Investor's Corner
Tesla (TSLA) stock price is the highest it's been in 2019, closing in on 52-week high
Tesla stock (NASDAQ:TSLA) recently crossed the $360 barrier, effectively hitting a year-to-date high. If Tesla maintains this momentum, the electric car maker may find itself within striking distance of its all-time high, especially if its Q4 2019 results are positively received by the market.
Tesla opened Friday at $361.05 per share, rising as high as $365.21 as of writing. This is the highest that Tesla has been in 2019 so far, with the closest one being November 19, when TSLA stock knocked on $359.99 before closing at $359.52. In a way, this bodes well for Tesla, considering that just a couple of months ago, the electric car maker’s shares were at the $240-$250 level.
Tesla has not had an easy time in 2019, being bogged down by pessimistic outlooks from Wall Street and missed internal targets. Following a first-quarter and second-quarter loss, TSLA stock dipped so much that it traded as low as $176.99 per share on June 3. Tesla recovered in a relatively slow and steady manner, at least until its blockbuster Q3 2019 earnings, which exceeded Wall Street’s expectations.
This fourth quarter, Tesla has yet another opportunity to surprise. CEO Elon Musk has been quite subdued this Q4, refraining (at least for now) from declaring hyper-ambitious targets for the company in terms of its production and delivery numbers. During the second-quarter earnings call, Musk noted that Q3 will likely be a break-even quarter, and Q4 will be profitable. These expectations were broken in the third quarter when instead of breaking even, Tesla posted a profit.
Amidst Elon Musk’s relative silence, Tesla does have some positive momentum carrying it towards the end of the year. Unlike past quarters, Tesla does not seem to be engaging in its now-trademark end-of-quarter delivery push, which involves the company going all hands on deck around the clock in a mad dash to deliver as many vehicles as possible during the final month of a quarter. It appears that deliveries are ongoing en masse this Q4, but the sense of near-desperate urgency present in past quarters does not seem to be there.
Apart from these, signs are abounding that Tesla Model 3 demand remains healthy. As noted by observations from the Tesla community, the all-electric sedan seemed to be sold out for 2019, with only a few areas assuring customers of delivery before the end of the year. In several territories in Europe and even in Asia, Model 3 deliveries for new orders are now estimated for Q1 2020.
Tesla has also been progressing well in its efforts to expand its reach to other countries. Gigafactory 3 Phase 1 has been fully completed, and mass production of the company’s Made-in-China Model 3 has begun. Tesla has also received a license to sell the all-electric sedan locally. Furthermore, the Made-in-China Model 3 has been granted government incentives, which will likely make the vehicle more attractive to mainstream buyers. Just recently, truckloads of Tesla Model 3 have been spotted being transported from Gigafactory 3, giving the impression that initial deliveries may just be around the corner.
Of course, Tesla does need to meet its ambitious targets to fully meet its own guidance. The electric car maker has estimated that it would deliver about 360,000 to 400,000 vehicles in 2019. Following Q3’s results, Tesla will need to deliver about 105,000 vehicles in the fourth quarter to meet this goal. If it does, then it would not be surprising if Tesla stock ends up being in striking distance of its all-time-high of $383.45 per share, which was achieved on June 19, 2017.
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Disclosure: I have no ownership in shares of TSLA and have no plans to initiate any positions within 72 hours.
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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
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.
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.
Investor's Corner
SpaceX and Nvidia team up on Musk’s orbital AI bet
SpaceX revealed a new Nvidia satellite partnership, then Musk pledged an exclusive Nvidia hardware commitment.
SpaceX and Nvidia are now working together on the hardware that will power Musk’s orbital data center ambitions. SpaceX announced on X on Tuesday that it is partnering with Nvidia to design the compute payload for Starmind AI1, the first satellite in a planned constellation built to run AI workloads directly in orbit. Each Starmind satellite will carry Nvidia’s Rubin GPUs and Vera CPUs, according to the post, which included renderings of the payload design.
The announcement landed hours before SpaceX’s first earnings call as a public company, where Musk went further, saying the company has committed to building its AI infrastructure exclusively on Nvidia hardware. “We think the Vera Rubin architecture is the best architecture. We think it’s the best AI computer, and we greatly value our close cooperation and partnership on many levels with Nvidia,” Musk told investors on the call,. “So we’re exclusive to Nvidia.”
Musk said SpaceX plans to deploy Nvidia’s Vera Rubin NVL72 rackscale system, codenamed Kyber, both on the ground and in space. He set a target of 2 gigawatts of compute capacity online by the end of this year, scaling to roughly 10 gigawatts by the end of 2027.
SpaceX’s newest Starmind will make earth data centers obsolete
Starmind has been in development since Musk confirmed the name in June, following an xAI trademark filing that tipped off the project before SpaceX made it official. The idea is massive in scope and instead of moving data down to ground based servers, satellites equipped with onboard processors and large solar arrays would compute AI workloads in orbit and beam results back to Earth. SpaceX has already filed with the FCC for a constellation of up to one million satellites to support the effort, citing constant solar power and the absence of zoning restrictions as advantages over terrestrial data centers.
The Nvidia exclusivity marks a shift in tone from just two weeks ago, when Musk was busy knocking down a report that SpaceX had ordered $52 billion worth of Nvidia GPUs through Foxconn, calling it fake news at the time. The dollar figure in that rumor may have been wrong, but the underlying direction seems correct. SpaceX’s AI division already leases Colossus compute capacity to Anthropic and Google, and Tuesday’s earnings report showed AI revenue climbing sharply as those deals ramp up.
Nvidia shares rose roughly 3% in Tuesday trading on the news, while SpaceX stock climbed nearly 9% during the day before giving back gains after hours as investors digested the earnings report’s capital spending figures.
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