Investor's Corner
Dissecting Jim Chanos’ short seller arguments about Tesla
All innovative companies attract negative press coverage, but the tide of anti-Tesla scare stories and misinformation has reached such preposterous proportions that it has become a story in itself (remember, colleagues, we’re supposed to report the news, not make it). It’s widely believed that much of the mud, especially the articles that focus on financial and stock-market topics, originates with short sellers, who have collectively bet some $12 billion against the California carmaker.
Perhaps the best-known and most articulate of the short sellers is Jim Chanos, a hedge fund operator who distinguished himself by calling attention to Enron’s shenanigans back in 2000. Chanos has made no secret of his disdain for Tesla, or his interest in profiting from its demise. Chanos figures prominently in Matt Taibbi’s 2014 book, The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap. A recent series of posts on the Tesla Motors Club forum argues that Chanos and other shorts are following a tried-and-true playbook that they’ve used to attack other companies in the past.
Enter Galileo Russell, a young independent stock analyst, who became something of a hero among Teslaphiles when Elon Musk granted him a lot of quality time on a now-famous conference call. In a new video, Russell answers Chanos’s bearish arguments about Tesla point by point.
Above: Galileo Russell takes on infamous Tesla short Jim Chanos (Youtube: HyperChange TV)
Chanos is no mindless naysayer or anonymous comment-section troll. “He has a reputation for being one of Wall Street’s best and sharpest short sellers and for good reason,” says Galileo. “His hedge fund Kynikos Associates [the name comes from the Greek for “cynic”] has a track record that has crushed the market.” Furthermore, Chanos has been “very vocal and public and transparent about his short of Tesla for years – he’s done a ton of interviews on CNBC and Bloomberg explaining his short rationale, so this gives me a ton of material to really understand what his thinking is.”
Galileo has “a ton of respect” for Chanos, but thinks “he is wrong on this trade.” In this video, which is worth watching all the way through, the exuberant young pundit answers the diehard bear’s long list of anti-Tesla arguments one by one.
Chanos and others have made much of Tesla’s supposedly high rate of executive departures (“rats leaving a sinking ship”). However, according to Galileo, “He has cherry-picked the names of 39 Tesla executives who’ve left over the past two years.” Tesla has 37,000 employees. The average tenure of departing execs has been about 4.6 years – not far off the 5.3-year average term of execs at the largest US companies. Mr. Russell also reminds us of a certain group of leaders who haven’t jumped ship, and don’t seem likely to: CEO Elon Musk (15 years with the company); CTO JB Straubel (14 years); CFO Deepak Ahuja (10 years) and Senior Design Director Franz von Holzhausen (8 years).
Is Tesla “structurally unprofitable,” as Chanos claims? Maybe, but so was a certain other growing tech company called Amazon. Is Tesla indulging in creative accounting by not including its R&D expenses in gross margins? Nope – unlike legacy OEMs, most of Tesla’s R&D goes for future products. Tesla’s accounting isn’t deceptive, says Galileo – it’s just more like that of a tech company than a traditional automaker.
Galileo goes on to address several more of Chanos’s anti-Tesla points: coming competition from the legacy automakers (almost no one in the EV industry takes this threat seriously – Big Auto has made it abundantly clear that its main agenda is to hold back the tide of electrification, not join it); delays in rolling out Autopilot, the Semi and the Roadster; and even a far-fetched notion that Elon Musk is planning to step down as CEO.
In every case, Mr. Russell marshals detailed facts and figures to support his rebuttals. Even if you’re a Tesla skeptic, you’ll be forced to admit that this is a virtuoso performance by an extremely well-informed and insightful analyst.
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Note: Article originally published on evannex.com by Charles Morris; Source: HyperChange TV
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.
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