Investor's Corner
The epic battle between Elon Musk and the Tesla haters
In a fascinating article in Institutional Investor, Michelle Celarier writes that Tesla [NASDAQ: TSLA] is: “the biggest short in the U.S. market; about 27 percent of Tesla’s free float is short, for a value as high as $10 billion” according to S3 Analytics, a firm that tracks short sales. That said, “the stock has soared more than 1,300 percent since Tesla went public in 2010. It is the first automaker to go public since Ford in 1956, making it one of the darlings of the post-financial-crash bull market.”
Photo credit: Tesla
It turns out that one of the most notorious Tesla shorts is Mark Spiegel. And Spiegel hasn’t even driven a Tesla yet. He says, “I’m more into sports cars.” According to Celarier, “Spiegel has become something of a zealot on Tesla. His small hedge fund, Stanphyl Capital Management, runs a mere $8.5 million, given that it was down 20 percent this year through August. That’s largely due to his short of Tesla, which had gained 74 percent this year, making it the worst-performing short of the year.”
However, there are bigger players out there shorting Tesla. Celarier reports that: “Everyone who’s anyone in Wall Street’s small and clubby world of short sellers has been short Tesla at one point or another… In the past, some of them also shorted Google and Amazon — other high flyers who weren’t making a profit — and somewhat sheepishly [now] admit they were wrong. Clearly, these guys are not dreamers from California’s La La Land, and Musk’s grand plans and his ‘save the world’ ethos can elicit a few eye rolls.”
Another well-known Tesla short, James Chanos of Kynikos Associates, “has been railing against Tesla for at least two years on CNBC and at numerous conferences. He has gone so far as to call Tesla a cult.” Speaking of Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk, Chanos proclaims, “People want to believe he’s some sort of visionary… In a milieu of boring people, they think he is changing the world. He’s not boring. He’s somebody they can attach their hopes and dreams to.”
Photo credit: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg
So why does Tesla attract so many arguments on Wall Street? On the one hand, “Looking at its balance sheet, Tesla is [considered] the perfect short. But its pioneering status in an industry facing wrenching technological upheaval, and its charismatic CEO, has won it legions of admirers and turned it into a battleground stock. Sure, Tesla’s lofty stock price makes it a risky buy — but also a perilous short.”
Anger and hope permeate both camps of investors. “Short sellers berate Tesla investors as momentum chasers, tree-huggers, or simply Elon Musk groupies, but these investors have bought into a vision that has already made great leaps toward building a sustainable energy ecosystem — a costly endeavor that has no shortage of well-heeled enemies.”
And while an army of short sellers persist, plenty of Wall Street’s power players remain steadfast Tesla longs: “The biggest holders, aside from Musk, are mutual funds like Fidelity Investments, which has owned the stock since the IPO. With a current 12.8 percent stake (down from a high of 15 percent), the mutual fund giant is the largest institutional investor in Tesla, and portfolio manager Kyle Weaver says Fidelity has a long-term perspective on the company that is playing out largely as expected.”
Tesla fleet lined up outside of the service center in Amsterdam [Photo credit: Teslarati App]
“It was the worst short I’ve ever had,” says Whitney Tilson, managing partner of Kase Capital Management, who was short when the stock went from $35 to $205. Last month, Tilson told investors he’s shutting down his funds due to poor performance. Tilson explains, “I can do the numbers and see how much money the company is losing, but you’re short an incredibly maniacally driven CEO, with maniacally driven engineers assaulting the world’s largest industry. If they succeed, Tesla could be a $400 billion market cap company.”“The internal combustion engine is toast long term. It’s game over. The costs of making an internal combustion engine do not go down, while the cost of battery technology has gone down every year,” says Fidelity’s Weaver. “The secular trends that will drive Tesla’s fundamentals are a decades-long trend.” He also applauds Tesla’s environmental mission, “I don’t want to bet against that in an emotional sense.”
Musk is also not afraid to openly attack Wall Street’s short sellers. Let’s not forget, “Musk, who has talked about being bullied as a child, seems to delight in taunting his tormentors. In 2013 he gloated on Twitter, ‘Seems to be some stormy weather over in Shortville these days,’” and once cautioned short sellers that a “tsunami of hurt” was coming in a televised interview.
Celarier writes, “To be sure, a mania surrounds Tesla… [and] betting against Musk is a tough proposition. Tesla has already survived near-bankruptcy events, and Musk has plenty of friends in tech companies with much higher valuations, like Larry Page at Google, that could afford to partner with Tesla or take it over. (Google had struck a handshake deal to buy Tesla during a near-death moment in 2013, according to Vance’s biography.)”
There’s also massive opportunity for Tesla in China: “Earlier this year, China’s Tencent Holdings took a 5 percent stake in Tesla. China is proposing to mandate a zero-emissions standard in 12 percent of new cars by 2020 and is considering letting wholly owned foreign electric-car companies operate there. The Chinese market is expected to be huge, and Tesla is charging ahead there. It is already building a new supercharger network in the country and plans to both build and sell cars there.”
Such realities make shorting Tesla, for all its financial shortcomings, a difficult call. As Tilson puts it, “I don’t want to be short open-ended situations. The tail risk is just too high.”
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Note: Article by Matt Pressman, originally published on evannex.com
Source: Institutional Investor
Tesla stock (NASDAQ: TSLA) just got a price target boost from its biggest bear, Gordon Johnson of GLJ Research, who raised his expected trading level to one that is 95 percent lower than its current trading level.
Johnson pushed his Tesla price target from $19.05 to $25.28 on Wednesday, while maintaining the ‘Sell’ rating that has been present on the stock for a long time. GLJ has largely been recognized as the biggest skeptic of Elon Musk’s company, being particularly critical of the automotive side of things.
Tesla has routinely been called out by Johnson for negative delivery growth, what he calls “weakening demand,” and price cuts that have occurred in past years, all pointing to them as desperate measures to sell its cars.
Johnson has also said that Tesla is extremely overvalued and is too reliant on regulatory credits for profitability. Other analysts on the bullish side recognize Tesla as a company that is bigger than just its automotive side.
Many believe it is a leader in autonomous driving, like Dan Ives of Wedbush, who believes Tesla will have a widely successful 2026, especially if it can come through on its targets and schedules for Robotaxi and Cybercab.
Justifying the price target this week, Johnson said that the revised valuation is based on “reality rather than narrative.” Tesla has been noted by other analysts and financial experts as a stock that trades on narrative, something Johnson obviously disagrees with.
Dan Nathan, a notorious skeptic of the stock, turned bullish late last year, recognizing the company’s shares trade on “technicals and sentiment.” He said, “From a trading perspective, it looks very interesting.”
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Johnson has remained very consistent with this sentiment regarding Tesla and his beliefs regarding its true valuation, and has never shied away from putting his true thoughts out there.
Tesla shares closed at $431.40 today, about 95 percent above where Johnson’s new price target lies.
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) stock received a price target update from Pierre Ferragu of Wall Street firm New Street Research, citing the company’s growing lead in self-driving and autonomy.
On Tuesday, Ferragu bumped his price target from $520 to $600, stating that the consensus from the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas was that Tesla’s lead in autonomy has been sustained, is growing, and sits at a multiple-year lead over its competitors.
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“The signal from Vegas is loud and clear,” the analyst writes. “The industry isn’t catching up to Tesla; it is actively validating Tesla’s strategy…just with a 12-year lag.”
The note shows that the company’s prowess in vehicle autonomy is being solidified by lagging competitors that claim to have the best method. The only problem is that Tesla’s Vision-based approach, which it adopted back in 2022 with the Model 3 and Model Y initially, has been proven to be more effective than competitors’ approach, which utilizes other technology, such as LiDAR and sensors.
Currently, Tesla shares are sitting at around $433, as the company’s stock price closed at $432.96 on Tuesday afternoon.
Ferragu’s consensus on Tesla shares echoes that of other Wall Street analysts who are bullish on the company’s stock and position within the AI, autonomy, and robotics sector.
Dan Ives of Wedbush wrote in a note in mid-December that he anticipates Tesla having a massive 2026, and could reach a $3 trillion valuation this year, especially with the “AI chapter” taking hold of the narrative at the company.
Ives also said that the big step in the right direction for Tesla will be initiating production of the Cybercab, as well as expanding on the Robotaxi program through the next 12 months:
“…as full-scale volume production begins with the autonomous and robotics roadmap…The company has started to test the all-important Cybercab in Austin over the past few weeks, which is an incremental step towards launching in 2026 with important volume production of Cybercabs starting in April/May, which remains the golden goose in unlocking TSLA’s AI valuation.”
Tesla analyst breaks down delivery report: ‘A step in the right direction’
Tesla has transitioned from an automaker to a full-fledged AI company, and its Robotaxi and Cybercab programs, fueled by the Full Self-Driving suite, are leading the charge moving forward. In 2026, there are major goals the company has outlined. The first is removing Safety Drivers from vehicles in Austin, Texas, one of the areas where it operates a ride-hailing service within the U.S.
Ultimately, Tesla will aim to launch a Level 5 autonomy suite to the public in the coming years.
Investor's Corner
Tesla Q4 delivery numbers are better than they initially look: analyst
The Deepwater Asset Management Managing Partner shared his thoughts in a post on his website.
Longtime Tesla analyst and Deepwater Asset Management Managing Partner Gene Munster has shared his insights on Tesla’s Q4 2025 deliveries. As per the analyst, Tesla’s numbers are actually better than they first appear.
Munster shared his thoughts in a post on his website.
Normalized December Deliveries
Munster noted that Tesla delivered 418k vehicles in the fourth quarter of 2025, slightly below Street expectations of 420k but above the whisper number of 415k. Tesla’s reported 16% year-over-year decline, compared to +7% in September, is largely distorted by the timing of the tax credit expiration, which pulled forward demand.
“Taking a step back, we believe September deliveries pulled forward approximately 55k units that would have otherwise occurred in December or March. For simplicity, we assume the entire pull-forward impacted the December quarter. Under this assumption, September growth would have been down ~5% absent the 55k pull-forward, a Deepwater estimate tied to the credit’s expiration.
“For December deliveries to have declined ~5% year over year would imply total deliveries of roughly 470k. Subtracting the 55k units pulled into September results in an implied December delivery figure of approximately 415k. The reported 418k suggests that, when normalizing for the tax credit timing, quarter-over-quarter growth has been consistently down ~5%. Importantly, this ~5% decline represents an improvement from the ~13% declines seen in both the March and June 2025 quarters.“
Tesla’s United States market share
Munster also estimated that Q4 as a whole might very well show a notable improvement in Tesla’s market share in the United States.
“Over the past couple of years, based on data from Cox Automotive, Tesla has been losing U.S. EV market share, declining to just under 50%. Based on data for October and November, Cox estimates that total U.S. EV sales were down approximately 35%, compared to Tesla’s just reported down 16% for the full quarter. For the first two months of the quarter, Cox reported Tesla market share of roughly a 65% share, up from under 50% in the September quarter.
“While this data excludes December, the quarter as a whole is likely to show a material improvement in Tesla’s U.S. EV market share.“
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