Tesla stocks’ sky-high flight today has helped the electric-vehicle company reach a new milestone of a valuation of over half a trillion dollars. The company’s net value is estimated to be around $515 billion, a five times increase since the start of the year 2020. And not just Tesla’s net market cap, the founder Elon Musk also saw himself overtake Bill Gates as the second richest man on earth, now only behind Amazon’s Jeff Bezos.
As mentioned before, the biggest factor behind Tesla’s latest growth is its stocks. After trading opened on Tuesday, Tesla’s share price crossed $527.48 per share, and within no time reached $545.62 per share in morning trading, an increase of 4.6%. This helped Elon Musk’s own net worth grow by $7.24 billion as it crossed over $128 billion to overtake Bill Gates on Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index. This recent progress from Tesla is, however, not new or surprising. In fact, this is how the automaker’s story has been pretty much this year.
After Tesla’s shares hit a low earlier in March this year, the company struck back to be on a constant growth trajectory, and never looked back. In August, the share price of the EV-maker hit the throttle and grew faster. And in the past few weeks, this growth has been fuelled by the news that the company might be possibly listed in the S&P 500 index in December.
The benchmark setters announced earlier this month that the company will be added to the index before trading on December 21. This move pushed the share prices of Tesla up high since investors with funds that track the S&P 500 will now buy Tesla shares for their portfolio.
The addition of the American EV-maker into the S&P 500 index will put it among the ranks of Apple, Berkshire Hathaway and Microsoft. Not only that, but it will also be one of the most valuable companies in the index. Other bankers like Morgan Stanley too have pushed Tesla a bit higher to a buy-equivalent overweight rating last week, which is the first time for the company.
