News and analysis

With Wall Street being at record levels once again, the Technology Select Sector ETF (XLK) climbed another 12.5% from 230 in early June to 258.70 at the intraday peak on July 10. The world's most valuable companies are reaching new milestones, including Microsoft breaking its long-time psychological $500 barrier, with now $3.75 billion of market caps and Nvidia's $4 billion absolute achievement. Tesla, with its "only" $1 trillion, currently looks like the most undervalued super unicorn, although it is arguably a much more AI-innovative and diversified company. Tesla's apparently temporary slide from its recent top range between $350 and $370 over the last couple of months to its lower end below $300 appears to be very politicised amid its founding father Elon Musk's verbal activity in X that should have little bearing on his actual business.

This opinion is supported by a sudden 5% surge in Tesla share price within one trading session in sync with even the slightest appropriate news coming. Tesla jumped from $295 to a bit above $310 before the end of the week, with the investing crowd whooping like a bee sting each of them, when Reuters said Tesla was seeking approval to launch its promising robotaxi services in Arizona. Despite the clearly experimental scale of this service so far in Austin, Texas, where they launched a limited robotaxi test program, not to mention other U.S. states or China, an enthusiastic sentiment of investors cannot be hidden any more. After the initial process of debugging in details, numerous Tesla sceptics are going to become confused.

It all sounds like the last call to buy Tesla stocks while they are still trading around $300 per share, and not somewhere between $420 and $480 as we expect. The ultimate profit margin for Tesla shareholders over the rest of 2025, using buy strategies after retracements, could be several times higher than the residual income from extra investments into NVIDIA or Microsoft, since at least two-thirds of their potential ways up for this year are probably left behind.

As for Arizona, Tesla CEOs reportedly approached the state authorities in late October to initiate certification for an autonomous vehicle ride-sharing service. An approval is expected by the month-end or before the end of the summer, with Reuters citing the state’s transportation department. "They have expressed interest in operating within the Phoenix Metro area," Arizona’s authorities told Reuters. The application was to test and operate EVs both with and without human drivers. Besides, Musk said that Tesla plans to extend the robotaxi service to a larger area in Austin as soon as this weekend and then launch it in the San Francisco Bay Area within the next couple of months.

The electric cars themselves, the network of electric filling stations, including its use by rivals, then robots, a completely innovative AI recognition system, and now extending full self-drive (FSD) technologies on robotaxis - all these are components of rising payback. If Tesla market value had to pay some fleeting price for Elon Musk’s political style, his new America Party project will turn the page soon, as we feel. The America Party has no presidential ambitions of its own, as Musk has confirmed that he is not going to nominate his alternative candidate for the White House chair, Musk himself cannot run there under any circumstances, even theoretically, as he was born outside America. The struggle for a small share of Congressional seats with opportunities to bargain with both Republicans and Democrats for crucial votes on important bills does not threaten the system so much that Musk or his business suffer significantly.

Those who refused to buy Tesla cars because of Musk's political views when he supported Trump, whether in the U.S. or Europe, do not make up a large proportion of Tesla's customer force. This is more of an anti-PR campaign than something strongly related to business reality. Again, the America Party project may free Elon Musk from the baggage surrounding president Trump. Trump haters would stop being Musk's haters, in simple words. And this may even improve the base for Tesla branding loyalty. As to robotaxis effectiveness, not single cases, but statistics will determine the robotaxi’s error rate soon. This error rate will become lower due to FSD’s reliance on machine learning for the algorithm's self-education. Then public trust in FSD will grow to transform it into the major trump card in Elon Musk's pack.

Basic Attention Token (BAT) is adding 13.4% to $0.1441 this week, outperforming the broader crypto market, where Bitcoin (BTC) is rising by 8.1% to $117,938. Altcoins are rallying across the board after Bitcoin broke through the key resistance at $108,000–110,000 and surged toward the $118,000–120,000 range. This rally appears to be largely driven by technical factors, with momentum alone fueling further gains.

BAT is benefiting from this broad upswing, pushing toward the resistance at $0.1500. If positive sentiment continues and the market sustains its current trajectory, the token could move even higher, with the next target set around $0.2000.

A fast and even accelerating way up of the chief AI chip supplier NVIDIA to become the world's first $4 trillion company is not only satisfying to me. Being a major part of my broader vision of the whole tech segment, Nvidia's new and now absolute record in market caps really helped me to meet some of my target levels for previously lagging chip-related companies. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is reportedly planning his Beijing visit next week ahead of the official launching of its new and cutting-edge AI chip tailored especially for the Chinese market. On July 8, Financial Times described a modified version of Blackwell RTX Pro 6000 model, freshly redesigned to comply with all those scrutinized U.S. export controls measures. The additional news that NVIDIA’s Huang was going to meet US president Trump just a day before leaving for China trip should cement its pioneer AI chip status. Previously, Huang criticized new export restrictions under Trump as those barriers threatened to stop Nvidia from selling its H20 chip in the China market. A timely heart-to-heart talk could be the key to resolving the contradictions for Nvidia and a wider range of interested parties. Riding this wave, Nvidia shares not only climbed to their all-time highs around $164.50, but took the Nasdaq Composite index skyward as well to make it setting a second-straight daily closing record, now at 20,630 points. In turn, this immediately triggered a vigorous continuation of the bull rally in Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Applied Materials (AMAT) and other global manufacturers involved in doing GPUs (graphics processing units), APIs (application programming interfaces and other parts for big data and high-performance computing).

AMD occupies almost a seven times smaller niche of the global market compared to Nvidia. However, growth based on the elimination of barriers for the segment is growth for everyone. I’ve introduced you to more investment rating updates for AMD about a month ago, sharing my personal view after the first ten days of June that a breakthrough above $120 would lead AMD stock price very soon to its nearest technical target at $150 per share. During the trading session on July 10, AMD gained 4.16%, five times faster than NVIDIA on the same date, and has already been at $145.80. This marks a more than 20% gain in 30 days. So, I'm one small step away from my first goal of $150, also keeping in mind a return to $180 as my next goal.

Some analysts, however, go even further in their AMD optimism. HSBC upgraded its target price to $200, citing "a stronger-than-expected pricing power" in AMD's AI GPU lineup and "growing confidence" in the company’s "data center roadmap". What's most important, HSBC was a brokerage, which had suddenly downgraded AMD in January to nearly $100 per share, and now admits AMD’s new MI350 chips may "command higher prices than initially assumed" to perform on par with Nvidia’s Blackwell-based B200. HSBC lifted its 2026 AI revenue forecast for AMD to $15.1 billion, 57% above Wall Street consensus, as average selling prices may reach $25,000 per unit against their prior estimate of $15,000. When someone very big like HSBC is waiting for $200 and is unlikely to leave this boat before then, $180 looks like an almost guaranteed easy ride.

Meanwhile, I wrote about AMAT that as soon as it rises to $180, its further horizon would open immediately to the next nearest target price of at least $200. Just look at the charts to witness that AMAT's intraday high on July 10 was already at $199.42, with a closing price being above $198, i.e. less than $2 away from my $200 per share. Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs initiated its coverage on AMAT the same day with a Buy rating and its inner price target of $225. Am I now also expecting new price records from this semiconductor equipment maker? Yes, I am, as it is very well-diversified in gadget producers and world regions. And NVIDIA's current example of successful barrier removal is even more inspiring for AMAT and some others.

This is the first moment since 2021 for the U.S. automaker Ford came in the spotlight again, as its shares sharply rose by nearly 10% since the end of June, reaching 11-month highs. A little history might help to understand what's happening. In 1913, Ford launched the world's very first automobile conveyor line at its Michigan plant. Although conveyor line technology had been used before in some other industries, it was Ford that first applied it to mass production of vehicles. This invention revolutionized the auto industry, significantly reducing assembly time and cost. Once the automotive capital of the world, thanks to Ford, General Motors and Chrysler, the Detroit region of the U.S. has since fallen into decline in the 21st century. Ford has been involved in projects to revive manufacturing in Detroit, but without much success because the U.S. employees are more expensive than in the Asian region. While Ford Focus compacts and other models have consistently ranked among the top 10 popular cars in Europe, financial returns have been weak in terms of profitability over recent years. During the COVID pandemic, the company has emphasized its plans on electric cars making - as a result, its market value had tripled in 2021 to historical peaks around $24 per share. However, by 2022, all this bullish momentum was completely lost, and so the company's shares have since languished within a dull range of $9.50 to $13, with rare price spikes up to $15.

Ford shares even reset its 5-year anti record low at $8.44 per share this April. But Ford is now trading around $12 again. And yes, it is still within the same price range just mentioned above, but there is an encouraging nuance: a clearly accelerating price dynamic of the last two weeks is boosted by the news. Ford said on July 8, it believes its $3 billion Michigan electric vehicle battery plant, which is almost 60% complete, will qualify for recently adopted production tax credits after a big and beautiful tax and budget bill revised the rules. Before that, in May and June, Ford warned over that the Republican government of the US could terminate company's tax credits, which supported the manufacturing of electric vehicle batteries using Chinese technology, according to the previous Congress version of legislation. But the juridical environment has changed, and now Ford's plant in Michigan, which is slated to employ 1,700 workers is reportedly "on track to qualify for the production tax credit", the company's management noted, adding that is "a win for customers" and also "a win for American competitiveness".

The Alliance for Automobile Manufacturers, a group representing General Motors, Ford, Toyota, Volkswagen and other world leaders, praised the final version of the bill for revising its language on a battery production tax credit to preserve "auto-related advanced manufacturing across the country and prohibited Chinese companies from eligibility." This may offset slowing demand for electric vehicles. Before that news, Ford's plant has attracted scrutiny from the government and congressmen because of its ties to the Chinese partners. The new legislation ends a $7,500 tax credit for buying or leasing new electric vehicles on September 30, as well as a $4,000 tax credit for used EV cars. This law also cancels penalties for failing to meet the so-called corporate average fuel economy shortfalls to make building more traditional gas-powered vehicles easier.

Ford's recent bets on electric cars failed. Its fully-electric models faced a sales decline of around 30% YoY, with elevated price tags being only one of the reasons behind it. Ford's total sales added more than 14% during the same annual period. And now Ford's battery production will most likely make a significant contribution to the payback, since it retains benefits. Ford's focus on traditional vehicles could make this segment forward. An auto-loan interest deduction may also increase Ford's strength for its coastal states' clients, its CEOs commented. We feel that the indicated favourable fundamental background for the business will force Ford shares to test the upper range around $14.5 or higher, at least, which already means a profit potential of 22% vs the current price below $12. This profitable result can be strengthened in case of a break through the $15 technical resistance barrier. Ford shares will rise either this summer or never this year.