(Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Wall Street says Tesla really isn’t about cars anyway

It’s more about the hazy and tough-to-quantify potential for Musk’s business.

1/2/25 5:40PM

So Tesla’s fourth-quarter auto deliveries whiffed versus expectations and year-over-year annual sales were down for the first time since the company went public.

Not great. But analysts have been saying for a while that the bull case for Tesla simply can’t be premised on growth in the EV auto market.

No, the storyline now is all about the hazy and tough-to-quantify potential for businesses like Tesla’s full self-driving software and Cybercab under a Trump administration. Trump seems fairly receptive to ideas from Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who, after all, dipped into his spare-change jar and spent about $250 million to make Trump 2.0 a reality.

“We reiterate our belief that traction on [full self-driving] and Cybercab will be critical drivers to TSLA shares in 2025,” wrote Stephen Gengaro, an analyst covering Tesla for brokerage firm Stifel.

Analysts at Baird wrote that they “believe growth in the Energy business, launching (and scaling) a robotaxi business, and expanding the capabilities/use of Optimus are additional milestones to watch for,” The Wall Street Journal reported.

Generating excitement about the future among retail shareholders is a speciality of Musk, and arguably it’s that skill — and his alchemical ability to transform it into a financial advantage in the form of dirt-cheap capital from a devoutly loyal shareholder base — that has made him the world’s wealthiest man.

On the other hand, at a certain point excitement has to turn into tangible results. And the never-ending delays and lack of details surrounding the Cybercab, for instance, or the problems with Tesla’s self-driving software — analysts from Truist on Thursday published a note that bluntly said they couldn’t recommend using full self-driving as it’s “not ready for prime time yet” — could be a concern, especially if the company can’t reverse Tesla’s stalled-out auto sales.

On that front, it’s pretty clear that Musk’s personal hobby of meddling in politics — his latest political project, for some reason, is doubling down on support for Germany’s extreme right-wing party, AFD — is perhaps unsurprisingly a turnoff to would-be buyers of electric vehicles.

Matt Phillips3/13/26

Oil settles Friday at highest level since start of war

US oil prices moved higher in afternoon trading Friday, sapping strength from the stock market as they posted their highest close since the start of the Iran war.

After another day where the Strait of Hormuz was essentially closed to global tanker traffic, US futures for West Texas Intermediate settled up 3.1% at $98.71 a barrel for an 8.6% weekly gain, per Dow Jones data.

American officials have discussed using the US Navy to escort tankers through the narrow waterway between Iran and Oman, but have said plans for such convoys are not ready yet. However, it is unclear if military convoys would bring an end to the war-related dislocations in the oil market.

“It could help,” Tom Liles, senior vice president of upstream research at energy consulting firm Rystad, told Sherwood News in a recent interview. “It could also go in a lot of different directions if a Navy ship is hit or if a tanker is hit.”

Oil Posts Weekly Gains As Middle East Conflict Drags On

Tasha Matsumoto

3/13/26

Stocks post third straight week of losses as Brent crude surges above $100

Stocks wiped out early gains to close lower amid the ongoing war in Iran.

Matt Phillips3/13/26

Memory stocks rebound off last weeks losses

Memory stocks Micron, Sandisk, Western Digital, and Seagate Technology Holdings rose again Friday, putting these crucial providers of chips for AI inference work on track for big weekly gains after last week’s steep losses following the outbreak of war with Iran.

There’s no obvious trigger for the move higher for these shares this week, other than a bit of a recovery in the AI trade more broadly — AI beneficiaries like IT cable and connections maker Amphenol and custom chip and networking company Marvell Technology clawed back some gains this week — perhaps due Oracle’s earnings earlier, and some mean reversion to boot.

Micron is due to report earnings after the close of trading on Wednesday, with the company catching a couple price target hikes this week, including one from Wedbush on Friday.

Sandisk is something of a different story, as its enormous gains over the last 12 months — roughly 1,200% — have made it a momentum play beloved by the retail crowd.

It was up about 20% this week at around 11 a.m. ET. And its nearly 170% gain this year keeps the stock on top of the S&P 500, in terms of price performance.

Luke Kawa

3/13/26

The S&P 500’s internals are awful... while it’s still less than 5% from its record closing high

The breadth of negative momentum within the index’s constituents is even worse than at the tariff-induced market bottom in April 2025.