I read this fantastic series of posts on Tesla by Tim Urban while flying back home from the east coast last week (thank you Pocket app). I urge everyone to find the time and read them. 

For what I do and how I think one chart stood out along with the paragraphs I clipped below that follow it:

Most people scoff at the $33 billion valuation of Tesla.  Not me. That’s the price. As a trend follower the big numbers (market cap and market size) give me context for possibilities. 

I spend a lot of time thinking about the stock markets and the financial industry. Here’s a whiteboard I recently marked up with the financial services landscape that I think about:

I made a video explaining the whiteboard in detail but forgot that Pericope does not save the video longer than 24 hours. I will have to make another one soon. 

In today’s world of Facebook, Amazon, Tencent, Alibaba, Google and Apple… the canopies that contained valuations in their respective industries were pierced. 

In the biggest industry of all (financial services and money) I don’t think we have scratched the surface. Wells Fargo and JP Morgan are the largest banks at $230 plus billion. Visa has a $200 billion market cap and MasterCard is at $100 billion. Goldman is $80 billion and they exist today because we saved them just 8 years ago. Schwab is $38 billion and Etrade $7 billion.  

Bitcoin gets a ton of press but is tiny. I own some just in case. 

I really believe that several financial services companies started and funded post the 2008 financial crisis will be $100 billion plus in my lifetime. Maybe the big banks have peaked and it’s the canopy breakers that slide into financial services. That would be fine as I would happily bank at Apple or Amazon.