New York, Jan 11, 2026, 18:40 (ET) — Market closed.
- Tesla shares last closed up about 2.1% at $445.01 as U.S. stocks rallied.
- Traders are weighing softer EV demand signals against a louder autonomy narrative coming out of CES.
- Next on the calendar: U.S. policy moves on self-driving and Tesla’s late-January results.
Tesla shares ended Friday higher, closing up about 2.1% at $445.01. The stock traded between $430.39 and $449.05 and changed hands about 67.2 million times.
The electric-vehicle maker’s stock is still trading on two clocks. There is demand for cars right now, and there is the longer bet on autonomy and robotics that keeps pulling money back in.
That split matters going into Monday because it makes TSLA jumpy. Macro data can move it, but so can any stray headline on “driverless” tech, even when it’s not Tesla’s.
On Friday, Wall Street pushed to a record high close, with chip stocks leading and megacaps back in favor. “Investors are getting granular and picking the winners and losers,” Zachary Hill, head of portfolio management at Horizon Investments, said, describing the AI trade. Reuters
A big part of that tone came from the jobs report. U.S. nonfarm payrolls — the monthly jobs count outside agriculture — rose 50,000 in December and the unemployment rate dipped to 4.4%, a combination economists said supports the case for the Federal Reserve to hold rates steady at its Jan. 27-28 meeting. “Hiring is still stuck in stall speed,” Fitch Ratings’ Olu Sonola said. Reuters
The EV supply chain also stayed cautious. LG Energy Solution, a battery supplier to Tesla, said it expects a fourth-quarter operating loss of 122 billion won ($83.8 million) as weaker demand from EV makers weighed on results.
The autonomy story is getting noisier too. At CES in Las Vegas, Nvidia and auto suppliers rolled out new partnerships and an open-source self-driving platform — code shared publicly so others can build on it — that investors see as another route for Tesla’s rivals to close gaps. “I don’t see, really now, a tsunami flowing towards Level 5,” Infineon CEO Jochen Hanebeck said, referring to fully self-driving cars that need no human driver. Reuters
In Washington, a House committee is set to hold a Jan. 13 hearing on proposals that could make it easier to deploy autonomous vehicles without human controls, including lifting an exemption cap now set at 2,500 vehicles a year. The hearing could put robotaxi rules back in play for companies such as Tesla and Alphabet’s Waymo.
Tesla’s next company-specific test is closer than it looks. It said it produced 434,358 vehicles and delivered 418,227 in the fourth quarter, and deployed 14.2 GWh (gigawatt-hours) of energy storage products, a record; it also said it will post quarterly results after market close on Jan. 28 and hold a live Q&A webcast at 5:30 p.m. Eastern.
The deliveries backdrop is still awkward. Tesla ceded the annual EV sales crown to China’s BYD after U.S. tax credits expired and competition intensified, Reuters reported, even as traders leaned into the autonomy pitch. “It’s about Optimus, Robotaxi and physical AI,” Dennis Dick, a trader at Triple D Trading, said at the time. Reuters
But the downside case is straightforward. If Tesla leans harder on discounts to defend volume, investors will watch whether margins get squeezed again, and whether regulators slow any wider push toward driverless taxis.
For Monday’s session, traders will watch whether the rate-driven bid in growth stocks holds and whether CES self-driving headlines keep spilling into TSLA. After that, the next dates are the Jan. 13 House hearing on self-driving rules and Tesla’s Jan. 28 earnings and webcast.
