Gorillas crash the car and the spaceship

A fight broke out between two males at the gorilla enclosure in the social media zoo yesterday, wiping billions off Tesla's value in one day and dragging the S&P 500 down in their blows. This was the most predictable break-up since a) Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, b) Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt or c) Channing Tatum and Zoe Kravitz.

As the stock market closed in New York last night, Tesla had seen over $150 billion evaporate from its 'market capitalisation' (what it's worth), from fears about lost Government contracts with Musk's companies. The share price has fallen more than 25% since January this year. Elon Musk has one expensive gob.

He also owns a space exploration group called SpaceX. This is not 'listed' - which means not any Tom, Dick or Harriet can buy the shares on a public exchange. You have to go directly to the company and enter into a private agreement to give them some money in exchange for owning a slice of the business. Which is difficult, it involves bespoke contracts and negotiation and makes it hard to both buy into these companies and also to value them on a frequent basis.

Think of unlisted companies like those frightening shops where you have to ring a bell for a snooty-looking thin person with fashionable glasses to let you in.

Little people like you and I can own a slug of these unlisted businesses through some Investment Trusts (for example, Baillie Gifford US Growth Trust has 12% in SpaceX and Scottish Mortgage has about 5% here); we can buy various private equity things, Venture Capital Trusts (VCTs) or maybe our 'boring' old pensions through work will soon start to invest more this way? Pension companies are getting excited about being able to own more things like this as the profile for returns can be better. And investment companies are looking to them for salvation, as the fees are high and all that 'nasty' low-cost passive stuff is gobbling away at their profits elsewhere.

As SpaceX is not listed, it's impossible to get a valuation for it at the click of a button. However, we can get a flavour of sentiment from what investors do with its rivals. As Musk threatened to decommission the SpaceX Dragon capsule yesterday - key for sending astronauts to and from the International Space Station - shares in rivals Rocket Lab and AST SpaceMobile jumped, as investors saw the potential for them to pick up some potential slack.

More affluent readers may like to explore VCTs. It's an investment vehicle which allocates money to young, innovative and often privately-owned companies and offers some decent tax relief for investors. As a rough guide, you can claim up to 30% tax relief on money invested BUT you have to keep the money there for at least 5 years. A well known success story is property search website Zoopla which was backed by VCTs in its early days, before floating on the London Stock Exchange (and hence becoming public). If you'd like some more info, Octopus is well-known for its VCTs and WealthClub has a helpful site which reviews the market.

Back to the zoo. We can't control the gorillas, but we can control our future wealth. (Oh - that's a bad leap!) Here's a weekend task.

If you answered a) to the break-up question above, then you might like this new price on 5 money tips for the newly retired OR to read this week's sponsor piece from Invesco on their well-rated Bond Income Plus trust which targets an income of about 7% a year (not guaranteed). If it was b) and you're in my gang, then there's a decent chance you're a bit ho-hum on your pension, so could you take our pensions quiz and see how you're doing and what you might do to dust off some cobwebs? And if you're a c)er, then find out about a Lifetime ISA which you can use to save for that first flat OR retirement, with some nice Government top-ups along the way.

Have a great weekend, everyone. I'm supposed to be heading out on a small dinghy into the Solent tonight, but there are wind gusts of up to 28 mph. Which is either fun... or VERY bad news?! Next week's blog might be brought to you from France. Zut alors.

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