Musk Selloff Deepens as Tesla and SpaceX Shed $456 Billion in Two Days

The selloff hitting Elon Musk's companies deepened this week, with Tesla and SpaceX together losing about $456 billion in value over two days. The decline has spread beyond a single stock, pulling down the group of businesses that investors have long treated as one bet on Musk.

The main concern is political rather than operational. Traders are worried that a Washington split along partisan lines could stall decisions and policy moves that matter to the companies, and that such gridlock could undermine the confidence behind "Elon, Inc.," the shorthand that ties Musk's ventures together in the eyes of the market.

That linkage is the reason the losses are so large. When investors value several companies as a single story, bad news for one can quickly reprice the others. Whether the slide continues will likely depend on how political developments unfold in the coming days and whether the companies give investors reasons to look past the uncertainty.