Tesla faces declining sales, contracting margins, and brand damage, with increased competition eroding its market share in Europe and California.

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After soaring in 2023 and 2024, shares of Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) were battered throughout Q1 2025. And while the stock performed marginally better in Q2, the largest U.S. EV-maker slid into Q3. Over the past five days,

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Tesla is a story stock, as investors are always believing in Elon Musk's grand vision. Based on the valuation, which is not even remotely rooted in the reality of the business today, the market sees Tesla succeeding with its goal of launching a global robo-taxi platform. Musk thinks this service could see "quasi-infinite" demand.

Here are the bull, bear, and base cases for the EV titan Tesla, as well as the varied viewpoints of multiple Wall Street pros.

Tesla, Inc.'s Q2 earnings disappoint, but a $16.5B Samsung chip deal powers optimism for Robotaxi/Optimus. Discover insights on TSLA stock and its next steps.

"Tesla is crossing the chasm to autonomy while absorbing slower volume, EV incentive elimination, tariffs and investing in new initiatives that may not make margins for years," Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas, a longtime Tesla bull, wrote early Thursday.

Tesla's valuation gains today follow a bigger sell-off in yesterday's trading that was spurred by disappointing second-quarter results and comments from management suggesting that performance headwinds could continue in the near term. The company's share price has seen some big swings in 2025, and is down roughly 21% year to date with today's pop.

Tesla's market cap fell below $1 trillion, but it still reflects investors' assumptions of enormous future growth.

Investors held onto hopes that the U.S. and Japan’s trade agreement could lead to a tariff breakthrough with other countries, and pushed the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite to fresh record highs.

Volume was lower on the Nasdaq exchange while higher on the New York Stock Exchange compared with Monday, in preliminary numbers. On the Nasdaq exchange, falling stocks edged out rising ones by more than 2-to-1. In yet another rotation on the NYSE, winners slightly edged out losers.