Aristides On Tesla “Is So Dependent Upon Trades Made by Completely Oblivious/Hopeful People”

Can Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) ever be more than a niche automaker? Wall Street increasingly thinks no; I-PACE sales in Europe.

1) Excerpt of the May letter from Chris Brown of Aristides, which mentions Tesla (I love his letters!).

Part of me feels bad that we didn’t press our Tesla (TSLA) short a little harder last month, given the stock ended April at a very perilous point on its long-term chart, having broken down below an important long-term line of support near $238 per share. Fearing a bounce, we trimmed a good bit of our TSLA short position, such that we made only 128 basis points this month off a 22% collapse in the stock during the month of May.

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Q1 hedge fund letters, conference, scoops etc

Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently told employees in an e-mail that, if they execute well in the rest of this quarter, Tesla could exceed its record for quarterly production and deliveries. The market didn’t seem to believe him, and the stock is still languishing at two-year lows. I don’t believe him either; my current best guess for Q2 deliveries is something like 75,000 units, with a lower average selling price than Q1. But I think that recently increased tax subsidies in some parts of Canada, as well as initial Model 3 orders into the UK cause some potential uncertainty to the upside.

He adds:

The stock is so dependent upon trades made by completely oblivious/hopeful people that it is hard to know what assumptions are built into the share price on any given day.

A friend comments that if you’re going to look at I-PACE sales in North America vs. Tesla, you also need to look at Jaguar’s home market (Europe), where the numbers are reversed:

Here are the Jaguar i-Pace sales numbers year to date, as best as I have been able to gather them.  You can compare against Model S or Model X in almost any country in Europe, and I think Jaguar is well ahead.  Obviously that is to some extent the mirror image of the U.S., which is Tesla's home market.  Jaguar does better in its home market -- Europe -- and Tesla in its home market -- USA.