After Elon posted the e-mail to employees and made it public, I'm starting to think the outrageous crap Elon has been doing lately is actually him doing a pre-victory lap.
Elon is a genius, and he's at a different level than all major CEO's. We know this, and he definitely knows this. Given the enormous difficulty of the tasks he's challenging (building a highly profitable mass produced EV), one can imagine the indignation he has been feeling for all the disrespect and stupidity of the shorts and media doubting him and talking smack about Tesla.
Elon is now highly fueled by this indignation to prove all the doubters want. What Elon wants is to be described, as written in his e-mail, a crazy "badass".
I suspect what he's doing is that he knows Q3 is going to be the most amazing quarter Tesla will ever have, and he's doing a "pre-victory lap". What I mean by that is that he's doing all these ridiculous stunts like smoking weed so that after Q3 earnings comes and Tesla kills it, and then Q4 earning does the final reaffirmation that Tesla has "completely turned around", Elon will be hailed and known as the CEO that smoked weed and did all these crazy stuff, AND defied all expectations and brought Tesla to crazy success. That's the ultimate "badass-ery" and will likely cause him to be treated as a meme God amongst young people that he wants to reach out to, while giving the ultimate middle finger to the shorts and the fake news media.
This is exactly the kind of boost that someone that has been tortured as much as Elon lately needs for recovery. And Elon loves doing this kind of stuff (which made him Iron Man a few years ago). This is all part of his pre-victory lap, setting up all the pieces to become a legend.
As much as I want your theory to be correct, shere logic is speaking against this. It makes no sense.
He was planning to do a short squeeze of the century about 2 months ago and tweeted about his plans. 3 weeks later, he wanted to take Tesla private and we all know by today that his plan was a huge failure.
The current environment at Tesla is therefore a mixture between confusion and fear. What we've seen on the show when he smoked weed was a more or less broken, tired and depressed Elon Musk I have never seen before in other videos, where he still had energy and enthusiasm.
Let's sum it up:
- He failed to take Tesla private and so at a very high price (loosing both reputation and credibility), whatsover is the reason, he never made an actual proof that funding was indeed secure and the deal structure wasn't even clear nor on paper
- The FUD is huge on media, customer and shareholder site
- He got sued by various Class law action suits and the outcome is still unsure and might cause further fear, as his liquidity is wholly invested in Tesla and SpaceX
- There is a SEC investigation ongoing that might result in further action against him and/or Tesla
- The thai rescue diver story is pure negativity for his reputation as a CEO and Chairman of a public company, further depressing stock price
- We have seen a tired an depressed Elon Musk on the Joe Rogan show - Please compare prior interviews with him - you'll see the difference
- We've just seen two major directors leave Tesla (HR director and Chief accounting officer). Elon and the board decided to reorganize the responsabilities within the firm - a good step in the right direction but confirms the above mentioned points. There was just too much going on at Tesla.
- Whether Q3 2018 will be an outstanding quarter or not - we don't know yet and all is just guessing. The 2X delivered vehicles is a nice indicator but this does not mean that they will be actually profitable - and if they're not - this might lead to further pressure on the stock price as ceteris paribus all other things are already priced in the stock price as of today.