Emily Flippen

They're not trying to make some sort of macro call by holding it.

I honestly think, to your point, Lou, there's a lot of different dynamics that are going on behind the scenes with the transition of leadership at Berkshire Hathaway, investment opportunities, of course, but also just the sheer size of the cash that they're holding is, in my opinion, not representative of the challenge that the average investor seeks.

And while you're right that I never put money into the market that I need for the foreseeable future, my emergency fund over the next three years, I also do not keep a conscious cash position for my investment accounts.

In my opinion, investors, depending on your risk tolerance, probably shouldn't.

It doesn't make mathematical sense.

Stocks generally go up, so every penny that I intend to hold for the long-term, I like to keep that invested, regardless of what Berkshire Hathaway or the market is doing at the time.

Well, far be it for me to be the person to defend Tesla here as somebody who has been a skeptic of the stock for a while, but I actually really like this pay package.

And we've seen other pay packages that have been similar.

I think about Axon when they set market cap goals for compensation for their founder CEO and achieved them.

It can be one of those win-wins for shareholders.

But I will say the milestones that you laid out, John, in my opinion, are

are somewhat contradictory to the expansion in market cap for Tesla, because we're talking about expanding the number of vehicle deliveries, robots, robo taxis.

These could be initiatives that are actually margin reducing for Tesla.

Trying to deliver more vehicles means cutting the cost.

We've already seen Tesla's margins start to erode in previous quarters.

There's still not an optimist robot that's available for purchase.

So if we're aggressively going after these milestones, if I'm Elon Musk and I want to get my pay package,

and I have to achieve these milestones, you're going through all of these steps to aggressively achieve them, even if it is at the expense of something like free cash flow.

And free cash flow has been the silver lining for Tesla shareholders for so long now.

So I worry a little bit that these operational metrics are in direct contrast to what has made Tesla such an incredible business to this point.