Investor's Corner
Tesla (TSLA) rallies +4.5% as Wall Street shrugs off Q4 delivery miss
While the initial after market reaction to the miss in Q4 2016 production and deliveries was negative, reaction from Wall Street tell a different story as the company’s stock (Nasdaq: TSLA) quickly rallied to a 4.5% gain.
We’ve provided some market reactions from analysts watching the stock.
Colin Rusch from Oppenheimer reiterated a Hold rating on Tesla and said that “with TSLA announcing shipments of ~22.2k cars in 4Q16, we are expecting a better- than-feared trade over the next couple of days. While the company missed its 4Q16 shipment guidance by over 10% for the quarter, we believe expectations had dropped significantly below guidance due to media reports of slow sell-through. We anticipate investors will now shift focus to the Gigafactory ramp, timing of Model 3 production, and the company’s ability to generate cash from operations. We continue to be cautious about potential margin drag given simultaneous Model 3 and Gigafactory ramp plus purchase commitments for solar modules from its Buffalo facility.”
Lou Whiteman of TheStreet.com in a piece titled “Wall Street Still Loves Tesla and This Chart Proves It” stated that “While the results provided fresh fodder for the bears, they didn’t do enough to crush Wall Street’s long love affair with Elon Musk’s baby. Investors may also be optimistic ahead of a previously-planned analyst tour of the company’s Gigafactory battery facility scheduled for Wednesday.” Additionally he positively stated that “The total deliveries, though a miss, by far surpassed 2015’s total of about 50,000.” “The company has a history of missing internal deadlines, but simply showing progress towards bringing the Model 3 to market should be enough to keep bulls on board and allow Tesla to return to the capital markets to raise more cash if needed.”
TheStreet.com has been bearish on Tesla for a long time, and Lou warned that “even if the Model 3 arrives on time, there are still questions about whether the company can turn a profit on the vehicle. Tesla has targeted a base price of $35,000 for the vehicle, but skeptics including Stanphyl Capital managing member and portfolio manager Mark Spiegel estimate it might cost the company upwards of $48,000 per unit to produce the car.”
Jim Cramer, also of TheStreet.com, said on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” that “the market isn’t having a stronger reaction because the company seems to be coated with Teflon, meaning that it can withstand things like a lower-than-expected delivery number.” “It should be called Teflon Motors because I don’t think this will matter. Tesla seems to be “charmed,” and it’s still making a lot of cars, like Jay Leno noted,” Cramer noted. “In particular, Tesla’s sales numbers in China jumped dramatically this past year, which is “important. But regardless, people are not going to react to this news. The analysts aren’t going to change their view on it. I think that’s the important way to look at it. They’re just not going to change. No ‘buy’ to ‘holds.’”, Cramer reiterated.
In a Marketwatch story titled “Here’s why Tesla is Baird’s top stock-market pick for 2017“, analyst Ben Kallo was quoted saying that he”expects the company’s energy business and the launch of the Model 3 electric sedan will exceed expectations.” He went on saying that “Tesla energy storage business and growth opportunity is not currently reflected in share prices”. Ben named Tesla Motors (NASDAQ: TSLA) his “top pick for 2017” and reiterated an Outperform rating and price target of $338. He “does not believe the Q4 delivery number (expected by Jan. 3) will be an overhang and recommends buying shares heading into 2017 as they believe the stock will make new highs.
As I predicted on Tuesday, several unrelated reports covered the positive fact that Tesla finally begun producing batteries at the Gigafactory, lead by information coming from Tesla’s invite-only ‘investor event’. Everyone from Reuters to Bloomberg and the WSJ reported this news in their opening pages.
Cadie Thompson reported on Business Insider that Tesla began production of battery cells at its Gigafactory on Wednesday. “The battery cells currently in production will be used for Tesla’s rechargeable home battery, Powerwall 2, as well as its massive commercial battery, Powerpack 2. The electric-car maker said in a statement that it aims to begin production of battery cells for the Model 3, its first mass-market car, sometime in the second quarter.”
Tom Randall of Bloomberg, in an article titled “Tesla Flips the Switch on the Gigafactory” stated that “Musk meets a deadline: Battery-cell production begins at what will soon be the world’s biggest factory—with thousands of additional jobs.”
He goes on stating that “the Gigafactory has been activated. Hidden in the scrubland east of Reno, Nev., where cowboys gamble and wild horses still roam—a diamond-shaped factory of outlandish proportions is emerging from the sweat and promises of Tesla CEO Elon Musk. It’s known as the Gigafactory, and today its first battery cells are rolling off production lines to power the company’s energy storage products and, before long, the Model 3 electric car.”
Tom added that “by 2018, the Gigafactory, which is less than a third complete today, will be staffed by 6,500 full-time Reno-based employees and singlehandedly double the world’s production capacity for lithium-ion batteries, according to a new hiring forecast from Tesla.”
Investor's Corner
Tesla gets tip of the hat from major Wall Street firm on self-driving prowess
“Tesla is at the forefront of autonomous driving, supported by a camera-only approach that is technically harder but much cheaper than the multi-sensor systems widely used in the industry. This strategy should allow Tesla to scale more profitably compared to Robotaxi competitors, helped by a growing data engine from its existing fleet,” BoA wrote.
Tesla received a tip of the hat from major Wall Street firm Bank of America on Wednesday, as it reinitiated coverage on Tesla shares with a bullish stance that comes with a ‘Buy’ rating and a $460 price target.
In a new note that marks a sharp reversal from its neutral position earlier in 2025, the bank declared Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) technology the “leading consumer autonomy solution.”
Analysts highlighted Tesla’s camera-only architecture, known as Tesla Vision, as a strategic masterstroke. While technically more challenging than the multi-sensor setups favored by rivals, the vision-based approach is dramatically cheaper to produce and maintain.
This cost edge, combined with Tesla’s rapidly expanding real-world data engine, positions the company to scale robotaxis far more profitably than competitors, BofA argues in the new note:
“Tesla is at the forefront of autonomous driving, supported by a camera-only approach that is technically harder but much cheaper than the multi-sensor systems widely used in the industry. This strategy should allow Tesla to scale more profitably compared to Robotaxi competitors, helped by a growing data engine from its existing fleet.”
The bank now attributes roughly 52% of Tesla’s total valuation to its Robotaxi ambitions. It also flagged meaningful upside from the Optimus humanoid robot program and the fast-growing energy storage business, suggesting the auto segment’s recent headwinds, including expired incentives, are being eclipsed by these higher-margin opportunities.
Tesla’s own data underscores exactly why Wall Street is waking up to FSD’s potential. According to Tesla’s official safety reporting page, the FSD Supervised fleet has now surpassed 8.4 billion cumulative miles driven.
Tesla FSD (Supervised) fleet passes 8.4 billion cumulative miles
That total ballooned from just 6 million miles in 2021 to 80 million in 2022, 670 million in 2023, 2.25 billion in 2024, and a staggering 4.25 billion in 2025 alone. In the first 50 days of 2026, owners added another 1 billion miles — averaging more than 20 million miles per day.
This avalanche of real-world, camera-captured footage, much of it on complex city streets, gives Tesla an unmatched training dataset. Every mile feeds its neural networks, accelerating improvement cycles that lidar-dependent rivals simply cannot match at scale.
Tesla owners themselves will tell you the suite gets better with every release, bringing new features and improvements to its self-driving project.
The $460 target implies roughly 15 percent upside from recent trading levels around $400. While regulatory and safety hurdles remain, BofA’s endorsement signals growing institutional conviction that Tesla’s data advantage is not hype; it’s a tangible moat already delivering billions of miles of proof.
Elon Musk
SpaceX IPO could push Elon Musk’s net worth past $1 trillion: Polymarket
The estimates were shared by the official Polymarket Money account on social media platform X.
Recent projections have outlined how a potential $1.75 trillion SpaceX IPO could generate historic returns for early investors. The projections suggest the offering would not only become the largest IPO in history but could also result in unprecedented windfalls for some of the company’s key investors.
The estimates were shared by the official Polymarket Money account on social media platform X.
As noted in a Polymarket Money analysis, Elon Musk invested $100 million into SpaceX in 2002 and currently owns approximately 42% of the company. At a $1.75 trillion valuation following SpaceX’s potential $1.75 trillion IPO, that stake would be worth roughly $735 billion.
Such a figure would dramatically expand Musk’s net worth. When combined with his holdings in Tesla Inc. and other ventures, a public debut at that level could position him as the world’s first trillionaire, depending on market conditions at the time of listing.
The Bloomberg Billionaires Index currently lists Elon Musk with a net worth of $666 billion, though a notable portion of this is tied to his TSLA stock. Tesla currently holds a market cap of $1.51 trillion, and Elon Musk’s currently holds about 13% to 15% of the company’s outstanding common stock.
Founders Fund, co-founded by Peter Thiel, invested $20 million in SpaceX in 2008. Polymarket Money estimates the firm owns between 1.5% and 3% of the private space company. At a $1.75 trillion valuation, that range would translate to approximately $26.25 billion to $52.5 billion in value.
That return would represent one of the most significant venture capital outcomes in modern Silicon Valley history, with a growth of 131,150% to 262,400%.
Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent company, invested $900 million into SpaceX in 2015 and is estimated to hold between 6% and 7% of the private space firm. At the projected IPO valuation, that stake could be worth between $105 billion and $122.5 billion. That’s a growth of 11,566% to 14,455%.
Other major backers highlighted in the post include Fidelity Investments, Baillie Gifford, Valor Equity Partners, Bank of America, and Andreessen Horowitz, each potentially sitting on multibillion-dollar gains.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk hints Tesla investors will be rewarded heavily
“Hold onto your Tesla stock. It’s going to be worth a lot, I think. That’s my bet,” Musk said.
Elon Musk recently hinted that he believes Tesla investors will be rewarded heavily if they continue to hold onto their shares, and he reiterated that in a new interview that the company released on its social accounts this week.
Musk is one of the most successful CEOs in the modern era and has mammothed competitors on the Forbes Net Worth List over the past year as his holdings in his various companies have continued to swell.
Tesla investors, especially those who have been holding shares for several years, have also felt substantial gains in their portfolios. Over the past five years, the stock is up over 78 percent. Since February 2019, nearly seven years ago to the day, the stock is up over 1,800 percent.
Musk said in the interview:
“Hold onto your Tesla stock. It’s going to be worth a lot, I think. That’s my bet.”
Elon Musk in new interview: “Hold on to your $TSLA stock. It’s going to be worth a lot, I think. That’s my bet.” pic.twitter.com/cucirBuhq0
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) February 26, 2026
It’s no secret Musk has been extremely bullish on his own companies, but Tesla in particular, because it is publicly traded.
However, the company has so many amazing projects that have an opportunity to revolutionize their respective industries. There is certainly a path to major growth on Wall Street for Tesla through its various future projects, including Optimus, Cybercab, Semi, and Unsupervised FSD.
- Optimus (Tesla’s humanoid robot): Musk has discussed its potential for tasks like childcare, walking dogs, or assisting elderly parents, positioning it as a massive long-term driver of company value.
- Cybercab (Tesla’s robotaxi/autonomous ride-hailing vehicle): a fully autonomous vehicle geared specifically for Tesla’s ride-sharing ambitions.
- Semi (Tesla’s electric truck, with mentions of expansion, like in Europe): brings Tesla into the commercial logistics sector.
- Unsupervised FSD (Full Self-Driving software achieving full autonomy without human supervision): turns every Tesla owner’s vehicle into a fully-autonomous vehicle upon release
These projects specifically are some of the highest-growth pillars Tesla has ever attempted to develop, especially in Musk’s eyes, as he has said Optimus will be the best-selling product of all-time.
Many analysts agree, but the bullish ones, like Cathie Wood of ARK Invest, are perhaps the one who believes Tesla has incredible potential on Wall Street, predicting a $2,600 price target for 2030, but this is not even including Optimus.
She told Bloomberg last March that she believes that the project will present a potential additive if Tesla can scale faster than anticipated.