Investor's Corner
Tesla bull Cathie Wood of ARK Invest explains why TSLA inspires even more confidence today
Tesla stock (NASDAQ:TSLA) may have experienced a notable dive as of late, but Cathie Wood of ARK Invest has noted that she and her team remain incredibly optimistic about the electric car maker. Wood noted that ARK Invest is poised to release its updated forecast on TSLA stock in the next couple of weeks. And based on ARK’s observations about the EV maker, Wood noted that she and her team’s TSLA price targets would be considerably higher than before.
During her CNBC segment, the ARK Invest founder explained why she and her team now have more confidence in Tesla despite the arrival of competitors from legacy automakers. Wood explained that Tesla actually performed better than her already-bullish expectations, particularly when the company actually increased its market share in the electric vehicle sector as EVs from rival automakers were released. Wood also highlighted that Tesla’s self-driving strategy is shaping up to be extremely strategic, potentially allowing the electric car maker to take the lion’s share of the autonomous segment.
“We’re about to publish–I’m hoping it’s within a week or two–our new forecasts. Our confidence in Tesla has gone up for a number of reasons. One, it didn’t lose share of the electric vehicle market when all of the traditional luxury brand names started bringing their own electric vehicles to market. Now, we expected (TSLA) will lose share, but our expectation is that its share would go from 17% at the end of 2018 down to 11% as more electric vehicles were coming out. Instead, what happened was its share moved up to more than 20% and roughly 80% in the US market. Eighty percent of electric vehicles. So that’s the first source of confidence. Market share up, not down.
“The second is autonomous. We believe that Elon Musk, who, over the weekend, tweeted out that he would offer or Tesla would offer, FSD (Beta) to anyone who wanted it, saw an incredible burst in demand. So for him to be able to do that suggests to us that he’s going to be able to show us the way to autonomous much faster than most analysts and investors expect. So the probability we have put on Tesla really winning the lion’s share of the autonomous taxi network market in the United States, also has gone up. So you might imagine that price targets have gone up considerably,” Wood noted.
When asked about the possibility of Tesla entering a phase similar to Amazon–which grew rapidly but had its stock pushed down for almost a decade after peaking in 1999–Wood explained that the electric car maker would likely not have the same experience. The ARK Invest founder noted that Amazon’s stock slump actually represented a time when the e-commerce giant was investing all its funds into growing its business, which of course, paid off in the long run. Tesla, according to Wood, seems to have passed this point already, with the company investing aggressively and excelling in four key metrics.
“It is leading the charge, so to speak. So battery technology, costs lower than anyone else’s out there, and will remain lower. Artificial intelligence chip, it designed its own. No one else has designed its own chip. This is analogous to Apple in the day. Cellular companies Nokia, Ericsson, and Motorola, didn’t see the future. Apple did, and yet it couldn’t get Qualcomm or Intel to move quickly enough. It had to design its own chip, and of course, now Apple basically accounts for the lion’s share of all the profits from smartphones in the world. We think this is going to happen also with Tesla. Maybe not worldwide because we know China wants its own champion. But that AI chip that Tesla designed, our analyst said, was four years ahead of where NVIDIA was at the time.”
“They have more data collected than any other company by orders of magnitude, not just by any other company but by all other companies out there. Because the largest pool of data with the highest quality is going to win in the AI game. They have the largest pool of data. And finally, until very recently, Tesla was the only automobile manufacturer able to improve the performance of its cars with over-the-air software updates… What they’ve done is extraordinary, and I think this is their market share to lose. I think they’re in a very, very different place. Also, we’re not in the tech and telecom bust. We are 20 years later. All of the seeds for what is happening now were planted back then. Now they’re coming to fruition,” Wood remarked.
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Watch Cathie Wood’s recent CNBC segment in the video below.
https://youtu.be/jreyOdXvvcI
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SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX) got an absolutely crazy price target rating from Raymond James after the company experienced a tough first few weeks following its Initial Public Offering (IPO).
Despite the tumultuous start, SpaceX has plenty of believers, and the company’s massively successful Starship launch last Friday, its 13th test flight of the massive rocket, went so smoothly that Raymond James analysts pushed its price target on the company to roughly 7 times its current trading level.
SpaceX Starship just nailed something it’s never done before
The firm officially put a “Strong Buy” rating and an $800 price target on the stock. It currently trades at around $113. Its all-time high is $225.64, reaching this trading level shortly after shares first went public.
Raymond James’ price target is tied to the firm’s confidence after Starship’s 13th test flight. Analysts at the firm said it was an incremental step that reduces engineering risks, citing the widely successful heat shield test that CEO Elon Musk recently detailed, the smooth deployment of Starlink V3 satellites, and a successful in-space engine relight.
SpaceX also managed to see Starship splash down safely in the Indian Ocean, while the Super Heavy Booster fell down to the Gulf of America with no incidents.
It is interesting to see these launches have such a tremendous impact on the stock and what investors think of it. After SpaceX initially delayed the Starship launch last week, shares fell tremendously. Most probably did not realize that the stand-down is a standard practice, especially if everything is not perfect.
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The mission was initially aborted due to an issue with Raptor engines. This was resolved, and Starship launched last Friday after another delay on Thursday, which was caused by weather.
Now that analysts have seen what SpaceX launches are capable of and how impressive the feat is, firms are adjusting their price targets accordingly, making it known that they have high expectations for the space exploration company.
Elon Musk
SpaceX Starship just nailed something it’s never done before
SpaceX’s Starship flew successfully Friday, landing both stages and deploying its first Starlink V3 satellites.
Starship’s thirteenth test flight delivered exactly what SpaceX needed with a clean liftoff, two successful stage recoveries, and the first real payload the vehicle has ever carried to space. Booster 20 and Ship 40 lifted off at 5:51 p.m. CT from Starbase, and by the time the mission wrapped roughly an hour later, both halves of the rocket had done exactly what they were supposed to do.
Booster 20 separated from Ship 40 a few minutes into the flight and stuck a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico about six minutes after liftoff. That is a meaningful turnaround from Flight 12 in May, when the booster lost several engines during its boostback burn before a hard water landing attempt.
Starship as seen from Starlink satellites pic.twitter.com/e2hvfmnewh
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 25, 2026
Starship 40’s performance was arguably the bigger win. The vehicle deployed the first 20 operational Starlink V3 satellites Starship has ever carried, then flew a suborbital arc to a landing in the Indian Ocean that SpaceX commentator Dan Huot called the company’s softest splashdown yet. “This is a dream scenario for this team that’s trying to get this heat shield data,” Huot said on the live broadcast, according to Space.com’s live coverage. “I’m a little over the moon right now. Wow. Lucky number 13.”
Unlike the mass simulators SpaceX flew on Flight 12, these were production Starlink V3 satellites, meant to extend solar arrays and antennas and attempt to link with the broader constellation before reentering minutes later. Getting real hardware through a full deploy sequence on only the second flight of the V3 generation keeps Starship on schedule for the payload work NASA is counting on for future Artemis lunar landings.
What an awesome launch, really seems like everything went super well and it was all incredibly smooth.
SpaceX is awesome. Very interested to see how the market will respond on Monday pic.twitter.com/KSHmyBfV55
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 25, 2026
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— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 25, 2026
The flight also arrives at a moment when SpaceX needed a win. SPCX has traded below its $135 IPO price since mid-July, as Teslarati reported when the mission slipped to Friday, and short interest has climbed to roughly a third of the tradable float. A clean flight will not fix a balance sheet, but it does answer the one question SpaceX absolutely needed answered this week: whether the fixes made after the July 16 abort would hold up under real flight conditions. They did, on both stages, on the first try after the redesign.
SpaceX has not set a target date for Flight 14, though the company has said it wants to push toward an orbital attempt on the next mission. After Friday, that goal looks a lot more within reach.
Tesla short sellers won big following the company’s massive fall on Wall Street after it reported subpar Earnings on Wednesday.
Tesla short sellers collected about $4.12 billion in single-day profits on Thursday, according to Bloomberg. Shares fell as much as 15 percent during Thursday’s session. It closed as one of the worst days for Tesla on Wall Street in the past three years.
Investors sold off the stock after Tesla said it would aggressively direct its spending toward AI and its Optimus robot project. The company had record revenues, which were driven by one of the strongest quarters in terms of vehicle deliveries in company history.
However, it missed EPS estimates by reporting just $0.33, a far cry from the $0.53 analysts expected.
S3 Partners reported that about 3 percent of Tesla’s outstanding stock is sold short. Managing Director at S3, Ihor Dusaniwsky, provided the short seller’s potential profit, as well as another figure: shorts have likely had paper gains of $8.92 billion this year, as Tesla shares are down 30 percent in 2026.
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Tesla (TSLA) Q2 2026 earnings results: miss on EPS, beat on revenue
Tesla has burned short sellers many times in the past, but the company’s latest Earnings Call was a chance for those skeptics to taste some payback. Although the company gave some very transparent information regarding future projects, the rollout of Robotaxi, Optimus, and Semi, many investors took their profits on Thursday.
Notable short sellers like Michael Burry have been transparent about their skepticism around Tesla shares. Burry just revealed three weeks ago that he had opened up a new short on the stock, stating he shorted Tesla shares at $416.22. “Happy it jumped back to this level,” he said in a blog post.
At the time of publication, Tesla shares were down about 3 percent and the stock was trading at $309.92.
Elon Musk sheds two new bits of detail on Starship after 13th test launch
Elon Musk updates the SpaceX timeline for Mars
