Forget the Trump Trade — Maybe the "Musk Trade" Has Been the Place to Be All Along

Elon Musk's overall net worth has grown by roughly $135 billion since the election, through Wednesday, according to Bloomberg data.

After Donald Trump's presidential election victory in November, there was an immediate surge in assets ranging from stocks to crypto, which was dubbed the "Trump trade." However, after an initial bump, things didn't go as expected.

The president was less decisive than anticipated — particularly when it came to tariffs — and it caused the trade to fade.

Meanwhile, assets specifically linked to Trump's efficiency-bureau righthand man Elon Musk have soared in appeal and value. Forget the Trump trade — maybe the "Musk trade" has been the place to be all along.

The clearest distillation of this is in Musk's overall net worth, which has grown by roughly $135 billion since the election, through Wednesday, according to Bloomberg data.

But it can also be seen across Musk's array of companies, both public and private, as well as assets that function as real-time sentiment gauges for the polarizing Tesla billionaire.

Here are five ways the Musk trade has panned out positively since November:

Despite choppy returns year-to-date, Tesla stock closed Thursday up 42% since the election.

Musk has set an ambitious 2025 plan for the electric vehicle maker, including the rollout of a network of automated Cybercabs in Austin, Texas, and a return to vehicle-sales growth for the overall business.

Meanwhile, Trump's plan to roll back Biden-era tax credits for EVs has been viewed by many analysts on Wall Street as a headwind for Tesla's competitors.

The meme cryptocurrency dogecoin has surged about 60% since Trump's election win. Musk has long called the Shiba Inu-inspired meme coin his favorite crypto, and even named the Department of Government Efficiency after it.

Meme coins broadly have seen sharp gains in recent months. That's allowed dogecoin, the original meme token, to ride a wave of enthusiasm generated by Trump and Musk's deep political ties.

X, formerly Twitter, has seen a resurgence in recent months, at least on paper.

The banks that arranged financing for Musk's acquisition of the social media platform have been able to sell much of the previously unappealing debt they've been forced to sit on since 2022.

The latest chunk of this debt — $4.74 billion, to be exact — was sold last week at face value. The sale was upsized from the $3 billion originally sought by Morgan Stanley and other banks after demand was higher than expected.

This reversal of fortunes coincides with recent X financials that showed EBITDA of $1.2 billion in 2024, roughly unchanged from the period before Musk's takeover of the now-private company.

Feeding into this, advertisers are returning to the platform. There's Apple, for one. Other big names that ranked among the top spenders on X in January included Amazon, Robinhood, and Chinese e-commerce giant Temu.

Elon Musk's xAI, which is a direct competitor to OpenAI, is also benefitting from a surge in interest from investors.

The company, which has raced to build a massive AI data center in Memphis, is in talks to raise $10 billion at a $75 billion valuation, according to Bloomberg.

That would represent an 88% increase from the company's $40 billion valuation in December, when it raised $6 billion in a Series C funding round.

"This pivot into AI, for Elon, is obviously what he's good at," Ross Gerber, the CEO of Gerber Kawasaki CEO and a longtime Tesla investor, told BI. "He's 100% focused on AI."

SpaceX, Musk's space flight company, is also among the entities that's seen its valuation soar since Trump's election.

In December, the space exploration company sold shares at a $350 billion valuation, a 67% increase from its previous valuation of $210 billion.

SpaceX is also racking up deals for its satellite internet division, Starlink, with companies like T-Mobile.

And not just in the US. In early January, it was reported that the Italian government was considering a $1.6 billion deal for secure telephone and internet via Starlink.