TSLA

Another upside wave in Tesla stock has begun. A cresting sound of applause erupted through the trading exchange floor on Wall Street to greet today's opening price at nearly $283.50 per share of the EV maker. This marked a 30% rebound from the bottom of the historically largest tech correction, which followed a mostly political after-election rally before the end of 2024. At the same time, there is still over 55% of space to recover to January's highs and about 70% of potential to return to the all-time peaks before Christmas. For me, now is obviously the right moment for the bullish crowd to step in, if some traders have been on the sidelines so far.

Everybody watched those viral videos with a set of Tesla car arsons in dealerships and parking lots, organized by mad eco-terrorists, as I cannot call stupid people activists. Damaging someone's property to intimidate new car owners and for political hatred reasons may have very limited impact on demand considering car insurance. One can also easily find a campaign of internet comments like "who will want Tesla to be proud of driving it", or "no one who cares about reputation wants to identify with Musk", and even detached from reality forecasts that a robotaxi launch in June allegedly means more death trap opportunities.

This will not stop Elon Musk, nor will it slow down technical progress. Any sensible person understands that the mass launch of robo taxis as soon as this summer, as well as a full-self driving option freshly adopted in China are very positive drivers to the value of the asset. Again, twenty million, or even fifty million opponents of Trump's policies in the United States mean nothing against the global population, and these numbers will be well balanced by an even larger number of Musk admirers all over the world, not to mention apolitical car enthusiasts who simply want a high-quality and increasingly affordable electric car. The machine of a dream, such a clean machine...

Well, Tesla shares could still retreat along with the overall market sentiment, as is happening on Tuesday's trading. However, this will now happen in the style of short-term pullbacks against the backdrop of a resumption of the main rally in Tesla. So I completely agree with the thoughts of, for example, Piper Sandler, as it freshly maintained an Overweight rating on the stock, while keeping its $450 price target in a note this Monday, citing "updated wait time figures" for new deliveries and commenting that "Musk’s political endeavors are probably a net negative for deliveries... but Tesla’s brand damage may be exaggerated". Many analysts also mentioned that actually supply constraints played a bigger role in the first-quarter shortfall. It was not correct when some journalists pointed to politics as the primary driver of Tesla’s double-digit delivery declines in Q1 on an annual basis.

First of all, this drop was measured compared to the very strong Q1 2024, which was pumped strongly by discounted sales. At the same time, multi-week shutdowns took place in all four of Tesla’s factories producing its most popular Model Y. Supply chains constrained Tesla’s ability to fulfil orders even when demand was as strong as usual. Therefore, supply-side constraints are the real cause of somewhat smaller numbers of deliveries compared to Tesla's potential. I would not consider this as a lasting weak point. Tesla is still one of the greatest success stories, and price targets like $450 or even higher are no joke at all. I am not sure about the current quarter's numbers, but we will definitely see the next quarter numbers rising, including financial flows from robotaxis and electric refuelling stations' network by Tesla.