Tesla doesn’t deserve to be in the Magnificent Seven—and that means investors need a different strategy to trade the ever-controversial electric-vehicle maker.
The Mag Seven, of course, are Amazon.com, Alphabet, Apple, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Nvidia, and, yes, Tesla. But like that oldSesame Streetbit goes, one of these things is not like the other. Tesla is the odd one out.
That conclusion has nothing to do with any animus toward CEO Elon Musk due to his ties to President Donald Trump or his actions with the Department of Government Efficiency. It isn’t a nefarious plot to upend his wealth by crashing Tesla stock (as if we could). Musk will be fine. His Tesla stake was still worth some $160 billion even after shares dropped more than 50% from their all-time high, and he has another $200 billion in wealth represented by his non-Tesla assets.
We just follow the numbers—and the numbers suggest that Tesla just isn’t in the same class as the Magnificent Six. For starters, Tesla’s market value is no longer in the top seven among S&P 500 stocks. With a market capitalization of about $740 billion, it’s now worth less than Berkshire Hathaway and Broadcom.
But the real difference is in the quality of Tesla’s business. The Mag Six are profit machines, with an average operating margin of 37%. Tesla’s margin was a meager 7% in 2024—not even stellar compared with other car companies, let alone the tech titans it gets grouped with. Tesla has a valuation problem, too. The Mag Six stocks trade for an average of 26 times earnings, while Tesla trades for 85 times, down from 200 times three months ago.
And while the Mag Six are known for their relative stability, Tesla’s volatility is another sign that it belongs somewhere else. Shares have traded between $139 and $489 over the past 12 months—a range of $350, which amounts to 145% of their recent price. The ratio is less than 50% for Big Tech. Wall Street’s price targets for Tesla reflect that price uncertainty. They range from $25 to $550, with the difference between the two more than double its recent price. The average for the Mag Six is 63%.
Those numbers reflect a simple fact: Tesla is built on a dream. Its stock doesn’t rest on a sturdy foundation like Alphabet’s Google search, Apple’s iPhone, or Meta’s Instagram. The company doesn’t dominate a big business like Amazon does in retail or Nvidia in artificial-intelligence chips. To believe in Tesla is to believe that it will not only dominate the EV business, but is also on the cusp of unlocking trillions in value from AI-trained self-driving cars and humanoid robots. That makes it more like Palantir Technologies, AppLovin, or Moderna—richly valued, highly volatile stocks that also trade on hopes for the future rather than dominance in the present.
Unfortunately, Tesla’s dream is threatening to turn into a nightmare. Tesla sales have been slumping: In January, combined U.S., European, and Chinese sales dropped 20% year over year. People have been protesting its stores globally, boycotting sales, selling their used Teslas, and damaging charging stations. The resulting damage has caught the attention of Wall Street. “We struggle to think of anything analogous in the history of the automotive industry, in which a brand has lost so much value so quickly,” says J.P. Morgan analyst Ryan Brinkman.
Tesla’s rise following Trump’s victory was based on little more than air, and now those gains have disappeared almost as quickly as they arrived. They were almost surely undeserved. A fair value for the stock, based on the car and energy businesses, is probably closer to $200 to $250 a share, or 40 or 50 times 2027 earnings, if for no other reason than Tesla is expected to boost profits at three times the rate of the S&P 500, which trades at 17 times. Anything beyond that range is a bet on the Tesla dream; anything below, and the stock starts to look interesting.
Where it goes next may be entirely up to Musk. He is the source of almost all the volatility, but also the source of the gains. Just showing up at Tesla and demonstrating a little balance in his life could be enough to slake investor concerns, says Wedbush’s Dan Ives. After that, Musk needs to deliver on his promises of a new lower-price model and a robo-taxi service, both slated for later this year.
Elon, it’s back to you.