What might bring people to speculate on a stock that, by all traditional metrics, is extremely overvalued? Desperation, says Ed Harrison, who made the point while discussing Tesla during today’s Real Vision Daily Briefing.

Harrison said that people who take a gamble on Tesla and other retail favorites do so out of a sense of desperation to feel a sense of stability at a time when they are powerless. It’s not just a mania perpetrated by the Fed, he said, it’s people trying to take control of their lives.

It is worth noting that Tesla wasn’t profitable until recently; the company has no track record of delivering income on a consistent quarterly basis. Yet the stock price has been run up, which Harrison believes is because people are trying to reclaim a sense of safety that they’re not getting in the world today.

People are sick of being sold a bill of goods that things have changed and the world will be better, Harrison said. He thinks that the pandemic has brought it home for people that there’s no reason to hope that the current system will give them what they want. As a result, they’re looking for some way to feel in control, whether it is through stocks, politics, nationalism, or ideology.

In the U.S., political ideology has deeply fractured the public, but although that may prove to be the country’s Achilles heel during this cycle, Harrison said he’d still bet on the U.S. over Europe in the long term.