Good morning folks -
Let’s talk Tesla.
Yesterday, $TSLA gained +3.5%, closing just shy of its 12/17/2024 all-time high. In a messy market, Tesla displayed serious relative strength.
You could call it a flight to safety. I kid. Sort of.
A quick look at yesterday’s S&P 500 heat map tells the story.
Elon Musk’s net worth crossed $600 billion. As if that means anything. Still, I’m honored to ride his coattails.
I’ve been consistent on this point: Tesla is the key ingredient in how I think about the future.
I shared that view publicly back in Q1, and again on July 20th, when I highlighted the asymmetric risk:reward setup.
I was early — a common theme for me — but timing aside, the thesis hasn’t changed. Since that post, $TSLA is up 44%.
The inflection point is autonomy.
Autonomous driving isn’t just another feature. It’s a milestone.
Waymo is working. I’ve used it. My experience is that it feels like a classic Google product — functional, technically impressive, and emotionally flat. It gets you from A to B, but it doesn’t deliver the “iPhone” magic. Remember the first time you held an iPhone? That’s the feeling I’m referring to.
Amazon’s Zoox is another serious effort. Purpose-built vehicles, thoughtful design, no steering wheel. But it operates in tightly constrained environments, with limited scale and limited exposure to the real world.
Tesla is different.
Millions of Teslas are already on the road, operating in uncontrolled conditions, collecting real-world data — every mile, every edge case, every mistake feeding the same neural network.
Tesla isn’t just building autonomy. It’s training it, at scale.
That difference matters.
The company has been reinforcing this point in its own words. In a recent tweet, Tesla shared:
“The fleet will wake up via over-the-air software update.”
This is the major, major unlock…
In addition to its robotaxi fleet, anyone who owns a Tesla will one day be able to add their vehicle to the fleet. Think Airbnb, but for cars.
Folks - Tesla isn’t just a car company. It isn’t even just an AI company.
It’s a real-world autonomy platform — spanning vehicles today and humanoid robots tomorrow.
I’ll leave you with one question. Do you own enough $TSLA?
Here’s the daily chart.
And monster monthly.
Disclosure: Not financial advice.
