Elon Musk is yet again the man of the hour. Elon can do no wrong. I have never seen anyone as consistently able to deliver as he is. After the July assassination attempt, he went all-in on Trump when no one other billionaire would. Having acquired Twitter, he repurposed the platform to help secure what was a historic and stunning win for the once and now future 47th president. Basically, he paid $20 billion of his own money to put Trump in office. But he will recoup that loss and more in terms of economic policy that is conducive to his other businesses.
Musk’s AI venture, xAI, was recently valued at $40 billion–that alone pays for Twitter. Tesla’s stock surge, up 11%, on Trump’s win also made Elon that much richer. In theory, Twitter/X was profitable for Musk if its spinoff is worth more than the actual service it originated from. It was quite ingenious what Musk had done: he rebranded X/Twitter as an AI company and integrated AI heavily into some of X’s features, so now he recouped his loss with the spinoff.
Rogan had Trump, Vance, and Musk in the span of a week on his podcast, to successfully make the case for Trump and bypassing the usual media channels like TV. This shows the power of today’s new right-wing media to overtake the left’s lead. The left started with a century head start, only to lose to this new media. Woke academia and the NYTs cannot compete against Rogan, YouTube, and Twitter when people are given a choice as to what content to consume, unlike the credentialism-to-DEI funnel that is academia.
No one cares about comparisons to Trump to Hitler, which ring as hollow now as such comparisons did in 2016. No one cares or is that aghast that Trump said certain things. The media is still stuck in its bubble where people are supposed to be outraged by the things Trump is allegedly guilty of or the worst things ascribed to him, when people simply see a man who is receptive to their needs and authentically honest, that compared to his opponent, are attributes sorely missing in politics today. It was not because Kamala was bad per se–although that was true–but copying the same playbook as in 2015-2016 which failed then and failed now.
Aside from Elon and Trump, the biggest winners are also the Twitter pundits. What a great time to be in that business. It’s like the ultimate “I told you so” on the Democratic establishment. This is includes Cernovich, Tim Pool, among others. Same for Bitcoin, which surged last night from $69k to $74k on optimism Trump would enact the polices he promised during the 2024 Bitcoin conference. I would put the probability as very low of Trump delivering on any of those things. Maybe he will pardon Ross Ulbricht, whose life literally depended on this outcome.
Fortunately for me, I always cover my Bitcoin short at the close, as per my method, I was unscathed even if I was wrong about it going back below $60k. Bitcoin cannot even get to $100k despite endless predictions over the past 5+ years it would. Each cycle is getting subsequently smaller. If anything, it’s reached the final stage in which the supply of new buyers to prop up the price, let alone new highs, is exhausted.
I also realized huge gains today on my leveraged tech stocks, so overall it couldn’t have gone better for me. By being fully invested in stocks with leverage, I was positioned perfectly for this win. The bond market is getting annihilated on the prospect of increased deficit spending and inflation due to Trump’s promised tax cuts. Cutting taxes, like in 2017, will be among Trump’s first priorities in office, not the other stuff like immigration.