Let's Check In With Tesla

Reader S sent me a bunch of Tesla links, which I’ll include below. The net of it is that Tesla had a terrible first quarter. Let’s look at two meme stocks, one real stock, and a couple of indices:

So, year-to-date, which roughly corresponds to Trump’s first term, tech stocks (NASDAQ) are down 13%, Apple’s down almost 20%, Tesla’s down 37% and Trump’s meme stock is down over 40%. But Tesla is still hanging around $250, which is probably at least $50 more than the price where the loans Musk has taken out on his stock are problematic. Trump’s stock is a lark, so if it’s worth anything, he’s still OK.

The key political point is that the average middle-class 401K probably lost at least 8% of its value since Trump took office.

Anyway, let’s look at the details. Electric vehicles (EVs) are in general doing great. In the US, two Tesla models are still the best sellers, but Porsche (+250%) , Toyota (+196%), VW (+183%) and GMC (+173%) showed sales growth that far outstripped Tesla. which was down 9%. In Europe, the story was similar: Tesla sales were down sharply in every European country except the UK. And the electric Ford pickup, the Lighting F-150, outsold the Tesla IncElCamino by 600 units in Q1.

I’m not an expert on cars, but from what I read about Tesla, they’re not an automaker in the way that the “big three” (Ford, GM and Stellantis) are — I’ve see pictures of cars that they’ve shipped with wooden blocks in the engine bay. Apparently they make modifications to their manufacturing processes all the time. (In contrast, I just downloaded the 400 page “builder’s guide” to my new pickup, which has every measurement in the damn thing diagrammed. My van had a similar guide. This only happens for a vehicle that isn’t going to be modified during the year’s production run.) Since they’re so inconsistently manufactured, only Tesla dealers can service Teslas, and there won’t be a meaningful aftermarket supplying parts and accessories for those vehicles. Their big new model was the Cybertruck, a flop, and their other models are old. They’re being out-sold in China by local company BYD, and they’re losing in the US. There’s nothing about Tesla’s fundamentals that can support their stock price.

Perhaps the most telling thing is that Musk is up to his usual bullshit, making almost certainly false promises about Tesla self-driving, prior to Tesla’s Q1 earnings announcement, which will probably be bad, and should probably be worse considering all the accounting tricks that Musk’s finance team is going to pull. Tesla will report earnings on April 22, for those of you like Tim Walz who are going to mark their calendars.

While we’re looking at the markets, the dollar is down versus the Euro:

The yield on 30-year Treasuries has risen to almost 5%, up from 4.4% a week ago. Bond yields go up when people don’t want to buy the bond, which is the opposite of what we should expect when the stock market is shitting the bed: normally there’s a “flight to quality” — i.e., people buy T-bills. Not this time, because Trump has ruined the reputation of our bonds.

Other than that, the markets look great, and by “great” I mean “shitty”.