No one could ever accuse Elon Musk of taking the conservative path. The minute he puts Tesla on a financially sound footing, he decides to invest $1.5 billion of the company’s cash reserves in Bitcoin, one of the most volatile assets around. Just imagine what he’d do if Tesla had the cash stockpile of an Apple, Microsoft or an Alphabet!

Those companies, each of which have between $100 billion and $200 billion in reserve, take an ultra-conservative view of where to put the money. All three say in their corporate filings that their investment philosophy is aimed at preserving capital and maintaining liquidity. All three spread their cash reserves mostly across corporate bonds, government bonds, mortgage-backed securities and CDs. Amazon and Facebook, which have a little less in cash reserves, take a similar approach.