Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk named Time’s ‘Person of the Year’

Yahoo Finance Live hosts Brian Sozzi and Julie Hyman discuss Time Magazine naming Elon Musk as "Person of the Year" and the innovation at Tesla and SpaceX he is credited for.

Video transcript

JULIE HYMAN: All right, Tesla's CEO Elon Musk-- he's the one who is named the "Time" Person of the Year for 2021. It's an award that the magazine says signify someone who, quote, "affected the news or our lives the most."

Over the past year, Musk saw his electric vehicle company become the most valuable carmaker in the world of more than a trillion. His rocket business SpaceX flew to the edge of space with an all civilian crew. "Time's" editor-in-chief said that Musk drove society's, quote, "most daring and disruptive transformations while inspiring younger consumers to switch their focus to all-electric car products."

Now, does-- you know, I have my opinions about Musk's trolliness. I don't know how that factors into this whole Person of the Year thing. And I don't know that it matters who the Person of the Year is most of the time. I mean, Tesla shares are going down today and our Jared Blikre points out to us that traditionally it's sort of a contrarian indicator for stocks, or companies, or what have you.

BRIAN SOZZI: Well, now we know why Musk got that cool haircut. He appeared over at a "Wall Street Journal" conference last week. I made a little bit of a joke on it, but, look, he's rocking that haircut now on the cover of "Time" magazine.

Well, we cover Musk so closely here, as do many folks-- his tweets, what he says on earnings calls. But the end of day he is doing just remarkable things. I mean, look what he has done with Tesla here, bringing the company profitability, really spurring the likes of a Ford, General Motors, Toyota, Volkswagen to ramp up their efforts in the electric vehicle space. And, of course, what he's doing over there in commercial space travel-- it's big stuff. So I would say well deserved, a rare compliment from me to Elon Musk.

JULIE HYMAN: Yes, kudos to him on the big stuff. I just wish he would avoid the petty stuff that he takes to Twitter.