How in the world is $TSLA worth more than $TM?

Stock prices do not reflect future earnings or company fundamentals, despite popular belief. The price of tradable assets with zero possible earnings demonstrate this.

Stock price is purely a function of supply and demand, and the demand does not have to be based on any sort of rational expectation of earnings. Price psychology is the biggest factor in my experience. People often buy for no reason other than the price moving up, which creates a cycle of upward price pressure which continues until enough decide to sell to take a profit, or there are no more buyers. This usually has little to do with company fundamentals like earnings. Day trading is pretty much based entirely on this logic, looking only at price and volume.

The lack of past profit actually fuels a higher price for Tesla, because it allows for imagining bigger profits in the future. A company that has a history of profits leaves little to the imagination. The story matters more than reality.

At the macro level, yield had dried up everywhere but stocks, combined with the Fed giving money to prop traders and signaling that they will buy junk assets and attempt to stop the market from crashing through any means possible. The market has become saturated with day traders and swing traders (retail and institutional) looking for volatility and price movement more than earnings or fundamentals, and newer stocks like Tesla attract them over established stocks like Toyota.

If you believe in all of the following,

Model Y, Semi, Truck and Model 3 will being in 5x the revenue, RoboTaxi, Lv5 AV coming in anytime, Tesla has the largest Battery Manufacturing Plant on the Planet, Tesla has 5 years lead in Battery Production, SolarCity taking over Solar Energy production, Elon Musk.....

But Yes... I still dont understand how on earth is it worth $200B.

Because stock prices reflect future earnings, not past earnings.

Basically, people buying TSLA stock believe future sales will be larger than Toyota.

Is there even a meaning to the stock market anymore? Share prices are running on a greater fool theory, aided by long term capital gains and the "reinvest in growth" charade, which will inevitably peak out. Everyone's just waiting to time the peak.

Seems insane to me. For some time its been my opinion that "the markets" weren't connected to any reality I can see. From my hilltop in the woods I don't see far; so that doens't necessarily signify much.

From my limited perspective it sure looks like there's so much play money seeking return that "brand recognition" is the only real reason to choose between one offering and another.

I wonder what the perception of Tesla will be in a few years when people start wanting to upgrade / sell these cars. I can’t imagine the resale being comparable to a Toyota. There is certainly a reason Toyota is the worlds most popular auto manufacturer, and it is very different from the reasoning people use to justify Tesla bullishness.

Company "worth" is calculated as: last sale price * number of shares outstanding

stock is held by founders and fans ==> few sellers

more buyers than sellers ==> stock price goes up ==> inflates worth

Company worth is an imperfect metric at best and non-sensical at worst.

It's not.

Enterprise value of Toyota: $318B

Enterprise value of Tesla: $205B

It isn't worth that much. It is however successful at making its stock price go up. These are not the same thing. If one share trades hands at $0.01 above the market then the market cap is outstanding shares * new price. Tesla has something like 185 million outstanding shares. That means a 1 cent change in price nets the market cap of the company 1.85 million. $0.01 = $1.8 million. Does that seem like a reality based means of setting the value of anything? It's about human psychology in the setting of a game at that moment. I would not take a linear extrapolation of that as a meaningful metric of the value of a company.

You can go down rabbit holes of apparent market manipulation, seeming fraudulent financial statements, an unquestioning media, toothless and out to lunch regulators, bubble inducing liquidity pushed by central banks but that stuff doesn't matter until it does. See Wirecard, Enron, Et al.

Do you think the future is cars running on fossil fuels, or electric cars?

Speculation, incredible liquidity in the system, etc.

That would be my guess.

Perhaps because Tesla is less bloated? Buying shares in an old big corporation feels like hiring the Vogon bureaucrats while investing in Tesla and SpaceX seems like paying young smart people for getting up-to-date things done.