News and analysis

If there is some truth in what people say that safety in numbers then Tesla stocks have become less reliable investments following the latest news. The world's largest and most hyped EV manufacturer reported disappointing first-quarter deliveries. The Elon Musk brainchild giant not only missed consensus expectations by far, as Tesla factories shipped only 386,810 vehicles vs the preliminary estimated number of nearly 450,000, but its actual numbers dropped in absolute terms for the first time after the pandemic spring of 2020. An important detail to consider is that the best-selling Model 3 and Model Y stood at 369,783 to mark a 10% decline YoY, falling deep below 426,940 units in consensus forecasts on Bloomberg. In fact, Tesla doubters have long suspected possible troubles with demand due to tight competition in China amid still expensive prices for electric cars for consumers. Their concerns intensified since the end of January when Tesla warned investors that the growth rate of its vehicle volume may become "notably lower" in 2024, compared to the previous year. Elon Musk personally urged the Fed to cut interest rates sooner rather than later, mentioning that too high borrowing costs inevitably continue to weigh on car sales all over the world. Overall, Tesla share price came down from $250.08 on the first trading day of January to $175.22 at closing price on April 1, which already formed a 30% retracement. However, a shocking effect with delivery numbers the next day led the stock to more than 6% lower levels below $165, which makes the price closer to diving to its new multi-month lows since May 2023.

Meanwhile, a gap between production and deliveries increased. Q1 2024 production numbers reached 433,371 vehicles, against an anticipated 452,976, with Model 3/Y making up 412,376 of that total, vs a missed 439,194 forecast. “Decline in volumes was partially due to the early phase of the production ramp of the updated Model 3 at our Fremont factory and factory shutdowns resulting from shipping diversions caused by the Red Sea conflict and an arson attack at Gigafactory Berlin,” the company's official explanation is. However, the incident at Gigafactory happened in the last month of the quarter, while other reasons could only partially cover short delivery as well as lower production facts of the report. Thus, we can just agree with Wedbush analysts group words who literally said: "While we were anticipating a bad 1Q, this was an unmitigated disaster 1Q that is hard to explain away", so that "some darker days could clearly be ahead that could disrupt the long-term Tesla narrative". Elon Musk and his professional team now need to put efforts turning this around.

The only good story behind the scene is that Musk probably may get a good chance of purchasing more shares of Tesla later if he is still sticking to his idea of owning a larger stake in Tesla before investing more into AI technologies. This may give little comfort for short-sellers, also promising brilliant opportunities for the crowds who are extremely interested in buying more Tesla shares later at a well discounted price. We sincerely belong to this waiting-for-purchase group, even though we expect that a good purchase for Tesla stock may be somewhere within a potential technical range between $125 and $140 per share, without reaching the January 2023 low at $101.81.

All Tesla troubles are here, yet we believe troubles are temporary. Ultimately, Tesla is more than car deliveries; it's the energy hub and gateway for numerous EV producers. It could be compared with Google, which is much more than the search engine. Tesla domination in North America, Europe and global markets would grow.

NEM (XEM) experienced a significant 11.0% loss this week, with prices dropping to $0.0453. Wednesday saw an even steeper decline, with the token falling to $0.0427, breaching the support level at $0.0450. However, prices later managed to rise back above this support level, offering some hope for further recovery. If prices can sustainably remain above this level, there may be potential for an upward movement towards $0.0500.

Despite this potential for recovery, it's important to note that there are no fundamental factors currently supporting such a rise in NEM's price. The broader cryptocurrency market, as represented by Bitcoin (BTC), has also experienced a decline, with BTC losing 6.5% to reach $66,150 this week.

Sincere greetings to Gold believers. Yes, I have a fair share of almost 15% for Gold in my portfolio, and also my "truck" honked my readers on a mark of around $2000/oz in early December that Gold was still worth its future hike to fresh all-time highs. So, I am happy, as it is still rising alongside continuing anti-cash moves by hedge funds and many private investors. However, you know that I am rather a stock market believer, especially when we talk about mid-term "speculative investments" in growth stocks, as it usually has a potential of bringing more profit compared to an old-school tradition of placing each and every extra penny into yellow metal.

For the last 12 months, Gold prices were growing even a bit faster than the S&P 500 broad barometer of Wall Street. Gold spot (XAUUSD) just came from a $1925/oz area (April 1, 2023) to nearly $2265 (+17.6%), vs another slow but steady upside road by the S&P 500 futures, which shifted from a 4,550 points area to about 5,225 points (+14.8%) during the same period.

Certainly, those numbers cannot be compared to dozens or percent, if not sometimes hundreds of percent, in AI-related businesses. Yet both Gold and S&P proportional investments provided double-digit percentage income over the past year, and would supposedly continue to perform in the same manner soon. Buying and holding Gold assets remains to be a preferred method of parking crowd's money compared to deposits or bonds nominated in U.S. Dollars, Euro and any other major world currencies.

Though, prices on Easter eggs increased substantially more than gold. So costly for the poor Easter bunny's budget. If eggs would not be a perishable product, then I would prefer eggs or other food investment, maybe, ha-ha. Yet, all of us need some more or stable asset to pursue inflation, and e-Gold is exactly this sort of thing. Thus, even assuming that some moderate pullback in Gold would be possible to fix profit by some part of the market, investors still foresee rate cut decisions by the US Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank. As a direct consequence, bond yields and money return from banking deposits would decrease. This and current uncertainty in EURUSD trends provides key advantages to Gold trading, as well as going on with stock portfolio investments. At least, keeping an eye for autumn, if not for the nearest 3-4 months period.

I feel Gold will continue to be of additional interest to investors in proportion to their increase in stakes on the stock market. Therefore, the further growth of the S&P 500 will be on hand for climbing gold prices higher, and not vice versa, while chances for stock correction is also a risk factor for Gold. A sharp corrective move in Gold may later coincide in time with a similar corrective slide in the S&P 500, but when would it happen? No one knows, but it's unlikely to take place in the very near future. Besides, as long as food and gasoline don't get cheaper, why should Gold get cheaper as a means of chasing inflation? I feel it is wrong when Gold assets are rising more slowly than your everyday food. Otherwise, it's a safe haven that doesn't work.

Neo (NEO) experienced a significant loss of 11.0% this week, trading at $14.37, driven by a general correction in the crypto market. Bitcoin, the leading cryptocurrency, also faced a decline of 7.0% to $66,000. While Bitcoin remains distant from its critical support level at $60,000, NEO has slipped below its key support at $15.00 and is now on track to test the $12.50 support level, representing a further potential decline of 12.0%.

Currently, NEO lacks positive catalysts to facilitate a recovery. However, from a technical perspective, the support at $12.50 is robust and may trigger a rebound in NEO prices.