesla and SpaceX Stock Still a Buy?

The article flags that both Tesla and SpaceX are “sliding,” with Tesla down 12.4% YTD and SpaceX now 26% below its highs. Musk owns 15.7% of Tesla (717.1M shares) and ~46% of SpaceX, but SpaceX has added governance risk: Musk holds 82.3% voting rights, limiting minority shareholder recourse. Valuation concerns are central—Tesla trades at ~368x trailing 12-month earnings (on shrinking net income) and SpaceX at ~110x sales with reported high net losses—leading to a cautious stance that neither looks like a clear “bargain on the dip.”

Analysis

The important signal is not the paper loss itself; it is that both names are already priced like perpetual optionality while operating momentum is no longer accelerating fast enough to justify that duration. In that setup, a rich multiple can compress much faster than earnings deteriorate, so the first-order move is usually sentiment-driven and the second-order move is a tighter financing/valuation feedback loop for any future capital raises, stock-based compensation, or acquisition currency.

For Tesla, the market is vulnerable to a narrative unwind if margin pressure persists for another quarter or two. A weaker share price can also make talent retention more expensive in economic terms, because equity comp becomes less compelling exactly when the company needs execution discipline; that matters more than the headline wealth effect. For the private-market name, concentrated control creates a governance discount that minority holders cannot vote away, so any disappointment tends to reprice as a permanent haircut rather than a temporary drawdown.

The contrarian read is that this is not primarily a "Musk wealth" story; it is a high-duration asset story where the marginal buyer is becoming more selective. If operating updates stabilize, the stocks can bounce hard because positioning is still driven by narrative, but absent a fresh catalyst the risk/reward remains asymmetric to the downside over the next 1-3 months. The thesis is falsified if Tesla re-accelerates gross margin/earnings or if the private-market valuation proves sticky despite slower growth and no liquidity event.

Key Decisions for Investors

• Sell TSLA rallies over the next 1-3 weeks via put spreads rather than outright short stock; target a 2:1 to 3:1 payoff if multiple compression continues, with risk capped if the shares reclaim recent trend resistance on improving delivery or margin data.
• Relative-value trade: long NVDA / short TSLA for 1-3 months. Use it as a cleaner expression of "quality growth vs. expensive growth with weakening profitability"; thesis breaks if TSLA gets a margin/guidance reset higher or NVDA guidance de-risks less than expected.
• Do not buy the dip in SPCX on this headline alone. Treat it as a governance-discount warning and require a materially lower entry price or a clear liquidity catalyst before taking exposure; there is no good minority-holder remedy if execution disappoints.
• If holding TSLA already, trim into any momentum-driven bounce and wait for the next earnings/margin update before re-risking; the near-term catalyst path is more likely to be multiple compression than fundamental upside.