It is rare to open a financial paper these days and not see Elon Musk mentioned within it. Why is that? Perhaps it is because everything he has been touching in the past 15 years has turned to gold.
Tesla was founded by Elon Musk back in 2003. At that time, Musk had capital left over from the sale of PayPal, the successful online payment company he co-founded in March 1999, and sold to eBay in 2002 for $165 million. In the early years of Tesla, Musk approached Daimler AG, the parent-company of Mercedes automobiles, hoping to jump-start the electric-automobile venture of his. Tesla has grown since that time. Launching IPO in July 2010, Tesla began trading at $19.20 per share. The company has been going from strength to strength ever since, and Tesla stock is currently trading at $231.10 per share.
It was reported late Tuesday that Daimler AG sold $780 million of Tesla stock this week. Analysts are still trying to decipher whether the sale was done because Daimler sees less potential in Tesla for the coming future, or whether it has begun to see Tesla as competition.
Meanwhile, under eBay’s care, Paypal has been growing more rapidly than eBay as a whole. Carl Icahn, the famed investor, recently told reporters that he believed PayPal would be more attractive to traders should the eBay division branch off as a separate company. And that is exactly what happened. Meanwhile, SpaceX, a Space Exploration project of Musk, was recently awarded funding from Boeing to create a Space-Taxi which will launch astronauts to the International Space Station.
Australian Dollar Killing It
The AUD/USD currency pair has been gradually climbing in the past six days. Analysts attribute the strengthening Australian dollar to better than expected numbers coming out of China, Australia’s largest trade partner. Due to their close trade relationship, success for China is a good indicator for success of the Australian economy.
China’s good numbers include:
a) A 7.3% quarterly growth of the economy (surpassing expectations of a 7.2% growth rate).
b) China’s national industrial production rising 8% in September (surpassing expectations of a 7.5% rise).
The Australian dollar is currently trading at 0.87872 against the US dollar, a significant increase from October 16th’s low of 0.87103.
