Why Is Tesla Stock Lagging the Market?

Ed Elson says Tesla stock is down 13% over the past year, and on a five-year window it has underperformed the S&P by about three times, because the car business is in decline. Revenue fell again last quarter, and car deliveries fell too. The story people are excited about is the robotaxi, and Ed Elson says that robotaxi is millions of miles behind Waymo.

He calls a merger with SpaceX brand laundering, or multiple laundering. The SpaceX story moves from satellites to orbital data centers, then asteroid mining, then colonies on Mars, and he says investors are buying it. He and Scott Galloway agree Tesla is way overvalued at more than 300 times earnings, against an auto-industry average of 17. Tesla trades at 14 times sales and SpaceX at 87 times sales. Ed Elson says putting the companies in one bucket lets Elon Musk point people at asteroids, AI, or data centers so they stop asking why deliveries and sales are falling.