Tesla gains $60bn in market value in a week

SMALL STARTUPS’ market value has been known to soar by 50% in a few days. It is almost unheard of for $100bn companies to gain that much so fast. Unless you are Tesla. Since we wrote about Elon Musk’s electric-car firm’s performance last week, when it reported a quarterly operating profit of $359m, its market capitalisation swelled by nearly $60bn—never mind that it still lost money for the year as a whole and makes one car for every 30 produced by Germany’s Volkswagen (with a market capitalisation of $95bn). On February 5th it shed some $30bn. The reasons for the volatility remain as mysterious as Mr Musk’s mood swings.■