Good morning from the Financial Times.

Today is Thursday, July 23rd.

And this is your FT news briefing.

The Trump administration adds pressure to an already strained relationship with Beijing by closing China's consulate in Houston.

All while a group of US tech investors make an ambitious play to buy Tik-Toc from its Chinese parent bite dance.

Plus German prosecutors have arrested Wirecart's former chief executive

for the second time in as many months.

But first, Tesla shares jumped more than 5% in after hours trading yesterday

after reporting its fourth consecutive quarterly net profit. The F.T.'s Patrick

McGee will run through the carmaker's latest earnings

and tell us why investors have been piling into the stock.

I'm Mark Filipino, and here's the news you need to start your day. And obviously it makes sense to say what are the reasons for that.

But I think frankly a lot of it is just people believe in Elon Musk and this is the only way that you can invest in him.

SpaceX is an amazing company, but it's private.

Neuralink might turn out to be an amazing company, but it's private.

Tesla is really the only way you can go to sort of invest in a person that people think

is the next Steve Jobs.

And so you have a lot of retail investors buying something,

and it's become a momentum trade where it just continues to go up,

and so people continue to buy it.

And I guess the question is whether that's sustainable sustainable or whether that results in a crash later on

But that's sort of the import for why it's significant that Tesla did just have its fourth consecutive net profit

...