Remember when everyone thought Cathie Wood was nuts for buying Tesla? Well, she’s doubling down while the rest of Wall Street is still figuring out if EVs are dead or just taking a really long nap.
Here’s the thing about Tesla (TSLA) – it’s having a quiet comeback that nobody’s talking about. While everyone’s been obsessing over whether Elon’s latest tweet will tank the stock, Tesla has actually been outperforming Nvidia over the past six months. Yeah, you read that right. The EV company is beating the AI darling.
Cathie’s Crystal Ball
Wood isn’t just buying Tesla for the cars anymore. She’s betting on robots. Specifically, Optimus robots that Musk claims will make up 80% of Tesla’s value. Now, we all know Elon’s track record with bold predictions (remember when we were all supposed to be living on Mars by now?), but here’s the kicker – the market is starting to believe him.
When asked which stock she’d pick if she could only choose one, Wood didn’t hesitate: Tesla. Her reasoning? It’s the perfect storm of three major trends – robots, energy storage, and AI. She’s got 11.32% of her portfolio parked in Tesla stock, which is either genius or the most expensive mistake in ETF history.
The Quiet Turnaround
Here’s what’s actually happening while everyone’s distracted: Musk stepped back from the political circus (thank goodness), and Tesla China just sold out of their October delivery slots for the new Model Y. New orders are being pushed to November. That’s not exactly the death spiral the bears were predicting.
Analyst Gary Black thinks Tesla will beat Q3 estimates, which currently sit at 431,000 deliveries (down 6% year-over-year). If he’s right, and Tesla actually shows growth instead of decline, we could see some serious fireworks.
The $500 Question
Here’s where it gets interesting. Tesla’s next earnings report drops in early October. If they crush delivery numbers and show that their EV business isn’t dead while simultaneously proving they’re serious about AI and robotics, the stock could rocket to $450, maybe even $500.
Is it realistic? Well, Tesla has a habit of making the impossible look inevitable. The company went from a startup that almost died multiple times to the world’s most valuable automaker. Now they’re pivoting to become an AI company that happens to make cars.
The bears keep pointing to weak EV sales, but they’re missing the bigger picture. Tesla isn’t just an EV company anymore – it’s positioning itself as the Apple of autonomous everything. And if Optimus robots actually work (big if), we’re talking about a market that could dwarf the automotive industry.
So while everyone else is arguing about whether Tesla is overvalued, Cathie Wood is quietly building her position. She might be early, she might be wrong, but she’s definitely not boring. And in a market where boring stocks go nowhere, that might be exactly what you want.