Jeremy Grantham says Elon Musk turned "bullshit and charisma" into billions of dollars and real factories.
He called it "almost miraculous management."
The legendary bubble investor had bought a Tesla in 2019. He praised the car but wrote that the stock was incredibly expensive.
It rose 10x.
At the time of his warning, the automaker had never reported an annual profit. He thought it might not survive another two years.
In this 2023 interview, Grantham says he failed to account for Musk's ability to persuade investors.
"He was such a wonderful propagandist that he talked the stock up way ahead of any possibility."
That enthusiasm gave Tesla more than a rising share price. It opened access to enormous amounts of cash.
When a company has a higher valuation, it can obtain the same sum while surrendering less ownership. During 2020 alone, Tesla completed three equity offerings that produced approximately $12.27 billion after costs.
Grantham says Musk repeatedly promoted the business as the company issued additional shares, converting investor expectations into cash it could spend.
"He had generated out of thin air a massive amount of real buying power which went straight into these megafactories."
Grantham thought the price had moved too far ahead of the business.
Musk used that gap to help Tesla catch up.
Charlie Munger said this on camera, weeks before he died: "I don't regard Elon Musk as truly rich, because I don't think it's sure that everything he's working on can work."
Then he went further. "I would not invest in Elon Musk myself."
Munger's reasoning wasn't about Tesla's product or Musk's talent. It was about pattern.
"He's used leverage so much that he's doubled down right to the edge of extinction maybe two or three times." Asked how many times Musk had walked that edge without falling in, Munger's answer: "he's done it three times. Maybe he's got six more."
This is coming from a man who spent six decades building Berkshire on the opposite principle. Munger and Buffett deliberately took smaller stakes than they could have afforded, using less leverage than was available, specifically so a bad stretch would never wipe out the people who trusted them.
Munger used the phrase "two hard pile" for things he'd rather not spend time thinking about, things he can't fix himself. He used it earlier in the same conversation for the risk of nuclear war. Elon Musk went in the same pile.
"I never met with him," he said. "As far as I'm concerned, he doesn't exist."
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