How to bet on the Trump-Musk relationship

The enemy of my enemy is my friend. A phrase that is catchy, sometimes true, and perhaps, in Donald Trump’s America, an investment strategy. A possible example of this comes from Charlie Ergen. EchoStar, the satellite operator Ergen founded in 1980, is in the middle of trying to build out a mobile telephone network, using a particular band of wireless spectrum it purchased from the US government. But the chair of the Federal Communications Commission sent the company a letter saying the regulator planned to review whether it was complying with its obligations to provide a 5G service. Since the letter, EchoStar shares lost almost one-third of their value, a decline of about $2 billion. But the FCC review could be good news for the company’s rivals, which might stand to buy the coveted spectrum should the regulator try to take it back. Chief among those peers: Starlink, the satellite internet business operated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX. The Trump administration has been nothing if not transactional. So it’s not totally surprising that EchoStar’s shares leapt 17 percent on June 5, the day that Musk and the president, hitherto close allies, engaged in a dramatic online fallout. Shares in Musk’s electric-car maker Tesla, by the same token, fell 14 percent.