In short: Noble is short: "sales are imploding" — US sales "in the months of July were down 26%," Europe and China down, and Q3 laps last year's pre-buying ahead of the credit removal, so "the third quarter is going to be a disaster." Capex goes from ~$6–8B to "30 billion this year" for AI, so Tesla is "going seriously cash flow negative" while it "never earn[s] their cost of capital." Robotaxi (Gordon Johnson's Austin data, rides per million people extrapolated to 350M): "800 million not 800 billion." SOTP "$30, $40, $50 a share… I'll give you 60" vs ~$360; the stock is "unchanged over 5 years." "Outstanding shorts," both, jammed into the S&P by passive buying.
Noble is also short Tesla. The car business is shrinking: US sales fell about 26% in July, Europe and China are down, and this quarter is compared with last year's rush to buy before the EV tax credit ended. At the same time Tesla plans to raise capital spending from about $6–8 billion to around $30 billion, mostly on AI, so it will burn cash.
Most of Tesla's value rests on robotaxis. Using the ride numbers from the Austin trial, scaled to the whole US population, Noble values that business at about $800 million, not the hundreds of billions the stock implies. He puts Tesla at $30–60 a share, against roughly $360, and points out the stock has gone nowhere in five years despite the hype.
44:48So, that's that Tesla the update sales are imploding. I want to remind you that — and how do you know that? — Oh, that's public data. Gordon J came out with it. it came out. I think US sales in the months of July were down 26%. Europe's down, China's down. What's really interesting is the third quarter last year benefited immensely from pre- buying the last minute buying ahead of the removal of credits, right? So, the third quarter is going to be a disaster this quarter.
In short: Passing mention — named with Amazon as the heavyweights inside the consumer-discretionary sector he likes.
25:00Now, discretionary is its own weird animal in that we'll see how things shake out in the coming years, is this company discretionary or is it tech, but generally you get Amazon and Tesla inside consumer discretionary. Well, I mean, what do you think, Jeremy? I kind of think Amazon's, well, it's Amazon Web Services plus the retail business, but the retail business is almost consumer staples.
In short: Named only as a peer — its robotaxi is one of the ride options an agent would weigh against Uber.
31:06With Uber, this is far less exposed because while the agent can compare Uber against Lyft, Whimo, Tesla, it can compare all of those together. Ultimately, it's going to go with the best combination of reliability, all your preferences, safety, travel time, all of that, plus price. And Uber already has massive demand density which will make it in most cases the best choice. We have Dualingo.
In short: Preferred to SpaceX on a relative basis only: "I've both owned Tesla at certain points and I've been short Tesla, and so I'm a bigger fan of that company on a relative basis because the valuation is less. I think they have a good play on robotics." But "cash flow, some of those other things you still have to be concerned about."
Tesla comes up only as a comparison with SpaceX. Niles has owned Tesla and shorted it at different times. Between the two Musk companies he prefers Tesla "on a relative basis" because its valuation is lower and it has a real robotics angle — but he still flags cash flow as a concern, so this is a relative preference, not a recommendation.
55:35From an investment point of view, it's very hard for me to say, "Hey, I want to be in SpaceX." And so, I know that's not necessarily a strong answer in either direction, but moving to Tesla, which is obviously related to SpaceX. I've both owned Tesla at certain points and I've been short Tesla, and so I'm a bigger fan of that company on a relative basis because the valuation is less.
In short: The partners: "we've been on and off only short or nothing Tesla for [the] better part of five or six years and fundamentally many could argue that we've been right" — Eisman: "there's no question fundamentally you've been right," earnings "down… and the stock has gone up." The lesson: "don't short a cult… sometimes we don't learn our lesson… you can't help yourself."
The partners have bet against Tesla on and off for five or six years. Tesla's earnings have fallen as they predicted, yet the stock went up. Their lesson: a stock with devoted fans (a "cult") can ignore bad numbers for years, so being right about the business doesn't make a short bet pay. They still can't resist it, but now bet much less money.
32:34one they matter you're out you're they take you out — and so shorting [clears throat] is and we pointed out shorting is a very tough game right especially when we've been on and off only short or nothing Tesla for part better part of five or six years and fundamentally many could argue that we've been right right the earnings have been — oh there's no question fundamentally you've been right the have gone in one direction — down — and the stock has gone up — yes so that's a tough short
In short: The historical analog: SpaceX roughly quintupled into its rumored Nasdaq inclusion, "very similar to the dynamics of when Tesla was included in the S&P in 2020."
11:40this comes to the conclusion that this is going much higher. You as a private investor in SpaceX experienced this in the runup to the announcement of the inclusion in the NASDAQ as that became rumored. SpaceX roughly quintupled in price very similar to the dynamics of when Tesla was included in the S&P in 2020.
In short: Robotaxi event: "not much new," stock −6%; "Elon Musk has a history of over-promising and under-delivering. He seems to have done so again." 2026 consensus EPS $1.66 → "the 2026 PE is 220 times" vs GM 6.5×, so "the future of this company depends on the success of the robotaxi." EPS peaked at $4.07 in 2022; 2026 is 59% lower, yet the stock "has done nothing for 5 years" — "how difficult it can be to short a cult stock." "I have no skin in this game. Just count me a skeptic."
A price-to-earnings ratio (P/E) is how many dollars investors pay for each dollar of yearly profit. Tesla trades at about 220 times its expected 2026 profit; General Motors trades at 6.5 times. Both sell cars, so Eisman's reasoning is that the gap can only be explained by one belief: that Tesla's self-driving taxi business will one day dominate the world.
That makes the robotaxi everything — and Tesla's latest robotaxi event showed little new, with the stock down 6%. Eisman's read is that Musk has again promised more than he delivered.
He adds a lesson about short selling (betting a stock falls). Tesla's profit per share peaked at $4.07 in 2022 and is expected to be 59% lower in 2026, so the shorts were right about the business — but the stock has gone nowhere for five years rather than falling. When a company has a devoted following, being right on the numbers is not enough to profit. He holds no position; he is simply a skeptic.
9:12He seems to have done so again. The future of this company depends on the success of the robotaxi. How do I know this? Well, the consensus estimate for Tesla for 2026 is $1.66. So, the 2026 PE is 220 times. Auto stocks, by contrast, have very low multiples. GM's 2026 PE is 6.5 times. The only explanation for Tesla's crazy multiple is that some investors believe that Tesla's robotaxi business will conquer the world.
In short: On the Cybertruck launch event: creators riding in steering-wheel-less vehicles doing "smaller trips in a little area in Texas today, but this shows the technology that it's working on the roads." He rates the boringness as the achievement — "it was doing what we do every day, and that is drive a car like a normal person, but it was a robot… that's really what Tesla needs to be doing here… not have incidents, have it be boring, and gradually build out an audience." The limitation is fleet economics and scale, and it's stated as a number: "Tesla is trying to test this and they have 40 on the road," expanding city by city, while an owned fleet is structurally caught between under-serving peak demand and holding idle capacity. No buy or sell view — a competitive-position assessment inside the Uber argument.
Carlson's read on the Cybertruck robotaxi launch splits the technology from the business. On the technology he is genuinely positive, and for an unusual reason: the footage was boring. Cars with no steering wheel drove people around Texas the way an ordinary driver would, without incident. That is exactly what a company trying to earn public trust in autonomy needs — "not have incidents, have it be boring, and gradually build out an audience."
On the business, the constraint is scale and economics. Tesla has 40 vehicles on the road, expanding city by city. And because Tesla would own its fleet, it inherits the problem laid out in the Uber segment: ride demand spikes for a couple of hours a day, so an owned fleet must either be too small for rush hour or too large for everything else. That is a structural cost disadvantage against a network that borrows its peak capacity from drivers' own cars.
He takes no view on the stock — this is an assessment of competitive position, offered as the counterweight to investors concluding the launch settles the robotaxi question.
15:03And then there's lots of video footage of it just driving around. It's doing smaller trips in a little area in Texas today, but this shows the technology that it's working on the roads. Now, there's lots of different reactions to this. The media itself and reporters weren't too impressed. But then as it just kept going, it was boring.
In short: The hosts split, and the row is Negative on the weight of Nathan's argument plus Adami's chart. Nathan is blunt on both product legs: "this story still sucks. The EV business sucks. Optimus is just dumb because humanoid robots are just not going to be a thing. Robotics… they're not going to look like humans. They're going to be in factories… in health tech" — so on Musk's timeline for Optimus being material, "you better take the over." On the cyber-cab/robotaxi event itself: the stock filled the gap from ~370 to 300 into it and is "down today 6%" — the familiar "muscle memory that you can rally into one of his events… and then it's kind of the sell the news after," which he says "seems like that was so 3 years ago." Adami declines to take a side — "I find myself sort of a healthy ambivalence… it's hard to bet against the guy" — but supplies the tape: from the all-time high near $500 in December, "on what's been a pretty good tape, it has not traded well… a series of lower highs and lower lows."
The two hosts genuinely disagree here, and it is worth reading the row as a split rather than a consensus short.
Dan Nathan's case is about the products, not the price. The car business is not growing the way it needs to; the robotaxi ("cyber cab") launch was an invite-only two-seater event rather than a business; and he thinks the humanoid robot programme (Optimus) is aimed at the wrong shape of problem — that real robotics will be machines built for factories and healthcare rather than machines built to look like people. His "take the over" line means: whatever date Musk gives for Optimus mattering to revenue, assume it is later.
The transferable observation is the behavioural one. Tesla shares have a long history of rallying into a Musk product event and falling after it — the pattern traders call "buy the rumour, sell the news." Nathan's point is that the pattern is now running on muscle memory rather than on new information, and it fired again here: the stock closed the gap into the event and fell 6% on the day of it.
Guy Adami declines the call — "healthy ambivalence," and "it's hard to bet against the guy" — but supplies the chart that makes the row Negative rather than Neutral: from the December high near $500 the stock has made a series of lower highs and lower lows, and it has done that during a rising market. A stock failing to participate in a good tape is its own piece of evidence.
24:59story still sucks. The EV business sucks. Optimus is just dumb because humanoid robots are just not going to be a thing. Robotics is going to be They're not going to look like humans. They're going to be in factories. They're going to be in health tech. They're going to be stuff like that.
In short: Its robotaxi launch showed "some people get in a car"; certification and infrastructure "will take years and years," so he is "not overly concerned" for Uber.
In short: The industry's valuation outlier: a $1.4 trillion market value driven by robots, autonomy and robo-taxis rather than cars — it "will earn little more than BMW this year and has 30 times its market value." Used to show how cheaply the car business itself is priced.
Tesla is used as a contrast. It's worth about $1.4 trillion — 30 times BMW — yet will earn only a little more than BMW this year, because investors are paying for robots, self-driving and robo-taxis rather than car sales. The point: ordinary car-making is priced very cheaply, and BMW is priced cheaply even among car makers.
In short: The Cyber Cab event failed, and the shareholder says so first. The tape: "it failed to impress. Stock's down 6½%… reflecting that, the safety regulator NHTSA, they're evaluating the rollout as well." Simpson owns it and does not defend the event: "I think there was a lot of hype and it turned out to be a big fizzle yesterday… with respect to the Cyber Cab event, absolutely." Why it matters more than a bad presentation: "cyber cabs are a really big deal, because you're betting on robotics, you're betting on autonomous driving, you're betting on Cyber Cab… all this does is delay the reality of that coming to fruition, if it ever does. Remember, the technology that they use is different than what we see with Waymo. So at some point you're going to want to see these things out there with paying customers." Lebenthal later uses the week's action as the cautionary case against believing in a devoted shareholder base: "that evangelical support at times withers — and look at Tesla over the last week or so."
Tesla held an event for its Cyber Cab — a purpose-built self-driving taxi — and the stock fell 6.5%. The safety regulator is separately reviewing the rollout.
Simpson owns it and does not defend the event, which makes his explanation more useful than a defence would be. A large part of what Tesla is valued on is not cars: it is robotics, autonomy and a future robotaxi fleet. Those are promises with no revenue attached yet, so the only evidence available is demonstrations. A disappointing demonstration therefore does real damage — "all this does is delay the reality of that coming to fruition, if it ever does."
His two specifics are worth holding on to. Tesla's approach to self-driving relies on cameras and software rather than the additional sensors Waymo uses, so the two are not interchangeable and progress in one does not validate the other. And the test that actually settles it is commercial, not technical: vehicles operating with paying customers.
In short: "So far, Tesla has proven, I think, [not] anything worth anything" on robotaxis — too many edge cases (phantom braking, non-ideal conditions); "Teslas are not being used in the same way Waymo's are."
In short: The negative data point inside her own "Neural 9": "Tesla, which is the 503rd ranked contributor to S&P returns this year. So almost the best to the worst in an array of nine stocks."
Tesla is the negative data point inside her own nine-stock AI group. Ranked by contribution to the S&P 500's return this year — price move times company size — Tesla comes in 503rd out of 504, essentially last.
She is not arguing a bear case on the business; she is using the number to kill the idea that "the Mag 7" moves as one block. Within a group of nine supposedly identical AI winners you have the third-best contributor (Micron) and almost the very worst (Tesla). That spread — dispersion — is the thing she expects to widen from here, and it is why she prefers screening on company characteristics over buying a theme wholesale.
30:26you know, you range from Micron, which is the third best contributor to overall S&P returns this year. I'm not sure what one and two are, but it's not any of the Neural 9. But you've got then Tesla, which is the 503rd ranked contributor to S&P returns this year. So almost the best to the worst in an array of nine stocks.
In short: The one fresh trade disclosed on the show. Bryn Talkington: "I added to my position, which I haven't added in quite a while. I added about three at 360." Her case is ground-level rather than model-driven: "the robo taxis are everywhere in Dallas, everywhere in Austin. The cyber cabs, which are still being driven by the engineer, are also everywhere — they're on every other street in Dallas. I haven't touched my steering wheel in weeks. FSD is getting better and better." Next legs: Optimus "towards the end of next year, as the Fremont factory is being built out." Conclusion: "I like the stock above 360 since its earnings decline… those multiple catalysts will drive the stock price higher over the next 12 months." She is explicit that Thursday's event itself is "more ceremonial." Oliver Renick supplies the flow: shares ripping into the cyber cab launch, options volume 60% above the 30-day average, about $1B of premium, roughly 70% of it in calls, call buyers outnumbering put buyers almost two to one, and the biggest open interest at the 400 strike, still 10% above the price. One trader bought 700 contracts each of the 300 puts and 600 calls — a $5m+ trade betting on a return to the lows or a huge rally by January 2028. The stock is down ~20% on the year but has almost fully recovered its post-earnings gap.
Bryn Talkington bought more Tesla at around $360 — her first addition in a long time — ahead of Thursday's "cyber cab" event, which she is careful to say is mostly ceremonial. Her reason is not the event: it is what she sees out of her own windscreen in Texas. Robotaxis are "everywhere" in Dallas and Austin, the cyber cabs are on the road (still with a safety engineer aboard), and she says she has not touched her steering wheel in weeks because the self-driving software keeps improving. Next year adds the humanoid robot, Optimus, as the Fremont factory is built out.
Alongside her, CNBC's Oliver Renick describes what options traders were doing that morning. An option is a contract to buy (a "call") or sell (a "put") the stock later at a fixed price; buying calls is a leveraged bet the price rises. Trading volume ran 60% above normal, about a billion dollars changed hands, and roughly 70% of it went into calls, with call buyers outnumbering put buyers nearly two to one. The largest cluster of open bets sits at $400 — about 10% above where the stock trades. One trader spent over $5 million on a barbell: puts at $300 and calls at $600 expiring in January 2028, a bet that the stock either collapses back to its lows or rips higher, but does not sit still.
In short: 2021-analogy reference: the SPACs and GameStops cratered in Q1 2021, but "stocks like Tesla, software eventually kind of hit their peak in late 21" — the real businesses held up until inflation and rates did the damage in 2022.
22:01There's a lot of ironic similarities to just incredibly leveraged hedge funds driving up a few of these stocks. I think even in 2021 stocks like Tesla, software eventually kind of hit their peak in late 21. So they recovered — the quote-unquote real businesses did okay even if the SPACs and the GameStops and whatever may have cratered around Q1 of 21 as you mentioned.
In short: Peak-date evidence, not a stance: "TSLA last December" — the middle marker in the peak-date scatter between the year-plus-old Meta/MSFT highs and the May highs in NVDA and GOOG.
In short: Raised by the host as the counter-example — years of losses, stock up anyway — to argue profitability may not matter for the AI labs. Eisman half-concedes and redirects: "eventually profitability matters, but near-term these stocks don't care, which is why I'm talking about revenue growth slowing is the more important metric."
Tesla appears only as the host's counter-argument: it lost money for years and the share price rose anyway, so perhaps profits do not matter for the AI labs either.
Eisman half-agrees, and the concession is what makes his chosen metric coherent. "Eventually profitability matters, but near-term these stocks don't care — which is why I'm talking about revenue growth slowing is the more important metric." In other words: do not wait for losses to become intolerable, because the market has shown it will tolerate them for a long time. Watch instead for the moment growth decelerates, because that is what a market willing to ignore losses is actually paying for.
9:13That's not the right direction. — Can we make the argument that profitability doesn't matter very much for these companies that we're talking about? Take a look at Tesla for example. For most of its history, it wasn't profitable. Stock still went up because the investors believed that there was a bigger picture beyond just short-term profitability.
In short: Deliberately left unanswered — his worked example of why labels do your thinking for you: "what is Tesla? Is it an auto manufacturer or is it a battery company or is it what? …how you frame it, how you describe it really greatly influences how you price it." Asked for his own answer, he declines: "I just pose the questions. I don't answer them."
Tesla is used as a thinking exercise rather than an investment. Mayer's point, borrowed from general semantics, is that the word you attach to a business quietly decides what you'll pay for it: "what is Tesla? Is it an auto manufacturer or is it a battery company or is it what? …how you frame it, how you describe it really greatly influences how you price it."
Call it a carmaker and you reach for carmaker multiples; call it a technology or energy platform and you reach for something far higher. The label does the valuation work before any analysis happens — which is the trap. The same applies to flattering labels like "compounder" or "value stock."
He is explicit that he isn't answering the question: "I just pose the questions. I don't answer them." So this is a neutral, methodological mention, not a stance on the stock.
47:55— Yeah. One thing is you certainly — there's lots of ways. So one other way I would say is you don't get too attached to labels. What other people say things are. — Compounder. — That's a good one. Compounder or value stock or whatever. I can think of even more conceptually what people would argue about — what is Tesla? Is it an auto manufacturer or is it a battery company or is it what? What people say, and how you frame it, how
In short: Named as the loser on the other side of the PHEV trade — a demand datapoint used against the pure-BEV thesis. "It's also worth noting that PHEVs are taking market share from Tesla. As The Financial Times reported last week, 21% TSLA owners are trading in their 'Musk-mobiles' for hybrids." The framing is deliberate: the entire palladium bear case is that BEVs replace ICE vehicles and "'pure' BEVs do not" use palladium, so Tesla owners defecting to hybrids — vehicles that carry a full catalytic converter and "often consume more" palladium than a conventional ICE — inverts the argument at its own source. No target, no valuation and no recommendation is given on the stock; the reference is to share loss in the segment Tesla defines, which is negative for the pure-BEV case Haymaker is betting against.
Tesla appears here for one line, but it is a load-bearing one. Hay cites a Financial Times report that 21% of Tesla owners trading in their cars are switching to hybrids.
The reason that matters is that Tesla is the pure battery-electric car company — the embodiment of the assumption underlying the whole bear case on palladium. That case runs: electric cars replace petrol cars, electric cars have no exhaust, no exhaust means no catalytic converter, no converter means no palladium. If a fifth of the people who already bought into pure electric are now moving to a car that has a petrol engine and therefore a converter, the assumption is failing at exactly the point where it should be strongest.
It is worth being precise about what is and is not being said. Hay gives no price, no valuation and no recommendation on Tesla shares. He is making a demand observation about the segment Tesla defines, and it is a negative one for the pure-electric story: the customers are drifting toward the drivetrain that consumes the metal he is buying.
In short: Absent by name — "Apple and Tesla were entirely absent from the top-five holdings" of the 20 funds, and Tesla appears nowhere in the top-buys or curveball sections either. The only mega-cap with no presence anywhere in the quarter's filings, at a time when the AI trade is broadening in every other direction.
Tesla is the electric-vehicle maker whose valuation increasingly rests on autonomy, robotaxis and robotics rather than on selling cars.
Like Apple, it was entirely absent from every fund's top-five holdings — and, unlike Apple, it appears nowhere else in the article either: not among top buys, not in the curveball section, not in any fund's notable moves.
In a quarter where money spread outward into memory, storage, connectivity, power, materials, rail and even offices in search of AI exposure, a total absence from a group of twenty AI-hungry funds is a conspicuous piece of negative space.
In short: Named among the "at least seven 100-baggers" David Gardner picked (Amazon, Nvidia, Tesla, Intuitive Surgical, Netflix, and others). A citation in support of long holding periods; no view expressed on the company.
In short: The larger index-inclusion case, cited in passing. "Tesla was a much more impactful — and controversial — example of messy index inclusion," with readers pointed to a short video overview of "that fiasco." Used to scale the SMCI anecdote up to something that matters at the index level — a single addition large enough that the mechanics of when and at what price the S&P admitted it were consequential for every index holder. No view is taken on Tesla's shares, no video title is given, and no numbers are attached.
In short: Dismissed on its AV approach. He grants Tesla is theoretically the only player whose fleet could ever cover a 6× Friday demand spike — "the only one that could possibly theoretically do this is if Tesla gets approved everywhere" — but immediately discounts it: "so far Tesla's not using lidar. We only see it in small little areas, and the whole dream of it seems somewhat fanciful. So far. We only see Waymo as the real threat."
Tesla appears as the one company that could in theory beat the peak-demand problem, because a huge consumer fleet of self-driving Teslas could in principle be summoned during a rush and parked the rest of the day — the same trick human drivers perform. Carlson raises the possibility and then dismisses it: it requires regulatory approval essentially everywhere, Tesla still isn't using lidar, the deployments are confined to small areas, and "the whole dream of it seems somewhat fanciful. So far."
His conclusion is that Waymo, not Tesla, is the only real AV threat today. This is a judgement on Tesla's robotaxi approach specifically, not a full valuation view on the stock.
In short: Personal, not an investment call: asked what he pays for gas, "I'm a Tesla owner and so it's all EV for me. So, I pay about 15 bucks a month if that… I would encourage people to explore the beauty of having a car that not only can drive on its own but also is very very cheap for energy costs." ~280 miles of range; charging "never really a problem" in the US.
This is a consumer anecdote, not an investment view, and is recorded as such. Asked what he pays for petrol, Newton answered that he drives a Tesla: "I pay about 15 bucks a month if that."
He went on to recommend the experience rather than the stock — "I would encourage people to explore the beauty of having a car that not only can drive on its own but also is very very cheap for energy costs" — and addressed the host's range and charging concerns with about 280 miles per charge and "thousands and thousands of charging stations" in the US. No technical or fundamental call on the shares was made.
20:10What are you paying where you are for a gallon of gas, regular gas? — I'm a Tesla owner and so it's all EV for me. So, I pay about 15 bucks a month if that. I don't pay hardly anything and so I would encourage people to explore the beauty of having a car that not only can drive on its own but also is very very cheap for energy costs.
In short: Named only in the founder-CEO pattern: "Tesla with Elon Musk." Structural reference; no view.
In short: Raised by the host (Tesla's proposed 100M-sq-ft Texas data center under the state's construction moratorium). Oakley doesn't rate the stock — he declines the whole data-center theme: "Not for us because we don't know where it's headed," and flags water, not power, as West/South Texas's binding constraint.
23:20Currently, the state has a memorandum on Oh, sorry, not a memorandum, a moratorium on data center construction. They're going to examine a bunch of different issues, including water. But, Tesla wants to build the world's largest data center there. The Gigafactory is supposed to be massive, 100 million square feet of space. I was looking at a map here.
In short: Le Shrub's blow-off-sociology call, not a fundamental view: the Musk–Jensen "bromance" plus Tesla's latest results going "exclusive with NVIDIA for GPUs" is "setting up for… the biggest circular deal of all times" — "I reckon we're going to see that in the next few months," and "it's not going to be $250 billion, it has to be like a trillion." Paulo's companion marker for the cycle top is the headline "Elon Musk brings SpaceX, XAI, Twitter all back public… the world's first trillionaire" — a Masayoshi-Son-1999 rhyme.
Tesla appears here not as a car company but as the other half of a predicted deal. Le Shrub expects Elon Musk and NVIDIA's Jensen Huang to announce an enormous GPU agreement "in the next few months" — Tesla has already said it will buy chips exclusively from NVIDIA — and he expects the number to be around a trillion dollars rather than the couple-hundred-billion these announcements usually carry.
He calls it "the biggest circular deal of all time." A circular deal is one where the money largely goes round in a loop: the supplier funds, invests in, or takes stock from the customer who is buying its product, so the reported revenue is partly the supplier's own capital coming back. That flatters both companies' numbers without new outside money arriving. Neither speaker is making a valuation case on Tesla — the stance is neutral because the point is sociological: giant circular announcements and "world's first trillionaire" headlines are what they use as markers of a market top, not reasons to own the shares.
In short: Two knocks in one call: "Tesla sales in Spain plunged 80% in July to just 131 vehicles, so that was very surprising"; and on the index composition, "I would say that AVGO is a much better company to have there than Tesla, but it is what it is." Also named among the robotaxi bears' weapons against Uber, a threat he thinks is years away.
Full passage: premium transcript (PDF).
In short: The trigger for the whole incorporation shift: a Delaware judge's 2024 decision denying Musk's $56B pay package "upset the Tesla CEO and helped spur a backlash," and Musk moved Tesla's legal incorporation to Texas, "whose rules are considered friendlier to corporations than Delaware's." Tesla is also on the list of companies that relocated their headquarters to the state.
Almost every big US company is legally "incorporated" in Delaware — meaning Delaware's courts and corporate law govern fights between the company, its board and its shareholders, no matter where the offices are. Delaware's century of business case law made that seem unassailable. Then in 2024 a Delaware judge threw out Elon Musk's $56 billion Tesla pay package, Musk moved Tesla's legal home to Texas, and the dam broke.
Tesla appears here as the trigger, not as a stock call. Its move gave Texas its proof point and set off the state-versus-state competition the article describes — Texas courting incorporations with rules "considered friendlier to corporations," and Nevada and Delaware then loosening their own protections to keep up. For an investor the read-through runs the other way from the company: a Texas-incorporated holding is one where minority shareholders have fewer tools (proposals, derivative suits) if management goes wrong.
In short: Named as SpaceX's partner in the Terrafab Texas manufacturing facility for AI semiconductors — a $16.8B joint investment for the initial phase, with the release stating that "the combined SpaceX and Tesla demand for chips is expected to be in excess of 1 terawatt of compute, which is significantly larger than the current global supply." No committee stance on Tesla itself.
In short: The headline special-situation rumour: the Wall Street Journal reported Tesla is weighing a separation of its Chinese business ahead of a potential merger with SpaceX. Musk dismissed it, "but Musk has dismissed claims like this in the past — there could be some truth to this, obviously, with SpaceX down 50% from the IPO price." Tesla is also in the cross-sectional chart of names dragging the cap-weighted S&P lower since June.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Tesla is considering spinning off its Chinese operations — a step that would clear regulatory obstacles to merging with SpaceX. Musk denied it, but he has denied similar reports before, and there is a logic to it: SpaceX shares have fallen 50% since its IPO, which makes a combination with Tesla stock more feasible. Singh flags it as a live special situation to watch rather than a position. Separately, Tesla appears on the chart of large companies dragging the S&P 500 lower since June.
Full passage: premium transcript (PDF).
In short: Named with MicroStrategy as an early institutional bitcoin adopter in the Metcalfe's-Law adoption progression — a network-growth datapoint in the bitcoin demand argument, with no view expressed on the equity.
Full passage: premium transcript (PDF).
In short: A one-line market observation while pulling up SpaceX's quote: "Tesla's getting clobbered today."
25:26I don't, but I would think so. — Okay, — Tesla's getting clobbered today, but that — Yeah, 116 as of the time we're recording here right now. — So, all those people that bought it in the with all the fervor of that post IPO and they're seriously underwater. That's a lot of money. — Yeah, — huge volume on that one.
In short: Evidence, not a position: −14% last week on accelerating capex and a profit miss (deck pages 38-39 cover the capex commentary and its negative free cash flow). "Elon spent some time on the call thanking Micron for selling him memory chips at a decent price and the market didn't really like that — he knows he's burning cash now, so he has to play nice."
Not a position — evidence. Tesla fell 14% last week after missing on profit and signalling much heavier capital spending, the same punishment being handed to every company that says it will spend more on AI. The telling moment: Musk stopped his own earnings call to thank Micron for selling him memory chips at a decent price. Singh's reading: "he knows he's burning cash now, so he has to play nice" — a striking illustration of how the power has shifted from the companies spending on AI to the companies supplying the parts.
Full passage: premium transcript (PDF).
In short: The main story: demand recovered, the economics didn't. Q2 revenue +26% Y/Y to $28.2B ($1.7B beat) on a record 480K deliveries (+25%, ~74K above the company-compiled consensus) with TTM revenue past $100B and the biggest order backlog since 2023 — yet shares fell nearly 14%, the worst post-earnings decline since 2013. Gross margin 17% (−4pp Q/Q), operating margin 1%, operating profit −57% to $398M (about a quarter of consensus), non-GAAP EPS $0.33 (a $0.21 miss). Free cash flow swung to −$1.1B (from +$0.1B) as CapEx jumped 142% to $5.8B; operating cash flow still grew 85% to $4.7B. The newsletter's prior-quarter flags both landed: Q1's margin beat had leaned on a $230M warranty benefit plus tariff relief that didn't repeat (auto gross margin ex-credits 19% → 16%, underlying roughly flat), and the $25B+ CapEx cycle turned FCF negative. Opex +47% on AI, pre-production R&D and stock comp; net profit of $1.1B included a $1.0B unrealized gain on the SpaceX stake. Segments: FSD nearly 1.5M paid customers, >55% attach on new North American deliveries, with the constraint shifting to supply (batteries, electronic components); energy storage 13.5 GWh (+41% Y/Y, +53% Q/Q) but gross margin 40% → 20% on a $240M warranty adjustment, the lost tariff benefit and falling industrial-storage prices (guided to settle low-to-mid 20s); services +50% to $4.6B at a record 14% margin (used cars, Supercharging, service, insurance). Funding: no FY guidance again, CapEx >$25B and growing for another two-to-three years, only $8.3B spent in H1 (so ≥$16.7B in H2), and debt facilities of up to $30B being arranged against $43.5B of cash — "debt is becoming part of the funding plan." A disclosed author holding. (Analysis, not a stance call.)
Tesla sold more cars than in any second quarter ever — 480,000, well above what analysts expected — and its sales over the past year passed $100 billion for the first time. On the face of it, a great quarter. The stock fell almost 14% anyway, its worst reaction to earnings since 2013.
The reason is what happened below the sales line. Profit from actually running the business (operating profit) dropped 57% to $398 million — about a quarter of what analysts expected — because the cost of building each car ate more of the price, and spending on AI, research and staff share awards jumped 47%. Worse, Tesla spent more cash on factories and computers ($5.8 billion, up 142%) than the business generated, so free cash flow — the money left after those investments — went negative for the first time in years, at −$1.1 billion. The headline net profit of $1.1 billion looks better only because it includes a $1 billion paper gain on Tesla's stake in SpaceX, which isn't money earned from selling cars.
This newsletter had warned a quarter earlier that Tesla's flattering Q1 margin came from one-off items (a warranty accounting benefit and temporary tariff relief) and that the huge building programme would flip cash flow negative. Both happened. And the spending is barely started: Tesla has spent $8.3 billion of a promised $25 billion-plus this year, so the second half is at least twice as heavy — and it's now arranging up to $30 billion of borrowing facilities, meaning debt is joining the funding plan for the first time in a long while.
What is that money buying? Robotaxis (self-driving cabs, running in seven cities with 380,000 driverless miles logged — Google's Waymo has about 220 million), Optimus humanoid robots (Musk calls it the hardest factory ramp Tesla has ever attempted, with a "flat and long" start), plus AI computing and chips. The article's conclusion is that investors used to hand Tesla credit for those future businesses; now, with profits this thin, they want to see the returns first. The author owns the stock; this is analysis, not a recommendation.
In short: "Very mixed results" — EPS 33c vs 40c last year and 51c expected, "so a big miss," on good revenue ($28B vs $26B expected). "The problem here is margins," pressured by a 67% decline in regulatory credits the Trump administration largely eliminated. Capex grew to $5.8B, "thereby sending its free cash flow into the red for the first time in 2 years" (−$1.1B). Down 14.5% Thursday "because of the negative cash flow."
Tesla sold plenty of cars — revenue beat — but earned much less on them: profit per share fell to 33 cents against 51 cents expected. Part of the margin damage is the near-disappearance of regulatory credits (payments Tesla used to collect from other carmakers for their emissions shortfalls), down 67% after the Trump administration largely eliminated them. That was close to free profit, and it's gone.
The rest is the same capex story as Google: spending rose to $5.8 billion, pushing free cash flow negative (minus $1.1 billion) "for the first time in 2 years." In this new regime that is the unforgivable print — the stock fell 14.5% in a day, and together with Google dragged the Nasdaq down more than 2%.
12:18They were under pressure partially because of a 67% decline in regulatory credits, which the Trump administration has largely eliminated. Also, and maybe even more importantly, Tesla grew its CapEx spending to 5.8 billion, thereby sending its free cash flow into the red for the first time in 2 years, despite the nice growth in revenue.
In short: "TSLA -13%" on the day — one of "these two disasters" (with SPCX) he expects "Elon will merge together… like a pair of drunks trying to hold each other up by leaning into each other." A disparaging read, no fundamental case beyond the price break and the Musk-conglomerate quip.
Tesla fell 13% on the day. Paulo isn't making a detailed fundamental case here — it's a dismissive read. He lumps Tesla and SpaceX (SPCX) together as "these two disasters" and jokes that "at some point Elon will merge them, like a pair of drunks trying to hold each other up by leaning into each other." The subtext: two richly-valued, Musk-run stocks both breaking down, and combining them wouldn't fix either — it would just tie two falling assets together.
In short: Cited as a stock "valued on promises" — the archetype of the bull-market "premium on promises" ("who's to say my company can't trade like that too?").
Chanos names Tesla as a stock "valued on promises" rather than current results — his shorthand for the whole market's mood. His warning: once a Tesla (or SpaceX) can trade on future dreams, every company argues "why can't mine trade like that too?"
That psychology — paying a premium for promises — is exactly what he says defines a bull-market top, and it reverses hard when reality reasserts itself.
45:27my company can't trade like that, too? And so that's just a matter of investor psychology. It's the glass half full, I say it till I'm blue in the face, in bull markets you put a premium on promises and bear markets you put a discount on reality.
In short: Datapoint in the token-spending pullback: Elon has put a $200 weekly limit on employees' token spending — evidence even the biggest players are reining in AI costs.
13:41Microsoft, so that's one of the hyper- — You had Tesla, Elon, putting $200 weekly limits on the amount of token spending. Coinbase is cutting their AI spending in half now because they were suffering. And what they're doing in all of these cases is they're going to using lower-cost models.
In short: Simpson owns it in the growth portfolio alongside SpaceX — deliberately holding both on the view that even without a legal merger, "a lot of a merger has already taken place" via shared AI (Grok/X). No fresh buy/sell; a high-multiple, ride-the-ebbs-and-flows name.
In short: Named in passing among Uber's autonomous-vehicle competitors ("Waymo, Tesla, Zoox, and all these other competitors") — no thesis, just the AV field framing Uber's risk.
25:16Uber stock price went as high as $100 per share. At that point I was thinking it's probably not the best to buy and then it traded all the way back down to $70 per share. And this gives us an opportunity. As we look at Waymo, Tesla, Zoox, and all these other competitors to Uber, they do face competition, but just to highlight the scale and size difference, Waymo's doing 500,000 trips per week, and Uber is doing 3.64 billion trips per quarter.
In short: Deliveries recovered to ~480k vs ~406k expected — but Singh thinks it was a temporary pull-forward as China/Europe feared the oil crisis. Also one of Burry's newly disclosed shorts.
Full passage: premium transcript (PDF).
In short: "Not done as well as people think" — BYD is a better car at a cheaper price with a better battery; Musk wasted money on the Cybertruck instead of a $30-35k car, is distracted (Doge, X), and is nowhere in robotaxi vs Waymo.
Tesla, he argues, hasn't done as well as people think. China's BYD now makes a better electric car at a lower price with a better battery, and Musk "wasted" money and attention on the Cybertruck instead of building an affordable $30-35k car.
He also thinks Musk is spread too thin — distracted by politics (Doge) and X/Twitter — and is far behind on robotaxis, where Google's Waymo is already operating well in major cities. His timelines, Harris says, simply won't be met; Musk is "a great promoter," which is different from a great operator.
10:02Yeah. So I don't really know that you know and and Tesla for example is not done as well as people think. I mean BYD is a way better car at a cheaper price point at a better battery level like better quality battery. like he spent all this time wasting our money on that stupid whatever that thing's called that
In short: In the Mag7 drawdown list (−20% from highs); cited for scale of the divergence — just ~$1B of quarterly operating income vs Micron's ~$41.5B.
Full passage: premium transcript (PDF).
In short: Referenced in the SpaceX discussion — Talkington is "a huge fan of Elon and the team at SpaceX, at Tesla." No fresh stance on the stock.
In short: Named as the third robotaxi competitor in Houston (with Uber and Waymo) — "one of the only US markets where all three will be competing." A future source of some Uber share loss, but a small one.
23:02Uber shares lowered this morning after the company said it will bring its own robo taxi service to Houston, a launch that would put Uber up against Waymo and Tesla in one of the only US markets where all three will be competing. Commercial service is slated for next year, but testing is already underway with Lucid supplying the vehicles and Nuro providing the self-driving tech.
In short: The Gigafactory "up the road" anchors the Silver Springs industrial hub that underpins Comstock's land thesis.
In short: "Tesla's unchanged since 2021" — another stalled mega-cap; also the management-overpromise yardstick (robotaxis "all over the streets by 2026" only happened in Austin) he applies to NexGen/Cameco.
6:24The big stocks are actually, Nvidia's unchanged since October, Microsoft's unchanged for two years. They're real dogs. Like Meta is unchanged for almost two years. Tesla's unchanged since 2021. So there's a lot of dogs, as Gordon Gekko says in Wall Street, dog with fleas.
In short: The IPO-lifecycle yardstick: "Tesla came public at $2 billion… for Tesla to go from $2 billion to a trillion, that's a big home run for somebody that's in the index" — versus SpaceX listing at $2T, where a double means $4T.
53:15Tesla came public at $2 billion, something like that valuation. So, for Tesla to go from $2 billion to a trillion, that's a big home run for somebody that's in the index, right? But for SpaceX to come public at $2 trillion, to double it has to go to $4 trillion. But no one's talking about — okay, let's just say it does double or triple.
In short: "The most overvalued company in the Nasdaq and in the Mag 7" — falling FCF, falling margins, dwindling EV sales, other bets years out — held up only by the Elon premium. Prediction markets put ~50–60% odds on a SpaceX merger by mid-2027; he sees few real synergies (SolarCity redux), though "anything is possible."
Singh calls Tesla "the most overvalued company in the Nasdaq and the Mag 7": free cash flow falling, margins falling, EV sales dwindling, and the futuristic businesses (robotaxis, robots) years away. What holds the price up is the "Elon premium" — funds and retail investors with deep conviction in Musk because he's made them rich before.
He brings it up as a warning for SpaceX buyers in both directions: the premium means SpaceX may also stay expensive far longer than fundamentals justify — but it's faith, not cash flow, doing the work. On the rumored Tesla–SpaceX merger (prediction markets say ~50–60% by mid-2027), his banker's verdict is that there are few genuine cost savings to justify it — though Musk merged SolarCity into Tesla without synergies too, so "anything is possible."
15:12so if you look at Tesla right Tesla is the most overvalued company in the NASDAQ and in the MAG 7. so when you think about, Tesla's free cash flows have been falling, its margins have been falling, EV sales have been dwindling, and, its three other business prospects are or many years in the future.
In short: The data-moat analogy for Intuitive Surgical: like Tesla's road data, Intuitive's surgical-robotics data makes it an AI beneficiary. (Also: Tesla came public at just a $2B valuation.)
39:39It's think of like Tesla 10, 20 years ago or 10 years ago, what they've done with the data on the road. It's like every road system in the world. Now, all that data is in the hands of Tesla, right? Same thing with Intuitive Surgical — doctors today with robotics can operate on patients in other countries.
In short: The EV-S-curve example — bought in 2019 at ~5× earnings as price/range barriers fell and the "tornado of demand" hit (illustrative).
22:33So Annie built an ecosystem and made it simple. So all the barriers to adoption were eliminated and then you rocket when those barriers are removed. That's the tornado of demand that everybody in the world knows they need this right away. And so that's the flip that happens. It happened with electric vehicles.
In short: The "Tesla marginalizes Uber" bear narrative: Tesla's AV service is still in testing with ~60 fatalities attributed to its autopilot vs zero driving deaths from Waymo tech failure — Hay thinks an Uber/Tesla cooperative relationship is more probable than displacement.
In short: Expects Musk may use SpaceX's stock to fold Tesla into one giant "X" — "the last thing" a SpaceX holder should want. Tesla's earnings have fallen four straight years; EVs are a capital-intensive, hyper-competitive business and China builds them far cheaper.
Eisman's worry here is a deal, not just the stock: he expects Musk to use SpaceX's richly-valued shares to buy Tesla and roll everything into one company ("X") — which he calls "the last thing" a SpaceX investor should want.
Why? Tesla's profits have shrunk four years in a row. Building electric cars is expensive and brutally competitive, and Chinese makers produce EVs far cheaper. So bolting a deteriorating car business onto SpaceX would, in his view, drag it down.
6:48BUT I'M SURE HE'S GOING TO DO IT. I MEAN, IF YOU LOOK AT IF YOU LOOK AT TESLA, THE EARNINGS HAVE GONE STRAIGHT DOWN FOR THE LAST FOUR YEARS. EVERY SINGLE YEAR THEY HAVE GONE DOWN THE THE EV BUSINESS IS JUST NOT THAT GREAT A BUSINESS. IT'S ALSO A CAPITAL INTENSIVE BUSINESS THAT'S HIGHLY COMPETITIVE. YOU KNOW, CHINA PRODUCES EVS MUCH CHEAPER THAN, THAN THAN TESLA DOES.
In short: The IPO counter-example — looked overvalued at IPO yet became one of tech's biggest gains, so he "doesn't know anymore."
5:27If you buy this IPO, you're exit liquidity for the venture capitalists who already got in. So, you're not early. And these valuations of some of these companies, SpaceX, for example, 100 times earnings, I think, something like that. Um, very, very ridiculous for some of the comments. But then I think to myself, okay, when Tesla IPOed, they were pre-revenue.
In short: SpaceX's Terafab JV partner — a proposed $20B+ chip joint venture with Tesla and Intel targeting 1 TW of annual compute (no binding terms yet); Tesla also supplies Megapack to the AI buildout. Cited as part of the related-party "Musk web," and as a Musk-premium precedent (Tesla gets credit for Optimus pre-revenue). Also a disclosed author holding.
In short: De-emphasized — "Not Tesla, not Nvidia" are his biggest bets; only a passing contrast (also noted EVs "can make new designs" in the Ferrari aside).
21:40It's Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta. All the hyperscalers are the companies that are buying the AI the fastest. I have Microsoft in the passive income portfolio with $70,000 invested. Google $130,000 invested. Both of these are massively in the green. We have Meta as a brand new position this year that I've already put $180,000 in.
In short: A full 15-step analysis ending in an explicit rejection: "We're not buying Tesla. I don't think it's a quality stock and the company looks very expensive. There are way better companies available on the stock market today." Total Quality Score 6.8/10 at a $417.3 price and $1.3trn market cap. What passes: growth (revenue +37.1% ten-year CAGR, EPS +38.8% five-year, a 41.3% long-term EPS estimate), a net cash balance sheet, and a +42.7% CAGR since the 2010 IPO. What fails: gross margin 18.0% (bar 40%), net margin 4.1% (bar 10%), ROIC and ROE both 4.9% (bars 15% and 20%), CAPEX/Sales 9.0% and CAPEX/Operating CF 57.8% — still failing at 6.5% and 41.7% after the maintenance-capex adjustment — and stock-based compensation at 74.5% of net income (67.7% five-year average) against a 10% bar: "This is not something you want to see as a quality investor." Valuation fails all three tests: 201.2x forward against a 104.8x five-year average, still 101.6x on 2028 expected EPS ("This is just ridiculous if you ask me"); a 6.5% expected return even assuming 15% EPS growth for a decade; and a reverse DCF requiring 54.5% annual free-cash-flow growth for ten years. Risks named include Musk himself — "He's a genius and a wildcard. His tweets move the stock, his politics alienate buyers, and he runs 5 companies at once."
Tesla sells electric cars (about three-quarters of revenue), batteries and solar for homes, cities and data centres (its fastest-growing line), and services like repairs, charging and self-driving subscriptions. Slegers gives the bull case a fair hearing: Musk owns 24.9% of the company and that stake is nearly half his wealth, so his interests and yours point the same way; the factories cast large parts in single pieces, which is genuinely cheaper; the cars collect driving data that trains the software; and all three end markets are growing fast.
Then the business is measured, and it does not look like a quality company. Of every dollar of sales, only 18 cents survive the cost of building the car (his bar is 40) and only 4 cents reach profit (his bar is 10). The return on the money invested in the business is 4.9% — a bank-deposit sort of number, against a 15% bar. And stock-based pay consumes 74.5% of profit: shareholders are handing three-quarters of the earnings to employees in newly issued shares. The counter-argument is that all of this is temporary, because Tesla is spending ahead of the robotaxi and robot era. That may be true. It is also what every capital-hungry business says.
The valuation is where the case ends. The shares cost 201 times next year's expected profit — and still 102 times profits expected in 2028, three years out. Run it forward generously: assume Tesla grows earnings 15% a year for a decade and the multiple falls to a still-rich 30 times, and you earn 6.5% a year, less than a boring index fund. Run it backwards and the price today already assumes free cash flow grows 54.5% every year for ten years. Nothing at this scale has ever done that. Hence the verdict, which is unusually blunt for this newsletter: "We're not buying Tesla… There are way better companies available on the stock market today."
In short: Bill — "nothing but air." If Musk is getting out of making cars and pitching robots, "that sounds like air to me." People "have that much faith in the guy." A momentum/faith stock, not a value one.
51:13— Yeah. And nothing was invested in the oil business. Okay. And now uh Musk is telling people he's getting out of making electric cars, which by the way, doesn't that just mean that that business is nothing but air? I I mean that's a whole another subject. But I mean, if they're not making cars, — I think they're still making cars.
In short: #10 pick, and the page's implicit counter-example. Reported facts only: "Tesla is not the world's leading electric vehicle manufacturer anymore. China's BYD recently took the top spot. However, Elon Musk still believes in his baby. He thinks Tesla could be worth $8.5 trillion within the next 10 years. Today, it's around $1.4 trillion. If that happens, and a few other targets are hit, Elon could receive a bonus worth $1 trillion in Tesla shares." No stance is written — but the table prints a 215.3x forward PE on a 5.3% net margin and 5.3% ROIC, every one of which fails the house thresholds, and the Constellation entry three rows later uses Tesla as the explicit contrast.
In short: Passing reference: Tesla holds nickel offtake agreements with Talon's Tamarack from 2028 — one plank of Talon's US-critical-minerals alignment.
In short: "Wildly overvalued," with the market over-appreciating the Elon/Trump relationship — but he won't short it given the momentum. Tesla's scale means it needs EV subsidies less than newer names.
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Verbatim excerpts from the public transcripts (auto-pulled at each mention's timestamp, lightly cleaned). Timestamps link into the video; "source page" opens that commentator's full analysis at this row. Click a mention's header line to expand it (one open at a time). For personal study — not investment advice.