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Tesla stock (TSLA) one week after the Q1 2016 Report

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Post Q1 Report Action

The technical response of the stock market to last week’s Tesla Q1 2016 report has been mostly negative. The stock lost quite a bit since last week, standing at around $208 when I write this, but overall 12-month Analyst Price Targets have actually increased with the average raising from $253 to $277, indicating that the Top Analysts did not see the report as negatively as this past week’s market action.

This is a small sample of the reactions from Top Analysts, noting that none of them changed their position to BUY, SELL or HOLD.

Adam Jonas of Morgan Stanley, reiterated a BUY with $333 price target, commenting that “we forecast ~70k units in 2016 (vs. the reiterated guidance of 80-90k shipments), which is composed of ~16k Model X and ~54k Model S units. In 2Q, we forecast ~17k deliveries–inline with the outlook.”

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Charlie Anderson of Dougherty resumed coverage of TSLA with a BUY and price target of $500, noting that “the focus coming out of the Q1 report is on managements decision to pull-forward its production goal of 500K vehicles from 2020 to 2018. While this aggressive schedule certainly increases the risk of nearer-term stumbles, it also significantly pulls forward the earnings power. Tesla has set a goal to produce 1MM vehicles by 2020, roughly 2x what most observers previously believed. Our view is that demand is not the question; it is solving the manufacturing challenges deftly as they come.”

Brian Johnson of Barclays reiterated a SELL with $165 price target.

Ryan Brinkman of J.P. Morgan reiterated a SELL with $185 price target, as he “Doubts Tesla Motors Can Meet Accelerated Production Target.”

Colin Rusch or Oppenheimer reiterated a BUY with $385 price target, indicating that “we believe the critical characteristic of TSLAs business model over the next 24 months will be operating leverage. We believe the company can achieve 15%+ incremental operating margins as it ramps the Model 3. We modeling TSLA reaching 500k vehicles in 2019 vs. the target of 2018, noting the company has a history of setting nearly unachievable goals. Effectively we are accelerating ramp by a year from our previous expectations, but calculate that if the company reaches its 500k vehicle target in 2018 and 1M in 2020, our EPS estimates will prove ~30% too low.”

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See the table below from TipRanks (tipranks.com) for a complete summary of the current top analyst ratings.

TSLA analyst coverage [Source: TipRanks]

TSLA analyst coverage [Source: TipRanks]


Swing Trading TSLA using the MACD

This is the first post where I will start outlining techniques that traders may want to use when trading TSLA stock.

I am mostly a “swing trader”. Swing Trading is a short term trading method that can be used when trading stocks and options. Whereas Day Trading positions last less than one day, Swing Trading positions typically last two to six days, but may last as long as two weeks (for TSLA sometime six-seven weeks). Swing traders use technical analysis to look for stocks with short-term price momentum. These traders aren’t interested in the fundamental or intrinsic value of stocks, but rather in their price trends and patterns.

There are a number of technical indicators that swing traders use. Today I will cover the MACD. The Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD) is a trend-following momentum indicator that shows the relationship between two moving averages of prices. The MACD is calculated by subtracting the 26-day exponential moving average (EMA) from the 12-day EMA. The Exponential Moving Average (EMA) is a type of moving average that is similar to a simple moving average, except that more weight is given to the latest data.

The good thing is that you really do not have to calculate any of these indicators yourself, as pretty much all trading platforms that I know of provide you with such indicators as an option when displaying the stock chart of a given security.

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The following stock chart from Wall Street I/O shows the TSLA market data as “candlestick” (showing open, close, high and low of the day) for the past year, plus it also shows the MACD for the same period.

Source: Wall Street I/O

Source: Wall Street I/O

One technique that swing traders use is to enter a “long” trade when the MACD “crosses to the bulls”, and exit the trade when the MACD “crosses to the bears”. I have indicated these points in the chart for the huge run up between the February low and April high.

Micah Lamar is the CEO of Wall Street I/O (wallst.io), where together with his team of experts he helps people learn stock and option trading. Disclosure: I have been a subscriber to wallst.io for a few years.

This past weekend, Micah run a “MACD Validation” experiment on TSLA 1-year behavior up to last Friday close. The results are as follows.

Micah found that “if one had bought TSLA stock exactly a year ago, and held it for the full year, one would have incurred a $30 loss per share.

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If one had bought and held TSLA stock while the MACD was bullish, one would be up $22 for the year.

If one had sold (short) TSLA stock while the MACD was bearish, one would be up $51 for the year.”

Someone trading both sides (long and short the stock) would be up a whopping $73, or a $30% gain.

Of course, trading the same entry and exit points based on the MACD with put or call options instead of stock would have resulted in returns 10 to 100 times or better than if just trading TSLA stock.

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Micah indicates that “TSLA is a great stock for swing traders: the reason is that it has so much “beta.” A high beta indicates that a security is much more “volatile” than the rest of the market. Most high-tech stocks like TSLA have a beta of greater than 1, offering the possibility of a higher rate of return, but also posing more risk.

As far as where TSLA is today, it is still in “bearish” territory (as far as the MACD and other indicators are concerned), which for me it means that it is untouchable on long trades as “too risky”, and since I do not like to play on the downside for stocks of companies that are in my “buy what you know” list, I will not trade it again until the MACD crosses back to the bulls.

 

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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.

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Credit: Tesla

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:

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“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

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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.

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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.

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Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

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.

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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%.

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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.

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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.

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Credit: Grok

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.”

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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