Replacing Elon Musk as CEO may be the solution to Tesla's problems

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has had it up to here with the short-termism of the stock market. So he must have been happy this morning when President Donald Trump tweeted he has “asked the SEC to study!” the idea of having public companies only report earnings every six months instead of every quarter, to “allow greater flexibility,” whatever that means. This came a week after Musk said he was tired of the market’s hamster wheel and wanted to take Tesla private, where he wouldn’t have to worry about pesky short-sellers, analysts and the like.

But short-termism isn’t a big problem for a company like, say, Deere & Co., notes Brooke Sutherland. The tractor maker, which reported quarterly results this morning, has a long-term story compelling enough to make investors overlook short-term hiccups. Tesla, on the other hand, is one of those companies “that have bigger challenges that get felled by arbitrary goal posts, and the most problematic are often those of leaders’ own making,” Brooke writes. 

Musk’s musings about going private have gotten the company in hot water with the SEC, and last night The New York Times published an unsettling interview with him in which he teared up about the pressure of being Tesla’s CEO. Matt Levine writes Musk has accidentally stumbled on the simplest solution to Tesla’s problems: Just let somebody else be CEO!