Forget moonshots. Investors want profit now.

livemint.com:

Elon Musk got the market’s memo. Mark Zuckerberg missed it. Cathie Wood ignored it.

The message: Stop shooting for the moon, and focus on making money. Last week brought home what any competent CEO should already know about what investors want, as Tesla shares soared 12% after disappointing first-quarter results and Meta Platforms shares plunged 11% after decent first-quarter results. Tesla gave investors what they have been demanding, pulling back from plans for an all-new car platform to speed up the launch of a line of cheaper vehicles.

True, CEO Musk insisted that only true believers in self-driving cars—something he has been promising for years, without delivering—should be shareholders. But investors were willing to look past the idealism to the pragmatic low-cost launch plans, which should reduce its capital spending needs. Meta did the opposite.

Its sales were a little higher than expected in the first quarter, normally a good sign. But investors who panicked in 2022 about Zuckerberg’s big-spending tendencies—leading Meta to reverse course and slash jobs—were put on edge again by its plan to sink billions of dollars more into artificial intelligence, even while it guided to lower-than-expected sales for this quarter. True, the gains and losses after Tesla’s and Meta’s results were amplified because they represented a reverse of the huge moves this year up to the announcements—when Tesla had plunged 40% and Meta had soared 40%.