Our noninvasive cloning technique just made the @TIME Best Inventions of 2025. 🎉 Old cloning took skin cells, meaning a piece of a living animal. Now we can clone using a simple blood draw, with no cuts and no biopsies. A gentler way to clone and a win for the animals.
David Friedberg: The Three Most Important Consequences of Tariffs
"If you use tariffs, or other taxes or other government intervening systems, to distort the natural forces of markets ... then you're creating a disincentive for American enterprise to be more competitive."
@friedberg on @theallinpod
Let’s be honest: Most WS analysts are used to being spoon-fed. And most CEOs hate providing guidance. They do it because their competitors do it. $TSLA not providing guidance just means WS has to do its own research, which is how it should be anyway.
@elonmusk is wired differently than most CEOs. TSLA’s mission is to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy. Providing WS guidance doesn’t further that mission in any way. TSLA’s 4Q results were actually better than WS expected stripping out accounting adjustments and non-cash tax rate changes going forward. Gross margins ex-reg credits grew QoQ to 17.2% as auto COGS per unit fell -8.5% YoY, supporting the thesis that auto gross margins bottomed in 3Q at 16.3%.
Last night, $TSLA declined to cut US prices on a Thursday, which is when 90% of TSLA price changes occur. Recall Elon’s comment on the earnings call that “If interest rates come down quickly, I think margins will be good.” As one of my clients @drjeffyu suggested yesterday It may also mean that going forward Elon is willing to sacrifice short term volume growth for profitability. As TSLA learned in 2023, cutting price doesn’t necessarily lead to more volume.
What we saw Wed night was Elon saying GFY to Wall Street. With the former CFO gone, Elon likely said let’s stop this silly custom of providing annual volume guidance to WS at the beginning of the year, which we are then beholden to the rest of the year. I’m actually good with that. As an analyst my job is to figure out the intersection of volume and price and forecast the stock price accordingly. It’s not written down anywhere that CEOs have to guide anything about the coming year. TSLA investors had a fit yesterday because they are used to be being spoon-fed the company’s outlook and now they have to do their own research. We all need to grow up. @elonmusk@MartinViecha
There’s a reason why investing is sometimes referred to as the “last liberal art.” It rests upon a robust foundation: a bedrock made up of mental models, clear thinking, and shrewd analysis.