Nobody Knows What Palantir Is Worth
Also guns, market manipulation and toilets.
One of the best things about well-functioning financial markets is that they provide a great way to settle arguments. If XYZ’s stock is trading at $100, and you think that’s a bargain price for a world-changing company like XYZ, while I think that XYZ is a fraud and the right price is zero, I can just borrow some XYZ stock and sell it to you at $100. You think that’s a great price to buy at, and I think it’s a great price to sell at, so we should both be thrilled to do this deal. If I’m right I will make money, if you’re right you will make money, and we can just sit back and wait for the answer to arrive. We don’t need to argue about it. People do argue about this stuff — good lord do they ever! — but it is all in a sense extraneous, a way to pass the time until the real bets pay off or don’t.
On the other hand, there is the valuation dispute between Palantir Technologies Inc. and some mutual funds run by Morgan Stanley: