Let’s review Tesla’s earnings report with a top US fund manager.
George Noble Post on X
Bio: Fidelity Overseas Fund, Was #1 mutual fund USA. Former Peter Lynch assistant. Virtual Stock Ideas Summit March 11, 2026.
Play the video. It provides more details than his full post below.
Last night was the biggest disaster in the history of Tesla. Let me walk you through what actually happened on that earnings call, because the headlines are doing you a disservice:
Elon Musk got on the call and admitted (his words) that Hardware 3 “simply does not have the capability to achieve unsupervised FSD.” He said he wished it were otherwise. He said the memory bandwidth is one-eighth of what Hardware 4 has. And that’s the end of the conversation.
Approximately 4 million Tesla vehicles on the road right now have Hardware 3. Many of those owners paid $8,000 to $15,000 for Full Self-Driving capability based on Musk’s repeated promises (going back to 2016) that the hardware was sufficient for full autonomy. As recently as 2022, Musk was publicly assuring owners that HW3 had the processing power to get it done.
BUT IT DIDN’T Those promises are now officially broken. The solution is a “discounted trade-in” toward a new car with Hardware 4. Not a refund or a free upgrade… A discount on buying ANOTHER Tesla.
Investor Ross Gerber said it too – all HW3 owners got screwed, and with roughly 285,000 FSD purchasers affected, the potential liability runs into the BILLIONS.
But that’s not even the worst part. Musk was asked if the current FSD v14.3 was ready for unsupervised deployment. He said yes. Then immediately walked it back and admitted Tesla has “major architectural improvements” in the pipeline that would significantly improve safety.
What he really means: the software isn’t SAFE ENOUGH to deploy without a human watching. Full unsupervised FSD for consumer cars is pushed to Q4 2026. At the earliest… Maybe.
How many times has this deadline been pushed? I’ve lost count. And trust me, I’ve seen a lot of broken promises. But this one takes the cake.
Now let’s talk about the numbers everyone is celebrating: Tesla reported $22.4 billion in revenue and $0.41 in non-GAAP earnings. A “double beat.” The stock popped 4% after hours. Victory, right?
WRONG Dig into the actual filing: The number one driver of operating income improvement wasn’t cost reductions, wasn’t volume growth, wasn’t FSD revenue. It was – and Tesla listed this FIRST in their own shareholder letter – “one-time benefits related to warranty and tariffs.” They released warranty reserves. They booked tariff refund windfalls. They stretched supplier payments by 10 days. They took on billions in new debt. Then they presented everything through non-GAAP metrics that strip out over $1 billion in stock-based compensation. GAAP net income was $477 million on $22.4 billion in revenue. That’s a 2.1% net margin. On a $1.4 trillion market cap.
Let me put that in perspective: 3.75 billion shares outstanding. Annualize the Q1 GAAP profit and you get roughly $1.9 billion. That’s a trailing P/E ratio north of 700. Use the adjusted number – strip out stock comp, which is a REAL cost to shareholders through dilution – and you’re still at around 250x earnings.
All of this is extremely bad, but I didn’t even talk about the CAPEX BOMB yet… 3 months ago, Tesla guided to “over $20 billion” in 2026 capital expenditure. Last night they raised it to over $25 billion. A $5 billion increase in a single quarter. That’s 3x their historical annual capex run rate – $8.5 billion in 2025, $11.3 billion in 2024.
The CFO confirmed on the call that Tesla expects NEGATIVE free cash flow for the rest of the year. So you have a company generating roughly $6 billion in annual free cash flow on a good year, and they’re about to spend $25 billion.
The math doesn’t work. They will almost certainly need to issue equity. Which means dilution. Which means the $1.9 billion in annual earnings gets spread across even MORE shares.
The core auto business is literally deteriorating in real time: Tesla delivered 358,000 vehicles in Q1 (missed estimates again). They produced 408,000. That’s 50,000 cars sitting on lots that nobody bought. Inventory days jumped from 10 to 27 in just a few quarters. California (their most important US market) saw registrations crash 24% year over year. Their market share in the state fell from 9.2% to 7.7%. That’s on top of a Q1 2025 that was ALREADY weak from Model Y retooling.
They’re declining off a decline. And here’s what really kills the bull case… The entire valuation rests on robotaxis, Optimus robots, and autonomy. So let’s put numbers on it: Waymo – the actual leader in autonomous driving with 15 million completed rides in 2025 alone, over 127 million autonomous miles driven, operating commercially across 6 US cities with plans to expand to 20 more – just raised $16 billion at a $126 billion valuation. That’s the market’s verdict on what the LEADING robotaxi company is worth. $126 billion. And Waymo is YEARS ahead of Tesla in actual deployment.
Tesla has 3.75 billion shares outstanding. So even if you assign $126 billion in robotaxi value (giving Tesla full credit for matching Waymo despite being nowhere close) that’s $33 a share. Add the auto business at generous auto-industry multiples, maybe $20 a share. Throw in energy storage and services, $10-15. Sum of the parts gets you to roughly $65-70 a share if you’re feeling generous. Maybe $50 if you’re not.
The stock is $387.
So what exactly are you paying for? You’re paying for a STORY. You’re paying for PROMISES that keep getting pushed back, technology that keeps falling short, and a business plan that requires spending $25 billion a year while the core product sells fewer units at declining margins in a market where California sales just fell 24% and the federal EV tax credit is gone.
I managed the number one mutual fund in America. I founded two billion-dollar hedge funds. I’ve been doing this since 1981. And I am telling you: Tesla at $387 is one of the most egregious mispricings I have seen in my entire career.
THE CRASH WILL BE EPIC
Have a Factual Rebuttal?
Noble closed his video with “I’ll gladly listen to a factual rebuttal.”
So, if you have a factual rebuttal, not an opinion about robots or FSD promises, send it to me.
I will try to get it to George Noble. He is one of my followers on X.
Tesla Monthly Chart
Technically speaking, I struggle to put an E-Wave count on the chart mainly due to lack of significant waves down until 2022.
However, I do see a bearish rising wedge on generally falling volume. This is an unconfirmed distribution signal.
I also see 5 waves in the wedge, possibly an ending diagonal to a massive top. If that is the case, we are in a wave 1 down of some sort, with the larger count uncertain.
Neither the fundamentals nor the technical picture is appealing here.
Returning to the Fundamentals
Noble discussed price fundamentals. Volumes rate to be a disaster. Tesla’s sales in China, the US, and Europe are all in decline.
The CyberTruck is a joke headed for the ash heap of history. Tesla sales in China and Europe will trend towards zero over time as BYD beats Tesla on price, performance, and features.
Tesla is realistically little more than a bet on robots, selling FSD service, or licensing battery technology.
This is at a point where BYD has far superior battery technology and features. And Waymo has far superior self-driving technology.
Price What If?
A decline from $499 to $50 would be a big crash, about a 90 percent decline. However, in a strong technology bear market, such a crash would not be that unusual.
I do note strong support at $100. At least Initially, I would expect a big bounce near the $100 level even if some of Noble’s more catastrophic valuation possibilities came into play.
A decline from $499 to $100 would be an 80 percent crash. That would be the minimum I would expect in a strong bear market given these fundamentals.
But the question is “Are we going to have a strong bear market?”
The answer is eventually, it’s guaranteed. As to when? “I don’t know, nor does anyone else”.
But beware. Every post I have done on the technical picture for two years has been negated by higher highs.
The market can and will frequently override technicals and fundamentals.
Meanwhile, please note Tesla FSD Taxi Remains a Joke: Backup Driver Moves to a Backup Trailing Tesla
Gizmodo: “Just what everyone wants, their own personal tail.”
Regarding FSD, Noble noted Musk immediately walked it back and admitted Tesla has “major architectural improvements” in the pipeline that would significantly improve safety.
It’s been the same story for a decade. Unsupervised FSD is a joke. And without Lidar, FSD will remain a joke in all but favorable weather.
Even without the rise of Chinese EVs, Tesla was overvalue and likely to be eventually overtaken by traditional car manufacturers.
The US isn’t seeing it but most of the rest of the world is. China is producing more EVs per month than Tesla is per year. They are flooding the market in Europe, Australia and elsewhere and consumers are happy.
Teslas have always been a novelty item. Early adopters love them. They have never been mass market.
I have a European PHEV. I only have 50miles of range on electricity which is enough for daily use. But have a tank of gas for the longer trips when I need it.
Has Elon named any of his kids “Edsel” yet?
When I was in Europe last fall, there were bus/train stops with posters that said “Tesla – Zero to 1939 in 4 seconds”.
It’s a slow burn, but this fascist company is trash without government subsidies. The blue wave is gonna wash right over Tesla IF the election winners are allowed to take office.
The Tedsla
Perhaps Tedsel?
Starlink sure works well out in the sticks, and that is a relevant revenue stream. Just not at these valuations.
Possibly in Cinemascope with Technicolor – and a cast of thousands.
Tesla receives big $$$$$ from passive index buyers who participate this way—-if money then buy index…at any price. It has distorted what something is actually worth bc nobody cares.
Someday it will roll over when more leave than enter. Tulips
Makes me to want to buy LEAPS worth the value of the Tesla component of my S&P500 index ETFs.
If you ask Chat GPT or others they will answer you 50% pros and 50% cons.
ALways.
Unless you pay extra I think.
when did rage bonerism become news?
When the internet took the ad revenue away from journalism.
Elon has made it farther on other people’s cheese, and backs, than any human in history.
Sincerely,
Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning
Nonsense Eberhard and Tarpenning could not get their concept to mass production; Musk joined and invested quite a bit of capital and by the time they began producing the roadster in 08 Eberhard and Tarpenning left the company. People are so full of hate for Musk they miss the forest for the trees. Stock is up almost 20 percent since this article was posted.
All Musk schemes rely on some form of regulatory arbitrage/government expenditure.
Tesla would never have made it without the market in carbon credits, which wildly favors Tesla disproportionately to actual carbon emissions, even if you grant the premise.
It is of course not the only company that relies on government spending.
Pretty rich that the controlling shareholder of such a company would operate DOGE.
this is future of USA stock market, funny valuation not linked to any fundamentals. You hear every day how China companies are taking over and having better product. Now due to USA tariffs most American are completely oblivious to this as those products are not available here.
But reality is, those products are taking over rest of the world quickly as we see with BYD or Xiaomi. So American companies like Tesla are going down with deteriorating financials.
Still broad wall street only know American companies so we chase those falling stars.
This so called “expert” (George Nobel) should invest in BYD, NIO or any other China EV carmaker if he wants to see good and improving fundamentals. But he prefer to short Tesla instead, like typical Wall Street addict and got burn when bigger player squeezes him and bitches now. Just pure casino at this point
The US is falling, and China is rising. Turns out being stupid, loud and uneducated doesn’t lead to global economic dominance.
The US will simply smash things up rather than let China rise.
The nuclear armed toddler in the room…
It’s hilarious that you think China needs our permission to succeed. There may come a time when we need not only their permission but their help to survive.
It is interesting topic actually, we will see how this play. So Wall Street was working in environment where USA had best global companies and also had most money. So financials and fundamentals were moving together. Now this is no longer a case, except few tech companies, like Meta or Google.
So we slowly move into direction where USA is falling technologically behind and other countries are taking over (mainly China). International companies are becoming dominant player.
But USA still is top dog financially, mainly due to dollar being world currency.
How will Wall Street operate in this environment? Will they just ignore it and keep pilling money into declining USA leading to such funny valuation like Tesla. Or they will start pivoting into international assets?
When you hear about SpaceX being targeted to have IPO valuation of like 1.8T on like 20B annual revenue you see where it is going 🙂 Hard to not laugh, but again experts like George Nobel will still jump in,
This is a topic Mish should cover.
The whole world is falling. You’re not looking close enough
This has been the past and present of the Usonian stock market for the last three or four decades.
Well seems move fast and break things if finally catching up to musk. He should adhere to the proper planning prevents piss poor performance mantra.
He gave 180 million( if i recall right) to the trump campaign. Alienated his customer base while supporting the candidate who pledged to gut funding and support for the green industry teslas in.
Maybe hes coming out ahead in the gov contracts hes getting. But from what ive seen everyone in trumps orbit looses.
Remember trump does not like to be surrounded by people who are smarter than he is. Prob add or wealthier.
Smarter than he is ?? So 99% of the world’s population then.
Donald Trump has made remarks in 2026 indicating he prefers surrounding himself with “losers” rather than “very successful people,” claiming he hates listening to their success stories and prefers people who listen to his own (lies).
He later said smarter people don’t like HIM.
The real decline will be once Space X is public. That’ll be a new entity to absorb capital from Elon fanboys. I don’t see how Tesla retains its value without relentless purchasing from such people…and their attention will be split.
Sorry, Elon.
Trillion dollar pay day is further and further away.
One day.
Ok?
Tesla had the early advantage in FSD but fumbled.
Now the Chinese are on FSD & some are better than Tesla in China.
Only a matter of time before they’re better than Tesla everywhere.
100% Tariff walls will only help Tesla in the US.
By 2030 Chinese cars will come standard with FSD, no monthly charges.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see Xpeng robotaxis in Canada next year.
Remember: When China walks in the room, profits walk out.
Here’s Tesla YouTuber Brian in China testing Xpeng’s latest FSD.
Not in this video but he or someone else was able to drive 1.75 hrs in the rain in heavy city traffic without having to touch the steering wheel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VQkyXyYRo0&t=76s
A famous quote: “The market can stay irrational for longer than you can stay solvent.”
You are totally ignoring the potential size of the Martian car/truck market. Martian colonists are going to demand their own personal vehicles. Further, trucks are going to be needed to haul ice from the martian poles for water, oxygen and hydrogen. ICE-powered cars cannot work on mars. Tesla is not only one of the leading forces in the EV space but is the ONLY player with access to mars. If this is not a compelling synergy, I don’t know what is.
Just STOP with the Elon hate!
The irony will be if the tesla he launched into space willy nilly comes back around and crashes into a star link
Tesla will crash and burn. The question is when?
Noble Absolute Return ETF (NOPE): Launched in September 2022 as a hedge-fund-like long/short vehicle for retail investors. It underperformed sharply amid the 2023 AI/tech rally (which it was short in areas like Tesla and Nvidia). The fund lost ~59–68% before closing/liquidating after less than a year (while the S&P 500 rose substantially).
Results of Tesla short, would anyelse like a shot at this.
It seems to me like the whole stock market is in a bubble, but I’m kind of a perma-bear like Mish. This country has lost so much industry, and we put all our hopes on fancy new technology like self-driving cars and AI.
Believing in the doom loop will make you poorer; market has done nothing but rip higher over the last several decades. I suggest limiting your exposure to authors like MISH and buy the indexes.
Well people make mistakes, Why I remenber Mish circa 2019 +/- predicting full self driving trucks within a year!
There are self driving trucks on the road doing long haul. Not at the speed Mish imagined but they are out there now and will continue to increase in numbers.
Sorry Elon. You’re too late.
Self-driving trucks in China are moving past the pilot phase and entering a stage of large-scale commercialization, fueled by supportive policies and a complete ecosystem of tech firms, automakers, and logistics giants.
Where is there room for grift in all that. American business requires grift.
In the future American cars will come without steering wheels and a subscription to FSD. When your subscription fee is late the car will stop FSD and leave you in a fast moving vehicle without steering, fun. It will be the GM/Ford pay or else plan.
I remember those days too. Concluded Mish was hoping to impress people by being one of the first to forcast how great things would be. Everyone wants to hear good news, even if it just a guess. No one wants to hear bad news even, if they need to hear it. The real problem is that people vote for the best liars.
Tesla is already dead. The model Y is its only real product, and its sales are declining after a decade of no refreshes and actually stripping it of features to lower the price. As for the other businesses: cybercab and optimus, there are already other companies with functioning products that are vastly superior. I will absolutely give Musk credit for creating the EV market. That was a world-changing event for which he should be justifiably proud. But he couldn’t keep his eye on the prize and got way ahead of his capabilities. The decline of Tesla will be fun to watch, it will go slowly at first as a few big bulls turn bearish and try to get out quietly. The stock price will drop slowly but steadily, with the young steers watching each other closely and trying to believe the story. Then the herd will panic and trample the villagers.
You can have the same convo about Intel right now. Barely made anything on a GAAP basis, trading above dot.com high when they had north of $2 EPS, not pennies.
Last night was the biggest disaster in the history of Tesla.
https://xcancel.com/gnoble79/status/2047416199122973107
If the buyers of FSD are not refunded, to the tune of $30 to 60 billion, any chance that the FTC force Tesla to refund them? Is that why Elon is ingratiating himself again with Caligula?
Whatever Happened to that Solar Roof? Askin’ for a friend.
That’s too bad that that hasn’t “become a thing”. It would be great for generating electricity if every single rooftop (both residential and commercial) was sitting there generating electricity all day long. Where i am (in Houston TX), solar panels on roofs have a very bad “reputation”. People (especially a lot of realtors) badmouth them as bad investments and blame them for causing leaks in existing roofs when installed. I think that both of those issues could be overcome with the right product installed the right way…
I think he meant on the roof of the car. They could also put a windmill there.
And a rubber band on a bracket to pull the car without electricity!
My Bad. I thought he was talking about solar shingles…
Yep put panels on the ground. The problem being in crowded cities and even suburbs there is no room.
The fact that none of the Gigafactories are entirely powered by solar is revealing. The location of the gigafactory to make the solar roof tiles in Buffalo, NY is a testament to the lunacy of corporate welfare.
Let us not forget that they Trotted Biden out Brain-Dead. The puppet strings were brilliant.
And now the same people trotted out brain dead Nero. The Epstein Files are brilliant!
Even with a dead brain, he was still a vastly better President than Trump.
Even corrupt comedian Zalensky is better.
The Z out killed by an oder of magnitude, especially his own countrymen.
You’re comparing two thieving corrupt deceitful confabulating mindless octogenarians. A little like concluding that rapist A is much ‘better’ than rapist B.
My vote is againstthe one that actually rapes children. But I’m funny that way.
One?
There were more than 10 presidents before Washington. 1 person out of a 1000 may be able to name 1. That’s the way it should be. The DC leviathan needs to be gone.
Before washington?
The Child Raper full on passed out in a meeting yesterday. There’s a photo of all his goons standing around him, trying to pretend it isn’t happening. Apparently they’re afraid to wake him up.
If they weren’t all raging incomps, they could make use of this.
I think that Elon should run for a job that delivers numbers smeared with dog poo. Head Dog Poo Writer. Trump could use some help.
My conclusion–Musk fanboys are as thin-skinned as an onion
Correct, that’s how cultists react when their savior/prophet is challenged or criticized.
How dare you mix onions in the same company as Tesla Furries
Onions touch more girls
“top US fund manager”! After leaving to start his own hedge funds, including Tetan Partners and G Falcon, he later closed his fund in 2009 following poor performance.So much for his credentials, MIsh…
I guess the compulsive lying is what brought Elon and Trump together.
A job requirement to be Pres.
I have no rebuttal. Just one question. Which automaker buys Tesla after the decline and what do they pay? Asking for a friend named Elon.
None. Who would buy an auto company with really just one model making any sales, a model with declining sales, a model with little change over a decade? Tesla is not competitive anywhere in the world against Chinese brands, and has no proprietary technology that hasn’t already been better copied by competitors. Tesla will go to zero, and be compared to a long pantheon of failed American automakers.
The charging station infrastructure is it’s most valuable asset and always has been because you can’t replicate that easily.
Someone will buy that part of the company once it’s spun off.
Key Context (2025 Full-Year Data)
Top sales, fact not fiction
The proposed wave 1 of the ending diagonal is relatively weak, although e-wave rules do not require wave 1 to be the largest of the motive waves. The ending diagonal scenario may still be in play. If the correction from the 2021 highs ended at the 2024 lows, then wave 5 ending diagonal is starting. New highs possible, but not by much since wave 3 cannot be the smallest motive wave. The large implication is the general market will continue to advance.
Noble is probably right that Tesla stock is way, way, way overvalued. That’s not a new opinion. Remember the observation that Tesla’s market cap was higher than all the top car makers together?
His observations suffer a little in a couple ways.
1) What triggered him: Hardware 3. 280K FSDs upgraded for $4K each are a billion and change, not “billions”. And Tesla, like Waymo, is a Moore’s Law play, so… Anyway, when you buy a computer, you expect it to be obsolete in three years.
2) “Waymo – the actual leader in autonomous driving”. Ha, ha, ha. I love Waymo. I want them to succeed beyond their wildest dreams. But Google’s Gemini says FSD drove in the past couple months almost exactly how far Waymo has driven since day zero. The two companies don’t even compete. Tesla is starting to try to compete in Waymo’s market, but Waymo isn’t anywhere near competing in Tesla’s market.
Tesla does have some positive aspects. For instance, Tesla is an OK bet to be the last US car maker standing after the world EV market shakes out.
Too, if you’re 80 and need a car that can do the heavy lifting part of driving, in the States it’s Tesla or Tesla, isn’t it? YouTube has some Chinese drivers comparable to Tesla’s. But … Yeah. Don’t hold your breath. US politicians are always ready to stop the threat of cheap cars. 🙂
Anyway, Noble’s posting is doubtless talking his book, but he does shine a light on buying Tesla just after its stock craters.
Ooops. Tesla’s 1.3 billion miles in +March+ is slightly more than Waymo’s 130 million since day zero.
Testament to how far Tesla’s star has fallen is Felix insisting Tesla is better than Waymo. OY VEY!
An actual Elon fan boy… I thought this description was an overblown joke, but you guys actually exist. I learn so much on this blog.
No matter what, Enron Mush is an utterly worthless person.
You cannot remove the Genius from Musk DNA. The man is a genius and there is just no way around that simple fact!
1. Co-Founding and Selling Zip2
2. Founding X.com (later PayPal)
3. Founding SpaceX
4. Founding Tesla Motors
5. Launching Tesla Energy Products
6. Founding The Boring Company
7. Founding Neuralink
8. Developing the Hyperloop Concept
9. Open-Sourcing Tesla Patents
10. He acquired and transformed Twitter to “X”
Just to name a few of his accomplishments. He has enough to fill pages upon pages with, as he is an intellectual machine! Some may not like whom he works for or with at times, and they may have issues with his success, as envy can be a horrible emotion.
He did not found Telsa, period.
Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning founded Telsa in July 2003.
X is a ceasepool of bots and right wing propaganda.
Plenty of reports that Peter Theil drove Musk out of PayPal because he was an asshat and a moron.
Hyperloop is the equivalent of the Mono-rail from the The Simpsons.
I could go on, but I won’t waste my time with a sychophant like yourself.
Cheers!!!
At a dinner table, your “Cheers” would be met with a punch to the face.
Eat a bag of dicks.
Hey Woodsie, you finished them off last night. You were eating them when driving your co-founder Musk Tesla that you borrowed…
David with how old you seem to be, I’m not sure you want to find out what happens after you put your dentures in to fight someone.
I just took that trash out to the curb
Your MAGA family is a heck of a lot more violent than normal, polite Americans. Would you punch us with a fist, a rock…. an AK-47 butt end?
it’s cesspool but we all know what you mean. stinks like in hell in both cases
Wait, Stu claimed Musk founded Tesla? Man, I thought that guy did at least one lick of DD in his life. Thanks for telling me, never would have seen it!
Hi did and is legally a Co-Founder. Look it up!
He’s an actual, non-AI moron. Getting somewhat rare to see anymore. Look at the magnificent plumage!
September 2009 allows all five (Eberhard, Tarpenning, Wright, Musk and Straubel) to call themselves co-founders.
Your correct that Musk didn’t do it all, but was a massive piece, and a Co-Founder He Is Indeed!!
I just want an endlessly OPEN and HONEST Leader of one of our big Names here.
He’s not a genius. Geniuses have known since the 1950s that a manned flight to Mars is a nonstarter.
Not if you relax the requirement that they return to earth healthy and sane.
So, no women allowed?
They got cooties!
Was that ever requirement?p
Did you hear you fall off the earth if you sail too far? Or that man can’t fly? The earth is not the center of the universe?
– In 1961: President Kennedy issued a challenge to NASA to land a man on the Moon before the end of that decade.
– In 1969, NASA did so.
Everything new, must start with a dream. Mars is a possibility, just as much as the moon was, in it’s time…
And that is the reason why Tesla sells at the multiples it does. Those buying Tesla stock don’t look at Tesla’s finances; they just want to buy a piece of Elon’s brain.
No. It’s like crypto. It’s various parties of speculators trying to make money off of trading something that promises to go up in value because it’s the future, etc etc.
Or the dividends? LOL.
Ew.
Stupid is what stupid does.
Scott Adams said, “We are all watching different movies”.
It is stunning, yet fascinating, to watch in real time. The comments amaze me.
In the professional sales people business, Musk would be classified as a “Promoter”. Avoid these people when ever you can.
To many in Space, Musk was considered, literally, to be a life saver. I will take a wild guess, they would think differently about Musk being included…
And the only people that like him are creeps that he doesn’t want to be around.
So he is a private sort of guy, unlike Trump for example?
I believe his little Nazi salute onstage didn’t help him, you forgot to mention that.
I know a lot of Traders, movers & shakers like to ignore the character of the person in charge but when you do that you get the dangerous freaks of Trump, Musk, and much of the tech-bro crowd on stage January 20. Look at where that got us, the Dow was at 50,000 and that’s all that matters….
Musk is just another narccissist bullshitter who tries to sell you a fantasy at your expense. All hail the capitalism end game?
A heart felt gesture, is not even close to a nazi salute.
Keep lying to yourself.
I am telling myself the truth to what I witnessed. You do you, and I’m ok with that, and don’t change for anyone, what you believe you witnessed, is yours to believe.
A heart felt nazi salute is still a nazi salute. Musk is complicating your defense of him by ton of his other far right (nazi) actions…
Capitalism is incompatible with AGI/ASI. One or the other not both. Interesting times ahead.
Hope not. Capitalism is really most about human nature. If our future economy doesn’t need to factor in human nature you could be right.
Um, robots don’t have human nature, right?
Only the human nature, that the humans decide to instill into the robots.
Stoned people do stupid things.
Maybe Elon can sell TESLA in a Fire Sale to BYD . . .
Don’t give Elon any ideas. The COO at Tesla is a Chinese national anyway
Tesla (new name perhaps?) will be the very first flying car available to purchase in America. I am not saying anytime soon, but in the very near future they will be imo.
He is getting closer and closer, once he realized the EV is just not suited for America Geography. We will buy them and someday they may be all that’s available, as the GV will be gone forever, once battery storage technology is 100% peak.
Now however, the EV as we know it is dead, and has been as it keeps changing with the ever changing technologies. If Musk isn’t working on EV’s like he was, it’s because he knows they are going to change way to dramatically, and now is not that time.he has moved to other newer technologies that he will process and offer when the time is right, that will be much better technology (Ex. Battery storage) than what’s available right now.
EVs will eventually replace ICE vehicles. Improved range and availability of public charging stations with electric costs compatible with ICE vehicles costs of fuel per mile will kill ICE vehicles. This emerging technology is in it’s infancy and will eventually mature into the dominate state of the art method of transportation in the world. I envision a future where individual ownership of personal transportation is nearly eliminated by door to door, less expensive, more convenient, public transportation. I’d love to see EVs with a thousand mile range regardless of outside temperature or weather conditions with a 10 minute recharge stations as plentiful as gas stations today. Alas at 75yo I probably won’t make it to that future.
Correct – Drill baby drill is not the best long-term approach
It will be a lovely crash.
The blood and tears will be epic!
Yay! A great post with some Mish chart analysis…just like the old days.
In other news…something brewing in the residential real estate market:
Price chops galoreLots of additional inventory (both new and existing)Nothing moving in the completed sales side of the ledger(All the above based on actual market observations, not some bullshit government fake statistic)
In related news:
Growing Number of Homeowners Are Sacrificing Sub-5% Mortgage Rates To Break Free From ‘Lock-In’ Effect—and Reclaim Their Sanity
Almost no one, even the article only claims one third, are giving up a sub-5% mortgage rate. The claim for 1/3 is from a survey of real estate agents by Realtor.com.
I seldom agree with Ezra Klein but his book Abundance got the remedy for all things housing. Less regulation = more building. Yes, in our backyard.
The valuation has to be among the most obscene in history, if not the most obscene. Yet, there appears to be no sign of sanity entering the room any time soon. If TSLA doesn’t correct, savagely, in the next couple of years, then we really have entered a “new paradigm” for markets. The bears have been so wrong, for so long, about pretty much everything that the “new paradigm” idea is starting to look legit. But my mind is not there yet and it probably won’t ever be. Too many examples of human nature never being “different”.
Excellent article, Mr Mish! Tesla only has one hope, and it still may not be enough. It’s called government regulatory fiat. ( not fiat – the car company) Like carbon credits, killing off internal combustion engines in vehicles and ‘incentives’ to buy EVs And our deep state fascists will have no problem answering the call.
“So what exactly are you paying for? You’re paying for a STORY. You’re paying for PROMISES that keep getting pushed back, technology that keeps falling short”
Wait a second here… is he talking about TSLA or cryptos? LOL!
Or politics.
Or AI…
Mish, I have never gotten over the feeling that Musk’s financial numbers are more crooked than his delivery promises.
I feel like it has to be too tempting for him to rob Peter in one area of the balance sheet to pay Paul under the table. I know everyone has been looking but this is a pretty smart engineer. Financial math is not that hard for him.
Any thoughts on that?
I genuinely do not think he’s that smart. You don’t need to parade around with a Bejeweled chainsaw to be smart
You mean like this?
SpaceX bought a significant number of Cybertrucks in late 2025. Data indicates SpaceX acquired 1,279 Cybertrucks in Q4 2025 alone, representing over 18% of all U.S. registrations that quarter. Together with other Musk-owned companies (xAI, Neuralink), these entities bought nearly 20% of all Cybertrucks sold in that period
Didn’t Tesla invest $1 billion into Space-X several years back ???
What’s that gonna be worth when Space-X IPOs???
I’d hate to short TSLA going into a period of media hype about Musk & Space-X.
The market for EVs is going crazy in Europe and the Far East due to Trump’s war (and maybe growing very fast in other countries). Even if Tesla lose share to Chinese and other they may possibly improve their finances next quarter.
To me this is like many US companies….do well at first, like Amazon, Apple and Microsoft, then the quality drops like hell….(not that Tesla was reported to have high quality early on at least). Tried to use Amazon lately….shockingly bad.
And what about Optimus? Will Tesla ever deliver any or is their “do everything” design philosophy simply too daunting?
And a $30,000 office tag? I would be amazed if it was less than 3 times that.
Recent reports indicate that Amazon has experienced significant, high-severity site issues and AWS cloud outages linked to the company’s internal adoption of generative AI tools. While Amazon has publicly attributed these incidents to “user error” or “misconfigured access controls” rather than inherent AI flaws, internal documents and reports suggest that AI-driven coding agents played a direct role in creating these disruptions.
Electricity is generated on the margin from natural gas.
There’s not much LNG coming from the Persian Gulf, it will have to come from the Gulf of Mexico. People will catch on sometime that electricity has to be generated.
I live by LAX. There is a Waymo station maybe a mile from where I live. I see them all the time and they appear to be very safe and I am actually getting used to seeing them perform, almost becoming blase. Never seen an issue and I have driven around them enough to not be worried about them. In fact, I think they behave way more safely than a lot of human piloted vehicles (big surprise).
Hard to see if they are making money – many drive with no passengers so they must be going back to their start point after dropping off passengers. OTOH I do see them disgorge young kids being dropped off at the elementary school across the street, so there is a market. Is it profitable? Who knows, but they are moving people around.
Haven’t seen an unmanned Tesla anywhere in greater LA OTOH.
Awaiting MPO’s take on this – whether to buy puts.
I’ve thought about buying puts but as Mish points out, the market will stay irrational a lot longer than you can stay solvent. There are far more easier targets to short than Tesla.
Part of the problem with Tesla is that it’s part of the MAG 7 so it will always get inflows until it crashes and burns. The stock is volatile so if I were going to do any options trades on it, I would do a straddle (buy calls and puts) 45 to 90 days and hope it pans out.
I’d rather short QQQ, SPY or XLF at the moment.
thanks.