Tesla’s “Trump bump” has officially run out of gas: Shares of Elon Musk’s electric vehicle company finished their weekslong tumble to pre-Election Day levels yesterday, marking the total erasure of $700 billion+ in value that Tesla added after Nov. 5—and then some.

From highest highs to lowest lows: $TSLA logged its worst trading session in nearly five years yesterday, plunging 15% to ~$222 and dragging the company’s market capitalization below $700 billion. The stock peaked at an all-time high of $1.5 trillion on Dec. 17 amid post-election optimism that President Trump would create a deregulatory environment favorable to big businesses, including Musk’s.

Since then:

• Tesla’s stock has declined every week for seven straight weeks since Musk joined Trump in Washington toward the end of January to head up the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). This is the longest stretch of losses Tesla has recorded in its 15 years as a public company.
• The company is the worst performer on the S&P 500 so far this year, cratering 45% since Jan. 1.

Here’s what happened

Tesla’s falling sales, trimmed sticker prices, and its CEO’s controversial turn to politics have eroded some investor confidence.

• With an aging lineup of vehicles and mounting quality issues, Tesla deliveries slid 7% in the US and 1% globally last year—the company’s first sales decline in more than 10 years. Meanwhile, worldwide EV sales rose 25% in 2024.
• In China, Musk’s carmaker is losing ground to the much cheaper domestic EV brand BYD.
• Tesla registrations in Germany plummeted 76% last month after Musk signaled support for the far-right AfD party.
• In the US, Musk’s ties to President Trump, his role in the Trump administration’s mass-firing of federal workers, and his promotion of anti-Ukraine talking points have drawn protests at Tesla dealerships and vandalism of Cybertrucks.

Looking ahead…Tesla’s value will largely rely on whether it can crack autonomous vehicles, which Musk has promised to deliver next year, every year since 2016, according to Reuters.—ML

US and Ukraine to hold talks today in Saudi Arabia. In the first major discussion between the US and Ukraine since a fiery exchange between Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky and President Donald Trump in the oval office, Zelensky will meet with US officials in Saudi Arabia to talk about a peace deal to end Russia’s war with Ukraine. It’s the second round of major US talks about the war to be held in the oil-rich Middle Eastern country: The US recently shifted its foreign policy to hold peace talks with Russia that didn’t include Ukraine, shocking Zelensky and European allies.

X suffers outages in possible “massive cyber attack.” The social media platform formerly known as Twitter went dark for many users several times yesterday, and more than 40,000 people reported problems with the site. Owner Elon Musk posted that X was the victim of a cyberattack and that “either a large, coordinated group and/or a country is involved.” Although an attack had not been confirmed, the hacking group Dark Storm Team reportedly took credit for it. The group, which has pulled off other sophisticated cyber attacks, has threatened cyberwarfare on Israel and its allies, according to Newsweek.

Trade war escalates. China began imposing tariffs on US agricultural products yesterday. The move to slap an import tax on US farm products, whose largest overseas market is China, comes after President Trump raised tariffs on Chinese imports to the US twice. Meanwhile, Ontario planned a 25% surcharge on US-bound electricity in retaliation for US tariffs on Canada, most of which have been delayed but remain a possibility. The extra fees will hit 1.5 million American homes in New York, Michigan, and Minnesota, according to the BBC.—AR

Who said economics majors are unpopular? Canada elected central banker extraordinaire Mark Carney as the leader of the Liberal Party on Sunday, making him Justin Trudeau’s successor as Prime Minister.

When he’s sworn in this week, Carney will inherit a country in the midst of an economic hailstorm brought on by US tariffs. But he knows a thing or two about tough economic climates, and he’s regarded by economists as a rock star central banker.

Who is this guy? Carney is like a living Patagonia vest—he studied at Harvard and Oxford before a 13-year stint at Goldman Sachs. Despite having no political experience, he made his way into the spotlight after years of successfully piloting countries through the economic equivalents of Scylla and Charybdis as the head of two central banks.

• Carney ran the Bank of Canada from 2008–2013, helping stabilize the country through the aftermath of the Great Financial Crisis.
• The Bank of England recruited him in 2013 to steer the country through Brexit. He was the first non-Brit to hold the position since the bank’s founding in 1694.

He already came out swingin’. In his acceptance speech, Carney said that President Trump is “attacking Canadian workers, families, and businesses.” He also indicated that he plans to keep reciprocal tariffs on US goods until the US starts to show some “respect.”—CC

A film buff looking forward to an evening with the Alfred Hitchcock Signature Collection DVD set is in for some suspense even before hitting play: Will the disc work?

There’s a good chance it won’t if it was released by Warner Bros. Home Entertainment between 2006 and 2008. The studio recently acknowledged that many of its late-2000s DVDs are unplayable due to a defect causing disc deterioration.

Who cares? Film fans cherish DVDs—which Sony says can last for up to 100 years—as a way to securely own their favorite rewatchables without relying on weirdly-named streaming services that often drop titles from their catalogs. The disc rot issue was surfaced by JoBlo.com Editor-in-Chief Chris Bumbray, who noticed duds in his own DVD pile and found similar lamentations from other cinephiles online:

• Many of the affected titles are Golden Age Hollywood classics like The Wild Bunch.
• Bumbray noted that some of the older movies haven’t been released on Blu-Ray or in digital HD—so their DVD demise could make them lost media.

If your Strangers on a Train DVD isn’t playing…Warner Bros. says to contact its support team for a replacement DVD or “a title of like-value” for movies that it can’t re-issue. Here’s a list of hundreds of reportedly rotted titles.—SK

Five years ago today, the WHO officially declared the coronavirus had reached pandemic status, and we’re all still living with the aftermath—from people who continue to face health impacts or grief over lost loved ones, to your friend who couldn’t keep a plant alive before that now has very strong feelings about the correct way to feed a sourdough starter, to offices sitting empty. Although many companies from Amazon to JPMorgan have started calling employees back to the office, the legacy of Covid lives on in office real estate. As of November 2024, Moody’s estimated US office vacancies were at a 30-year high of 20.1%. According to ABC, 900 million square feet were available then—enough to fill NYC’s One World Trade Center 300 times.

And besides making working in your jammies a real possibility, the pandemic has helped us all fulfill Liz Lemon’s ambition of saying yes to staying in more. On average, Americans now spend an extra hour and a half at home per day, the New York Times reports. And we’re not necessarily having friends over since we’re spending fewer minutes socializing per day, on average, than we were before the pandemic, per the NYT.—AR