News and analysis

Tesla (TSLA) stocks responded to the S&P 500 broad barometer's rally, which is approaching the 6,000 points mark again, with a convincing break through a 2-week-long flag pattern above the $360 barrier. The stock now looks like the vanguard of an advanced team of tech assets among other global giants fighting for new price heights in May. Following that jump led by a 6.9% rise on May 27, now the number $420, so mellifluous to the ear of the founder of the EV making company Elon Musk, seems to be a minimally reasonable and only initial target, if we make the simplest possible graphical approximation on Tesla charts, using the so-called "measured move" technique with the vertical flagpole as a measure of scale, which extends from $270 as the low point on May 7 to $350 as an intraday high on May 14, i.e. just one week later.

Tesla's rapid rise to the top looked like an essentially predetermined move during the company's conference call hot on the trail of its quarterly report on the night of April 22-23. And here we would like to especially highlight the prospect of active implementation of robotaxis with deliveries of hundreds of thousands, if not a couple of million robotaxi cars in the next couple of years in the U.S. alone, as well as Tesla cars' relative independence from imported components. The latter factor gives it a huge advantage not only over other car companies, but also among many megacaps, with Apple (APPL) as a very good example, since shares of the iPhone manufacturer are still pressured enough due to its large exposure to production chains in China and trade war costs. Nothing like this is happening with Tesla, since Tesla localized its production in America, Europe and Asia.

Even though Tesla is facing a plunge in sales across its European markets due to protests and boycotts over Elon Musk's political stance, and with the broader electric vehicle market in Europe growing by approximately 28% YoY but declined by nearly half vs last year's records particularly for Tesla, its moving in other parts of the world is spectacular to offset Tesla's shortfall in the EU. Brief factory shutdowns for several weeks to upgrade the plants for its best-selling Model Y sport utility vehicle, also constrained supply but is a strong factor of increasing sales soon. Let's not forget that Tesla would be characterized correctly as a hybrid of an AI leader and an EV leader at the same time, which also manages to make competitors partners by simply providing them with necessary and actually unavoidable infrastructure and batteries.

Wedbush Securities has issued the most bullish call to shift its Tesla’s price target to $500 from recent $350, meaning a nearly 47% upside potential. It is positioning Tesla as “one of the best pure plays on AI for the next decade,” emphasizing the company’s artificial intelligence, robotics and full self-driving (FSD) ambitions as key value drivers. Launching FSD rollout in China just began in Q1, and its expected deployment in Europe will follow, probably in summer, with pending regulatory approval. High-volume production of the Optimus robots is planned for 2026; initial customer deliveries are projected for 2027 to unlock at least $1 trillion in AI-related extra valuation. This may double Tesla’s market caps to more than $2 trillion by late 2026. Again, Tesla announced its fresh lower-priced vehicle in the first half of 2025, starting around $30,000 including tax credits, which could align well with market conditions.

Elon Musk’s Neuralink project successfully raised $600 million, valued up to $9 billion by some analysts. It develops brain-computer interfaces (BCIs). Their flagship product, called "The Link," is a coin-sized implantable device to control various devices with thoughts.

All of the above are natural fundamental background behind a new round of Tesla's rally to new heights, not to mention such a "trifle" as a simple repetition of the historical peaks of December and January around $480. From a technical point of view, Tesla's price consolidation between $330 and $355, to digest the set of news from April 22-23, lasted only two weeks until yesterday's trading session on May 27 when the situation ultimately resolved in favour of further gains. It therefore makes sense to reiterate a very short-term horizon for Tesla within the range from $400 to $420, where the price has a high chance of being as early as June, with targets above $500 in the medium term, and most likely within the next few months, or at least until the end of 2025.

ApeCoin (APE) is adding 9.2% to $0.688 this week, strongly outperforming the broader crypto market, where Bitcoin (BTC) is up by 2.2% to $109,768. After breaking through the resistance at $0.500 in late April and successfully retesting it in early May, APE gained momentum, rising steadily before briefly consolidating. The current price action suggests the token is preparing for another leg up, aiming to surpass the $1.0000 resistance level. The rally marks a significant recovery from the low of $0.348 in early April and is supported by overall market optimism and renewed interest in the ApeCoin ecosystem. With improving sentiment, APE has a solid chance to break into higher territory.

Merck (MRK) shares underperformed during the strong April–May market rally, with the S&P 500 rising 22% to 5,865 points, while MRK gained just 2.5% to $77.55. The stock pulled back from $85.68 in early May but managed to break through trend resistance in April for the second time, later retesting it in May. A solid support zone around $70.00 — unbroken since 2019 — continues to provide a strong technical foundation.

Given this setup, the $70–80 range appears to be a promising buying zone. The next major target is $100–105, which aligns with a price gap that could attract further interest. A reasonable stop-loss can be placed at $60, below long-term support, to manage downside risk.

Bitcoin triumphantly persists in consolidating recent gains around and just below the now-iconic $110,000 mark, as it happens for the second time in the crypto world's history. The first time this hill has been climbed to stay at the top between mid-December and mid-January, when attempts to break higher ultimately failed. But it was only a matter of time before a retest of the resistance area, naturally formed here, would be called for. A further correction to $75,000 was prompted by growing uncertainty over tariff wars and the US central bank's ambiguous stance on the interest rate cuts. Lower prices for the leading crypto asset provided markets with fresh buy positions at discount prices, as Bitcoin has already given investors plenty of promises for the future in the course of the US post-election rally.

Trade tensions between Asia and America, as well as America and Europe, although these conflicts are clearly approaching some consensus agreements and will lead eventually to positive shifts in national budget deficits and public debts, will not be slow to give another kick in the depreciation of the US Dollar, the Euro, the Chinese Yuan, and all other fiat currencies against the whole mass of goods and the volume of services provided globally. When the voice and the size of traditional currencies of measurement becomes muted, then Gold and some most popular crypto assets that are correlated with those currency units, will inflate over time. An inevitable process, and so I believe in new heights for Bitcoin soon at least for this reason. The other reason lies in the mountain of newly-baked US crypto reserves.

Another thing is that the long-term statistics of classical approaches, purely from the point of view of technical analysis, suggests that the second touch of resistance areas more often leads to another pullback before the final exit to substantially higher levels takes place. So, even if the upper limit is surpassed first, for example, in the form of a false break structure to $115,000 or so, then another dive into the range between $90,000 and $100,000 cannot be excluded before talking seriously about Bitcoin prices beyond $120,000. A ground behind possible but moderate downward move could be a simple profit-taking by the most satisfied but non-euphoric part of the speculative crowd, while the big players may still stay in business and even add more buy positions in case of a temporary price decline, if any. Let's say that at the end of the first quarter of 2025, electric car maker Tesla had over 11,500 Bitcoins on its balance sheet, but Tesla's shareholder meeting said it plans to keep its entire crypto stash despite the company's tough times. Probably they, and surely I, have no doubt that both $120,000 and $150,000 will shape Bitcoin over the course of this year, if not in the coming months. Through the new normal underworld below $100,000 again, or launching like a rocket straight into the sky, a particular path is now incomprehensible and impossible to know, but this journey to the moon will happen.

Binance CEO Richard Teng just gave his quiet warning as the crypto market enters a new phase, he turned investors' attention to what he believes are the true sources of long-term value, excluding hype, headlines or short-term bias. His three core ideas are that long-term vision beats fast trends, community strength compounds over time and having early conviction in the right assets to lead to growth "far beyond initial expectations". A maturing market is where attention is being turned away from speculation toward patience, structure and belief in utility, he said, as "macro conditions begin to tilt further in crypto’s favor". "Bonds are breaking down. Yields are rising. Trust in traditional risk shelters is fading", and this triple motto explains why Bitcoin will remain attractive even at high levels. The crypto network value and user conviction can build over time. While Ethereum is not surging, but rather stable now, altcoins are starting to see "early inflows, particularly in themes like decentralized finance, layer-2 solutions, artificial intelligence and tokenized assets", he added.

I would also mention here the factor of rapidly rebounding equities, which in parallel triggers proportional extra volumes of rising investments in the crypto environment, as growing S&P 500, Nasdaq and the Dow Jones become new rulers to create new dimensions for money relocations. A lot of money is still on the waiting mode looking for a safer place to stay, and Bitcoin could well be not the only one, but just one of such important places in order to avoid too much concentration in the tech segment, while the broader market may be at higher risks of a global economic slowdown.

Meanwhile, former BitMEX CEO and now Maelstrom’s head Arthur Hayes directly links recent changes in US fiscal policy to the rising price of Bitcoin, predicting a rise in the cryptocurrency above $110,000 and even $200,000. In an essay "Ski Cut" in late April Hayes described how the macroeconomic policies of the U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve is driving further increase in liquidity to reinforce optimistic sentiment about Bitcoin. He compared the situation in the third quarter of 2022, when quantitative easing continued and Bitcoin faced pressure below $16,000 and could fall to $10,000, with the recent period of concerns about a possible drop from $75,000 to $60,000, which didn't happen. And he is not alone in his bold thoughts. Well, folks, I don't know anything and I can't say anything about Bitcoin for $1,000,000. I'm not even ready to seriously discuss this, because we might as well be discussing $1 billion or $1 trillion, if we are crazy or high enough. But, against the background of such hot forecasts, it seems to me that few investors are going to stop before the "weak" barrier of $150,000. The so-called "measured move" from classical books on technical analysis may point to targets around $150,000 as realistic, by the way. What do you think?