Today on the Brief:

• Wall Street quarterly earnings season opens
• Investor flock to higher-yielding Chinese government bonds
• Bitcoin whales go down but other types of HODLers go up

Our main conversation: What the hell is going on with $TSLA?

Elon Musk is now richer than Warren Buffett. A year ago, Tesla wasn’t as valuable as Ford or GM. Now it’s more than 25% of the value of the auto market as a whole. 

In this episode, NLW looks at a set of possible explanations:

• Elon as a Golden God/the cult of personality
• Tesla as an innovative tech company
• Better-than-expected vehicle delivery
• The mother of all short squeezes
• Robinhood effect
• Mr. FEDerico
• Narrative Market Machine

In the end, NLW argues that in a world where 1) the new retail base is willing to engage in narrative and meme warfare and 2) where the Federal Reserve distorts prices, the narrative market machine becomes more of a driver of prices than ever before.