Tesla's stock just hit a record $420

[martythemaniak]

The stock is blazing!

Weed jokes aside, the market has finally caught up to the fact that Tesla is years ahead of their competitors. I bought my Model 3 18 months ago and it felt like buying a car from the future. I think my feeling was correct.

2019 saw a number of serious competitors (Audi, MB, VW, Porche) release their first EVs and they've all been somewhat disappointing. Very solid first releases taken in isolation, but the market expectations were that the "Big Boys" were coming in and were going to wipe the floor with Tesla. Turns out they couldn't, Tesla's head start is real and consequential.

If you go out and actually try to put down $40-50k on a car and judge all EVs on a collection of attributes (range, efficiency, safety, charging options, tech, etc) Tesla clearly stands out. It's tough to convince yourself to put down a nearly-equivalent amount of hard-earned money for another brand, so it is no coincidence that they outsell other EVs by a very wide margin.

[stoicShell]

Here's what most surprised me recently, which compounds all your points.

Middle of Nowhere, France, 11 AM. My Uber arrives, a cool Model 3, "huh, great!" I thought, "I'm gonna pry this guy's brain for info on EV's."

Sure thing the driver was a talker and over the course of the next 20 minutes proceeded to tell me all the good and bad, in his opinion — it was his 3rd or 4th EV.

Tesla is "out of this world" — his words. "And you know why? Because they have the best free charging network, period, others are not even comparable". Remember, we're in the middle of nowhere in a rural town. He points to me a couple gas stations on the map nearby: "I can charge there, super fast, no problem. But with any other brand, the German, the French, the Japanese? It's a mess. Nothing before 30-40 miles at least, can only charge during work hours, that sort of... problems. And Tesla's (sorta) free and has much more range to top it all."

Consider that we're talking infrastructure, Tesla being better than the French and German brands in France of all countries, about 200 km from the German border!

So, there's that. The headstart and pragmatism of Tesla, even far away from homeland, USA is big and consequential — it'll take years for others to catch up, and they're not heading this way as they all rely on different standards (NIH syndrome) and bodies like the EU haven't catched up on regulation yet (like they did e.g. for phone chargers normalized to micro-USB, now USB-C).

I know it's anecdotal, but for a professional driver it was pretty clear that Tesla is just about unchallenged in EV.

[disconnected]

> the market has finally caught up to the fact that Tesla is years ahead of their competitors.

Incorrect. The stock value is being pushed up by:

1. Unexpected quarterly profits in October;

2. Tesla planning to open a new factory in China and securing a 1.4 Billion dollar loan to do so;

3. Apparent strong interest in the Cybertruck and the impending announcement of the Model Y;

4. USA and China are easing the trade war, which is pushing the whole stock market up (there have been "records" left and right in the past few days).

But the big one is number 2. Tesla moving into China means that they can tap into the humongous Chinese market.

[mprev]

I’ve had my Model 3 just over a week. It’s great. I love it. But I can’t wait to get an EV in a few years from a mature manufacturer. I hope that mature manufacturer will be Tesla.

Right now, though, after sales care is pretty much non-existant, I have rattles that I didn’t have in a car with over 100k on the clock, the handover was chaotic and rushed, the interior is cheap.

Even so, I have no regrets. And I’ll recommend the car because it is such a game changer. It drives brilliantly and, of course, it’s great to know that I’m not pumping out diesel fumes. But if there was a EV BMW 3 series with the same range and performance I don’t see how the Model 3 could compete.

[noir_lord]

Saw the first Model 3 I've seen in the wild today (north of England though I see a few S's on a regular basis), pretty pretty car in the flesh, the white looked lovely though like all white cars in winter I bet it's a bastard to keep clean.

I get what you mean about the car of the future, it glided past silently (couldn't hear it through my motorcycle helmet) like something from the future.

Would be the car I buy if I ever went 4 wheels.

[bluepickles]

Tesla puts 20-30% of their gross profits into R&D. https://q10k.com/financials/TSLA

Ford/GM don't even have an R&D row on their income statements.

[spike021]

What part of the Porsche Taycan has been disappointing when compared to Tesla?

My only complaint is the price, but it's a Porsche so what can I do?

[bryanlarsen]

> competitors ... all been somewhat disappointing.

Often that's bad news, though. If your competitors cannot sell their product, that's a sign of a small/poor market.

[slg]

Besides all the funding secured and pot jokes, can anyone explain what has happened to this stock recently? Over the last two months it has gone up roughly 30% after already having a big immediate jump after the last earnings. Is this mostly related to long term shorts finally closing their positions in the wake of those earnings? Or was there some big Tesla news that I missed that changed the perception of the company's financial position?

[lazyjones]

It's probably not one single reason. Tesla has had a lot of good news lately, from reports about Elon behaving a little better (and winning that defamation lawsuit), to competing EV from companies like Mercedes and Audi not really selling well and securing a large area for GF4 near Berlin. The most impressive feat for me was how quickly they built GF3 and started production in China, but my tiny contribution to the stock price was earlier this year (late May), the return to profitability in Q3 probably impressed many investors as well.

[manigandham]

Stock prices are based on perception of where it's going. The surprise profit from the last earnings, trade deal leading to lower tariffs, new China factory opening up that market, and the general quality of electric car competition released this year have all shown that Tesla is still far ahead of the game and close to running a sustainable operation.

[friedman23]

There have been 5 or 6 different pieces of good news in the past two weeks which have led into what I believe is an insane enthusiasm for purchasing this stock. Go on investing forums and you will see people casually throwing out numbers like TSLA to $1000. It's like bitcoin 2.0. I would not short it.

[bryanlarsen]

There has been lots of positive news in the past couple of months, and you'll see some listed in other replies, but IMO it's more due to the fact that the bear story has disintegrated.

Prognostications of Tesla’s doom have gone from concerning, to annoying, to boring, to pathetic[1]

Tesla has a successful ongoing business just selling Model 3's and Y's. The S could be destroyed by the Taycan, the Cybertruck could flop, the Semi could fail to take off, Autonomous driving could remain a slightly more intelligent cruise control, their solar tile business could fail and Tesla would still be OK. It wouldn't be worth $420 a share, but they wouldn't be bankrupt either.

1: https://cleantechnica.com/2019/12/21/prognostications-of-tes...

[asdfqwer234]

Musk was able to get funding in China for the Gigafactory there. That's my best guess

https://techcrunch.com/2019/12/23/tesla-lands-1-4-billion-fr...

[OrgNet]

Its probably because of the pickup truck that is priced very nicely (but don't rely on my personal opinion)

[rwerkjlkjweq]

WSB is going bananas over this:

https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/

[eindiran]

Just for reference, the claim that "420" comes for a police code for marijuana possession is completely incorrect:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/420_(cannabis_culture)

[look_lookatme]

Seems like a strange thing to go around correcting people on. I didn't even know it was supposed to be a police code, it's just some silly code word for weed that like 85% of American english speakers understand to mean weed.

[stillmotion]

> 420 often refers to the police code for cannabis possession

Hah, this journalist is so out of touch with the joke. 420 is the time to blaze it!

[sudoaza]

420 was the California Bill for medical marijuana legalization (and of course the time to blaze it).

[nabla9]

420 was the price Musk planned to turn Tesla private "funding secured" Musk lied.

[ggambetta]

  Funding secured.

[DeonPenny]

It was just at $140 a month or two ago I feel like. Incredible

[jfengel]

It hasn't been at $140 since 2013. It dipped to $150 in 2016, and $185 in the spring after a long, slow decline early in the year. If you'd bought it during that dip it would have been a big win.

[dangerboysteve]

Every Tesla stock price increase story is always followed by the mandatory story of Tesla short sellers getting crushed.

[rcMgD2BwE72F]

Because it's the most shorted stock in history relative to its float/market cap?

[oluomike1]

https://techcrunch.com/2019/12/23/tesla-lands-1-4-billion-fr...

[Animats]

Tesla finally seems to be focusing on building cars in volume. Not making heavy-truck prototypes. Not talking about "transportation as a service". Not claiming self-driving. Just making electric cars at a profit. That's good for the stock price.

[rcMgD2BwE72F]

>Tesla finally seems to be focusing on building cars in volume.

That has always been the case. Perhaps you meant "Media and markets know focus on Tesla's building cars in volume". It takes time to build plants, install machine them and organize the whole logistics/delivery part. They've always been focusing on this, and had to run the show so people would be ready to take delivery by the time they reach mass production.

[rossdavidh]

I cannot believe that the significance of the $420/share price just now occurred to me.

[tus88]

Take that shorters!

[dang]

Please don't do this here.

[RealityVoid]

I do think that they will need LIDAR to achieve the level of autonomy they advertise will be available. That being said, that does by no means mean the demise of Tesla. Even if they fail delivering autonomy promises with the current gen of hw, they could still deliver a solid vehicle.

[Jamwinner]

A bit early for strawmanning isnt it?

[rwerkjlkjweq]

You forgot about how ugly the CyberTruck is, and why would anyone buy such a monstrosity.

That being said, HN is not so bad towards Tesla. The real haters are at FT (Financial Times). It's hard to tell what they hate more, Tesla or Bitcoin.

[mdszy]

That he'll completely fail to smoke properly.

[isoprophlex]

vaporwave track plays in the background

https://youtu.be/bAgmGZ9iQ2Y

[corporate_shi11]

That's a key level

[OrgNet]

stocks (on average) tend to always go up...

[runeks]

Except for those that go down, of course.

[pastor_elm]

Funding secured.

[CriticalCathed]

The shorts on twitter are particularly venomous today. I have to wonder if they're too emotionally involved in this. Tesla is seriously flawed but "fraud" is truly ludicrous.