Investor's Corner
Tesla stock’s Twitter overhang highlighted in Morgan Stanley survey
Tesla as a company is doing very well, but one would not really see this from looking at TSLA stock’s performance this year. Amidst CEO Elon Musk’s turbulent acquisition of Twitter, Tesla shares have seen a notable dive, with the company losing over $600 billion in the past year.
Tesla bulls and bears have found common ground in the notion that TSLA stock has suffered this year partly because of Musk’s Twitter acquisition. And as it turns out, institutional investors that were surveyed by Morgan Stanley think the same way, too.
Morgan Stanley recently released a note highlighting what institutional investors think of Twitter’s effect on Tesla’s stock performance. According to Morgan Stanley’s note, a survey about Tesla’s Twitter overhang was sent to an email distribution list comprised of institutional investors and industry experts.
There were only two questions that were asked. “How much of Tesla’s recent underperformance o you attribute to the Twitter situation?” and “What impact do you believe Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter will have on Tesla’s business going forward?” The results were very telling.
Almost 75% of the respondents to Morgan Stanley’s survey noted that Musk’s Twitter acquisition has accounted for at least a significant portion of TSLA’s underperformance. About 40% of the respondents also noted that the Twitter situation has accounted for half or more than half of the weakness that’s been evident in the EV maker’s stock.
Apart from this, about 65% of the respondents to Morgan Stanley’s survey noted that Musk’s Twitter takeover would have a negative or slightly negative impact on Tesla’s business moving forward. That being said, 5% of the respondents expected a positive impact from Musk’s Twitter acquisition.
“As we highlighted in last week’s note, we see the situation at Twitter potentially exposing Tesla to risks along a number of areas including: (a) consumer sentiment/demand, (b) commercial partnerships, (c) government relations/support; and (d) capital markets support. While difficult to quantify, we believe there must be some form of sentiment’ circuit breaker’ around the Twitter situation to calm investor concerns around Tesla,” Morgan Stanley wrote.
That being said, Morgan Stanley remains optimistic about Tesla. Despite its reservations about Elon Musk’s Twitter overhang, Morgan Stanley still has a $330 per share price target for the EV maker and an “Overweight” rating. Morgan Stanley explained its stance on the EV maker in its note.
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“Tesla is the only name we cover that generates a profit (before incentives) on the sale of EVs. Tesla is the only self-funding pure play EV name we cover and has achieved a unique position to secure supply of the battery metals and related up-stream supply necessary to produce EVs at multi-million-unit scale.
“In a slowing economic environment, we believe Tesla’s ‘gap to competition’ can potentially widen, particularly as EV prices pivot from inflationary to deflationary. The current price offers approximately 80% potential upside to our $330 price target, which is the highest upside to target we have seen from Tesla in over 5 years,” Morgan Stanley wrote.
Disclosure: I am long Tesla.
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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.
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
— 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.
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
