Someone is very wrong.
UBS upgraded Tesla to Neutral from Sell, raising its target to $352, a small decrease on the current price.
Analyst Joseph Spak said the risk-reward has improved but conceded the stock trades more on sentiment and narrative than fundamentals.
He flagged soft EV demand, higher costs, and slow progress on robotaxi and Optimus as near-term drags. TSLA rose 2% in premarket on the upgrade.
JPMorgan went the other direction. Analyst Ryan Brinkman reiterated his Underweight rating and $145 target, pointing to Q1 deliveries of 358,023 that missed consensus by roughly 4%.
Tesla built over 50,000 more cars than it sold during the quarter.
Brinkman called the inventory pileup a free cash flow problem and warned traders to approach the name with a high degree of caution.
What Prediction Markets Say
UBS is betting that robotaxi and Optimus eventually justify the valuation. Prediction market traders are not convinced they arrive on schedule.
On Polymarket, a California robotaxi launch by June 30 is priced at 11%. That may be generous.
Tesla logged zero autonomous test miles in California in 2025 for the sixth straight year, and the DMV confirmed the company hasn’t applied for permits beyond the entry-level tier.
Optimus hitting public sale by the same date sits at 6%.
On Kalshi, the odds of Optimus shipping this year are around 17%. Musk acknowledged on the Q4 2025 earnings call that no Optimus units are doing “useful work” yet — they remain in the learning and data collection phase.
The bigger picture may be more telling.
NVIDIA holds 73% odds on Polymarket to finish 2026 as the world’s largest company by market cap. Tesla is at 1%.
SpaceX, which may IPO this summer at a reported $1.75 trillion valuation, sits at 3%. For traders looking to ride the Musk trade, bettors are saying the better ticket may not be listed yet.
The Earnings Setup
Tesla reports Q1 results after the bell on April 22. Wall Street expects $0.34 EPS on $22.85 billion in revenue, but the company has missed consensus four quarters running. The question isn’t whether the delivery numbers disappoint. It’s whether Musk has something new to sell the room.
TSLA is trading around $358, up more than 1% today. The stock is down more than 22% year-to-date.
Image: Shutterstock