On Monday, a Tesla Roadster lifted off the tarmac, and a shadow appeared beneath it where no shadow belonged. I have been staring at that shadow for six hours. It is shaped like 1929.
The demonstration, covered by Wired and MarketWatch, has been called an engineering flex with no commercial value beyond embarrassing other car makers. Everyone is celebrating. Everyone celebrated in 1999, too (right up until they didn't).
Let me explain the problem in plain terms. Traders talk about a "support level", the floor a price tends not to fall through. For roughly all of recorded history, the ultimate support level has been the actual floor. Cars sat on it. Buildings sat on it. Confidence sat on it. Tesla has now broken through that floor in the wrong direction. Any chart reader will tell you a sharp move up with nothing underneath is not a rally. It is a long drop that hasn't started yet.
"They haven't built a flying car. They've shorted gravity, and gravity has never once lost a margin call," said the head of downside strategy at Gravewell Capital, from beneath his desk.
