Tesla more valuable than Ford, GM? Crazy

The longer I watch the auto industry, the more I become convinced that the stock market is a good banker but a lousy CEO.

As a CEO, the market (investors both large and small and the financial analysts who drive their actions) makes horrible short-term decisions that defy logic.

How else does one explain Tesla surpassing Ford Motor Co. and General Motors in market capitalization?

Two of those three companies each made and sold more than 6 million vehicles and generated more than $10 billion in pretax profits last year.

The third runs one of the most inefficient automotive manufacturing plants on the planet and is learning — learning — that building things is hard.

Don’t try to sell me that “I’m buying the future” claptrap. If that were true, startups developing flying cars would be more valuable than Tesla. But they’re not.

No, the problem is not with Ford or Tesla or any other automaker, supplier or publicly traded automotive stock. The problem is the stock market itself.

You see, the stock market is one thing above all else: the most efficient machine ever created by man.

It’s powered solely by an unlimited supply of human greed and greased with equal parts human perspiration and aspiration.

The stock market devalues work and small proven innovations while heaping unjustified adulation upon unproven theories and pipe dreams.

Tesla’s vehicles are fine pieces of machinery, but we can talk more when it outsells the ancient Dodge Journey in a quarter.

Am I a Tesla luddite — or maybe a Detroit “homer” — when it comes to the auto industry? Perhaps.

But I can’t think of a single reason why rational people would think Tesla is more valuable than either Ford or GM.