Investor's Corner
Tesla stock (TSLA) one week after the Q1 2016 Report
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.”
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.”
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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.”
See the table below from TipRanks (tipranks.com) for a complete summary of the current top analyst ratings.
![TSLA analyst coverage [Source: TipRanks]](http://www.teslarati.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/TipRanks-1.png "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.
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
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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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.
SpaceX stock did the opposite of what most of Wall Street expected this week, when the day designed to be its most dangerous turned into a rally, and the rally kept going.
Thursday marked the first major lockup expiration since SpaceX’s June IPO, making roughly 911.5 million insider held shares eligible to trade for the first time, more than doubling the company’s public float. Analysts and short sellers had spent weeks bracing for a flood of selling, especially after the stock fell 13 percent following its first earnings report as a public company on Tuesday. Instead, shares rose 6.1 percent Thursday to close at $114.92, and by Friday they were trading near $129, up more than another 12 percent on the day.
SpaceX shorts get warned by Musk ally, echoing Tesla’s early struggles
The setup made the outcome notable. Short interest had climbed to roughly 34 percent of the float heading into earnings, among the highest of any large cap stock, with about 95 percent of available shares to borrow already on loan. CEO Elon Musk warned short sellers twice in the weeks before the lockup, writing on X that “the survival probability of firms who maintain a significant short position in SpaceX over time is very low,” then following up on the morning of earnings with “I try to warn them, but they just double down.”
When the newly unlocked shares hit the market and the selloff never showed up, some of that short position appears to have started unwinding. TipRanks reported that options activity shifted toward bullish strategies like put selling and risk reversals following the rally, with roughly $600 million in options premium trading Thursday alone. Retail buyers also stepped in during the earnings dip, according to Vanda Research.
The fundamentals behind the stock have not changed much in a week. SpaceX’s revenue nearly doubled year over year to $7.8 billion, with Starlink subscribers doubling to 12 million and the company’s AI segment growing 247 percent. What spooked investors on Tuesday was the spending side. Capital expenditures jumped to more than $18 billion for the quarter, up from $2.8 billion a year earlier, with AI investment alone rising from $749 million to $15.8 billion. Wall Street remains split on whether that spending is building infrastructure SpaceX needs or outrunning what the business can currently support, a debate Teslarati has tracked since shares first came under pressure.
None of that resolves the bigger question hanging over the stock. Thursday’s release was only the first of nine staggered lockup tranches, with roughly $800 billion worth of additional shares scheduled to become eligible through October, and Musk’s own stake stays locked until next June. If this week is any indication, the market is treating that supply as something it can absorb rather than something to fear, at least for now.
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Cybertruck
Tesla Cybertruck production snaps back after ugly supplier fight
Cybertrucks are piling up again at Giga Texas after Tesla’s court win against a parts supplier.
Cybertruck production at Giga Texas is showing its first visible recovery since Tesla sued a supplier last month over withheld manufacturing tooling.
Aerial observer Joe Tegtmeyer flew over the Austin factory Wednesday morning and counted roughly 100 or more Cybertrucks filling the outbound lot, a sharp jump from the thin numbers seen in recent weeks. The flyover came a day after a judge granted Tesla a temporary restraining order against Angstrom Automotive Group, the parts supplier at the center of the dispute.
Tesla filed an emergency lawsuit in late July after Angstrom told the automaker it planned to close the Troy, Texas facility where Tesla’s die-cast tools, trim dies and other Cybertruck stamping equipment were housed. According to Tesla’s complaint, a shipment of 700 finished parts never left the building, and when Tesla sent representatives to retrieve its equipment, accompanied by law enforcement, they were turned away. Angstrom allegedly then asked for an extra $250,000 a week to keep operating, which Tesla’s filing described as holding its own property for ransom.
TESLA: U.S. District Judge Christopher R. Wolfe of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, Waco Division granted Tesla a Temporary Restraining Order and Writ of Replevin in its dispute with Angstrom Automotive (Case No. 6:26-cv-00477).
The order authorizes… https://t.co/E1DKcQSxMn pic.twitter.com/LR8aAiV2Og
— S.E. Robinson, Jr. (@SERobinsonJr) August 5, 2026
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The restraining order gives Tesla immediate right of entry to Angstrom’s facility to recover the tooling. It is temporary, with a fuller hearing still to come, but the speed of Wednesday’s rebound suggests the Angstrom shortage was indeed the main bottleneck limiting Cybertruck output. Outbound lot counts are an imperfect measure of actual production, since finished trucks can sit for days before shipping, but a lot that full after a lean stretch is a meaningful signal.
Cybertruck output at Giga Texas has fluctuated all year as Tesla worked through supply issues and introduced new trims, including a cheaper Dual Motor AWD version that drew strong early demand.
Venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya has cautioned investors shorting SpaceX shares, drawing a direct parallel to the intense short-selling pressure Tesla faced in its early public years.
Responding to reports of elevated short interest in the newly public rocket, satellite, and AI company, Palihapitiya noted that similar dynamics played out with Tesla, where aggressive short sellers ultimately “went broke.”
SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX) went public on June 12, 2026, in the largest IPO on record, pricing at $135 per share. Shares quickly surged to an all-time high of $225.64 just days later, briefly implying a valuation exceeding $2 trillion. The stock has since retreated sharply amid valuation concerns, lockup expiration fears, and broader market dynamics.
By early August, it traded near $108–$125, representing a roughly 50 percent decline from the peak and bringing the market capitalization closer to the $1.5–1.7 trillion range. On August 4, shares closed up more than 9 percent at $125.33 ahead of earnings before facing pressure in after-hours and premarket trading.
Short interest has climbed dramatically. According to S3 Partners data widely cited in market reports, short positions reached approximately 219.3 million shares by late July, about 34 percent of the limited public float of roughly 640 million shares, and represented a notional value of around $24.6 billion.
Utilization of shares available to borrow hit 95 percent, with borrow fees rising. This level of shorting exceeded the dollar value of short bets against Tesla at the time and built rapidly ahead of two catalysts: the company’s first post-IPO earnings and an August 6 lockup expiration that could free up to 911.5 million additional shares.
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CEO Elon Musk has issued warnings of his own. In mid-July, as short interest approached one-third of the float, he posted that “the survival probability of firms who maintain a significant short position in SpaceX over time is very low,” reiterating his view that the company could ultimately be worth more than Earth if it achieves its goals.
On August 4, just before earnings, Musk responded to the latest short-interest data by saying, “I try to warn them, but they just double down.”
SpaceX delivered its first quarterly results as a public company after the close on August 4. Second-quarter revenue rose 92 percent year-over-year to $7.8 billion, beating consensus estimates near $6.8–6.9 billion.
The net loss narrowed to $541 million, or 9 cents per share, better than the roughly 23–24 cent loss expected. Starlink/connectivity contributed about $4.3 billion (up 66 percent), while the AI business generated $2.6 billion (up roughly 250 percent). Capital expenditures were heavy at $18.4 billion, largely tied to AI infrastructure. Management projected a $100 billion annualized revenue run rate by year-end 2026 and outlined a path toward $1 trillion in annual revenue by 2030.
The combination of Chamath’s historical reminder, Musk’s repeated alerts, and the company’s ambitious growth targets underscores the high-stakes debate surrounding SPCX. Short sellers are positioned for near-term supply pressure from the lockup, while long-term bulls point to Starlink scale, Starship progress, and AI compute expansion as reasons the bears may ultimately face the same fate as many early Tesla skeptics.
The Boring Company’s newest tunnel vehicle runs on Tesla parts and no one is driving it
Elon Musk and SpaceX shrugs off the trading day Wall Street feared most
