Investor's Corner
Tesla short-seller and TSLA bull face off in classic Bull vs. Bear debate
The Quoth the Raven podcast recently hosted a debate between notable Tesla bear and SeekingAlpha contributor Montana Skeptic and Tesla bull and YouTube host Galileo Russell. Over the hourlong session, both bull and bear discussed issues from Tesla’s financial status, competition from other carmakers, and the company’s future.
MontanaSkeptic1 is an outspoken Tesla critic and a supporter of the bear thesis against the company. An interview with QTR on Seeking Alpha states that Montana has a JD from Yale Law School and manages a $1 billion portfolio. After graduating from Yale, Montana has 30 years experience as a trial lawyer. Montana also notes that he did not take a bearish stance on Tesla from the start. Rather, he states that after reading the company’s filings, he was reminded of Enron, an American energy, and commodities company that went defunct in 2001 after a scandal caused by accounting fraud.
Galileo Russell, on the other hand, is 25 years old but is a self-confessed “finance geek” who has a bullish stance on Tesla. Galileo studied Finance & Entrepreneurship at New York University – Leonard N. Stern School of Business. He currently runs a YouTube channel called HyperChange TV, where he discusses stocks such as TSLA, SNAP, AMZN and other tech companies. Galileo first made waves after he predicted Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods months before it was announced, but more recently rose to fame after having 23 minutes of airtime with Elon Musk during Tesla’s Q1 2018 earnings call.
The debate between the Tesla bull and bear adopted a structured format, with Montana and Galileo getting an equal amount of time to state their case for a particular topic. The hourlong debate started with a discussion on whether Tesla’s CapEx would be sufficient for the company’s future projects like the Model Y, Tesla Semi, Solar Roofs and its other upcoming products, followed by Tesla’s market share and sales in the United States. Elon Musk’s behavior on social media was also discussed. During these rounds, each side presented a number of compelling arguments, with Montana Skeptic pointing out Tesla’s losses every quarter and Galileo arguing that becoming a profitable car maker requires a heavy time investment. Both reached a consensus that Elon Musk should be more restrained on Twitter.
Ultimately, however, the Tesla bull focused on the long-term prospects of Tesla, as well as the potential of the company in the future, while the bear case is founded on skepticism that Tesla could deliver a $35,000 Model 3, the China Gigafactory, and compete with profitable automakers that have a proven history of manufacturing at scale. The final arguments of Montana and Galileo summed up their stance on the electric car maker.
“I think Tesla is just extraordinarily weak. It lives from capital raise to capital raise. But for a capital raise, it is always on the brink of insolvency. I think that other automakers have a huge advantage. They have a portfolio of products, and those products are largely profitable, and the fact that they are compelled to make EVs that don’t make economic sense, and would never be bought other than as niche performance products, absent huge subsidies. That makes a huge difference. They would be able to outpace Tesla. The interior of the Model 3 has become tired. It was never all that luxurious, and I think it won’t be the aspirational car much longer, especially when these other cars hit the market, and this is happening,” Montana said.
“If you see Tesla’s business unfold and that’s why if you compare them to all the old metrics and look at how much money they’re losing now, you’ve missed the entire story because you’re failing to appreciate just how rapidly Tesla is growing. This is a Silicon Valley company. Software is eating the world. Software is eating every single aspect and niche of the way we build cars, what’s in cars, how they run, how we interact with our cars. This is a totally, fundamentally different set of skills than building an internal combustion engine,” Galileo said.
Listen to the full Montana Skeptic vs. Galileo Russell debate in a recording of the Quoth the Raven podcast below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=190&=&v=LqKEP6j0qe0
Tesla Full Self-Driving (Supervised) is currently listed as a Level 2 suite in terms of its passenger cars. As its Robotaxi platform continues to move quickly, it has been recognized as a Level 4 ride-sharing program by the State of Texas, as Tesla recently self-certified itself.
However, a Wall Street analyst is arguing that Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) has effectively achieved Level 4 autonomy in most conditions in all of its vehicles, drawing on personal experience and data released by the company.
Alex Potter of Piper Sandler said in a note to investors on Wednesday that “Tesla has solved the self-driving puzzle,” pointing to decisions to offer insurance discounts for FSD-enabled policies as a signal of confidence, which is backed up by stellar safety records compared to human driving.
Investing.com initially reported on Potter’s new note.
Additionally, Potter looks at the recent start of Cybercab production at Giga Texas as a potential indication that Tesla is ready to offer some level of unsupervised driving at least in the near future. The Cybercab has no steering wheel or pedals, completely eliminating the ability for human input.
He also sees Tesla’s allocation of “several hundred million USD (if not $1B+)” as confidence internally, seeing as it would be tough to set aside that amount of capital toward a project that the company does not see as relatively near-term.
Forward thinking, especially as Cybercab has no human controls, it would make sense that Tesla is at least close to self-driving. How close is another question.
Tesla has routinely teased that unsupervised FSD is close, but there are still a lot of things it feels as if the company has to roll out some more capability, including unsupervised parking features, known as “Banish,” better operation with regional self-driving performance, and other improvements.
That is not to say that Tesla FSD is super impressive already. It has already completed coast-to-coast drives across the United States and Canada, it routinely takes the stress out of driving for most people, and it has proven through Tesla Safety Reports that it is safer and involved in accidents less frequently than humans.
🚨 These are the first-ever FSD safety statistics out of the Netherlands, showing it was over 3.5x safer than human driving on Dutch roads.
The most recent numbers out of Tesla for North America show:
-Over 5.5 million miles between accidents for Teslas using FSD
-660k miles… https://t.co/XKlRzgSGEh pic.twitter.com/HX6kzh0ZKc— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) June 9, 2026
Even Potter believes it is capable, as he used it to go from Missoula, Montana, to Minneapolis, Minnesota, back in April.
“There’s no substitute for personal experience,” he wrote.
Investor's Corner
Tesla just did something in South Korea that no foreign carmaker has ever done
Tesla’s Model Y just became South Korea’s best-selling car, beating every domestic model in May.
Tesla did something last month that no foreign car has ever done in South Korea by outselling every vehicle in the country, domestic or imported, finishing the month with Model Y as the single best-selling car across the entire Korean market. According to data from the Korea Automobile Importers and Distributors Association released on June 4, the Model Y recorded 8,762 units sold in May, pushing the Kia Sorento into second place at 7,836 units and the Hyundai Grandeur into third at 5,183 units. It is the first time an imported vehicle has outsold every domestic model on a single-month basis.
Tesla imported 10,866 cars into South Korea in May, making it the top import brand for the fourth consecutive month. BMW followed at 6,555 units, less than two-thirds of Tesla’s total, while BYD registered just 1,032 units. The combined domestic sales of GM Korea, Renault Korea, and KG Mobility last month totaled just 7,019 units, meaning a single Tesla model outsold three Korean automakers combined.
Tesla FSD earns high praise in South Korea’s real-world autonomous driving test
South Korea has historically been one of the hardest markets for foreign automakers to crack. Hyundai and Kia together control close to 70% of the overall market and carry deep consumer loyalty built over decades. Tesla’s path into this market was an uphill battle due to high import duties, limited service infrastructure, and early skepticism about charging networks. In 2024, the Model Y was the best-selling imported car in South Korea with 18,717 units for the full year. By 2025, after the Juniper refresh, it cleared 50,000 units and took the top spot among all EVs.
Year to date, Tesla has a 250.8% increase in the country over the same period last year, and now holds a 30.8% share of the entire imported car segment for 2026. EVs as a category represented 48.6% of all imported passenger car registrations in May. As Teslarati has reported, the Juniper refresh brought meaningful improvements to range, interior quality, and ride refinement that addressed the most common criticisms of earlier Model Y versions. Those upgrades appear to be resonating in markets like South Korea where buyers compare Tesla directly against high end domestic competitors.
The Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan (OTPP) stands to reap one of the most extraordinary returns in pension fund history thanks to a bold 2019 investment in SpaceX.
According to a recent report from The Globe and Mail, the Toronto-based fund invested roughly $300 million CAD (~$220 million USD at the time) in Elon Musk’s space company as its inaugural deal through the Teachers’ Innovation Platform.
At SpaceX’s anticipated $1.75 trillion IPO valuation, set for a mid-June debut on Nasdaq under ticker $SPCX, that stake could now be worth up to $11.6 billion USD. This would represent a roughly 50x return and easily become OTPP’s most successful single investment ever.
The fund manages $279 billion in assets for approximately 346,000 working and retired teachers in Ontario, potentially delivering an average boost of around $33,500 per member if fully realized.
SpaceX has filed its S-1 and plans to price shares at $135 each, aiming to raise a record $75 billion in what would be the largest IPO in history, surpassing Saudi Aramco. The company reported $18.67 billion in revenue for 2025, driven primarily by Starlink satellite internet growth and NASA contracts, though it continues to post significant losses tied to ambitious R&D in Starship and AI initiatives.
Important pieces moving forward include:
- Starlink Expansion: The satellite broadband service is scaling rapidly, targeting global connectivity, especially in underserved rural and remote areas. This segment offers massive recurring revenue potential as numbers climb.
- Starship and Reusability Leadership: SpaceX’s fully reusable Starship aims to slash launch costs dramatically, enabling frequent missions, Mars ambitions, and lucrative government/defense contracts. Success here could unlock exponential growth.
- AI and Diversification: Recent moves, including ties to xAI, position SpaceX in high-growth AI infrastructure, broadening beyond traditional aerospace.
- Validation Scrutiny: While the $1.75 trillion target excites investors, analysts like Morningstar value the company closer to $780 billion, citing high multiples (around 90x trailing revenue) and execution risks. A 180-day lockup period will prevent early investors like OTPP from selling immediately post-IPO.
The irony has not been lost on observers. Ontario’s government previously canceled a Starlink rural internet contract amid political tensions involving Musk, yet the pension fund’s savvy investment, made when SpaceX was valued around $33-36 billion, and Starlink was nascent, delivers outsized gains independent of politics.
For OTPP, this windfall strengthens its already solid 111 percent funding ratio and underscores the value of patient, innovation-focused capital allocation.
For SpaceX, the IPO marks a new chapter: greater transparency, access to public markets for talent retention and growth capital, and heightened pressure to deliver on its multi-planetary vision.
All eyes are fixed on whether SpaceX can justify its lofty valuation through sustained execution. For Ontario teachers, the returns are already stellar, but SpaceX, like other Musk companies in the past, has plenty of things to prove. Perhaps the most ideal person for the job is at the helm, hoping to bring the company to a massive valuation.
Tesla stuns with another FSD approval in Europe, its second in two days
SpaceX’s Elon Musk relieves worries about orbital data centers
