NEW YORK, June 26, 2026, 15:04 EDT
- Tesla moved up late in the U.S. afternoon session, after swinging 5.1% between its high and low earlier in the day.
- The stock moved in a range worth about $68 billion on the day, topping Ford’s total market cap.
- The stock is still off by around 15% this month as investors look at delivery numbers, FSD investigations and AI costs.
Tesla, Inc. NASDAQ:TSLA climbed 1.3% to $380.03 by 2:49 p.m. EDT Friday, bouncing after a volatile session where it flipped from losses to gains and traded between $368.50 and $387.72. That $19.22 swing in Tesla’s share price translated to about $68 billion in value, topping Ford Motor Co. NYSE:F at $57.4 billion and coming in just under General Motors Co. NYSE:GM at $72.5 billion. Even a routine move in Elon Musk’s company is pushing around market caps larger than entire carmakers.
Tesla is still deep in the red for June, down about 15%—the worst month since February 2025. Shares are also off 8.5% for the week, Barron’s said Friday. With a market cap near $1.34 trillion, the 15% monthly drop equals about $240 billion in market value wiped out.
Tesla’s trillion-dollar-plus valuation has rested on bets for autonomy, software, and robots, not the car business. But the stock is acting these days like an AI name under pressure instead of a carmaker readying a delivery update.
It’s not just Tesla under pressure. SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust NYSEARCA:SPY slipped 0.3% in afternoon trading. Reuters said the Nasdaq Composite was headed for a weekly drop as investors reconsidered tech and chip stocks after big AI-driven runs. Julia Hermann, global market strategist at New York Life Investment Management, called it a “live question” if higher rates could hit the more cyclical areas of tech. Reuters
Tesla’s upcoming focus is on second-quarter deliveries. Wall Street is looking for 401,120 vehicles, which would be a 4% rise from the same period last year, Barron’s said this week. That could support the core auto story, but it might not satisfy if the stock’s valuation keeps riding on hopes for robotaxis and Full Self-Driving, not current auto profit.
The legal news kept moving. TechCrunch said Friday that Tesla settled a lawsuit over a deadly 2023 crash tied to Full Self-Driving, but terms weren’t made public. TechCrunch said the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s stepped-up look into Tesla’s FSD software is still ongoing. A recall could be on the table.
Texas is facing more questions after another crash. Reuters said NHTSA started looking into a June 19 Model 3 crash in Katy, Texas, where a car hit a house and killed a 76-year-old woman. Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla’s self-driving lead, said the driver “manually overrode self-driving” and hit “73 mph.” The Harris County Sheriff’s Office said the driver claimed some automated help was on. Reuters
Bullish arguments for Tesla are still on the table but look further out now. JPMorgan Chase & Co. NYSE:JPM analysts led by Rajat Gupta bumped Tesla to neutral earlier this month and lifted their price target to $475. They said Tesla’s hardware-software blend is “under-appreciated and misunderstood.” But the analysts also pointed to high execution risk, calling out regulation, safety validation and technology scaling as issues. Reuters
Tesla’s spending risk matches the scale of its bets. Reuters said in April that Tesla raised its 2026 capex outlook to over $25 billion and expects negative free cash flow for the rest of this year after a first-quarter surplus. Seth Goldstein at Morningstar, Inc. NASDAQ:MORN said skeptics think this “capex doesn’t make sense.” Greg Basich from Counterpoint Research said Tesla is being stretched in “too many different directions at once.” Reuters
The stock is now exposed to both economic numbers and company updates. Doug Huber, deputy chief investment officer at Wealth Enhancement, told Reuters that a strong jobs report next week could hurt if it boosts rate-hike odds. Tesla traded at a trailing price-earnings ratio of about 349 Friday afternoon.
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