Transcription
The last trading days of 2025 begin, and also the first trading days of 2026 arrive this week. And it's time to look forward for Tesla, to think about what's happening, and I have some concerns I want to share with you guys.
I want to go through my concerns for Q1 and why I think there could be a little bit of a crash or correction for Tesla stock, which would be very interesting for us to know. And also go back into my thesis why I think Tesla will have a very, very strong 2026. You know that my price target is above 1,000 for 2026. But that does not change the fact that I think Q1 could be a huge challenge. And I want to conclude the video in the end with my Pioneer Alpha strategy going into this week. I think I position myself a little bit on the hedging side. I don't like the whole situation, and we'll go into that.
So, what am I so concerned about? Well, my main concern is that the soft catalysts for Tesla have been used up. What do I mean with that? I think all the hype, all the good news that is soft good news means it's just news, it's not cash flow. Hard catalysts are cash flow, are facts that we start to getting a lot of dough rolling in into the robo taxi vertical, which means, and I gave that again and again, that target 1,800 full-time commercial robo taxis, 200 million miles a day each commercial miles, that would get us to 5% of free cash flow of 2024 Tesla. And that 5% if that happens in Q2, which I think it will, in April, May, maybe April, that would give a very strong hard catalyst to us because the analysts would see, "Oh my god, we are now annualized at a 5% free cash flow of 2024, and we are growing rapidly at 10%, 20% a month on that segment." Which means we are hitting 100% of 2024 free cash flow just in robo taxi. In other words, we are doubling the entire cash flow of Tesla just through robo taxi the same year in 2026 or early 2027. And if that happens, that is what I call a hard catalyst, where every analyst, every investor worth their salt has to buy Tesla and drive the stock above a thousand. There is simply no other way, right? That is why it's a hard catalyst because no one has a choice. This stock has to be driven up like crazy. Everything that happens before that is not hard cash at high growth coming into robo taxi at a critical mass is a soft catalyst. A soft catalyst is something that sounds good but is not directly connected in a straight line to cash, on a straight line that you can quantify time-wise. And these soft catalysts, they work great as hype. They are great fumes on that you can drive a stock, and if the market plays along, they can drive up a stock a lot. But don't forget, we are at all-time highs here.
And when we look at the stock, how it actually behaved over the last few months. If you look at this here, you know, that's a 6-month chart. And you see, you know, in August we were at 309, 328, and then had this giant run-up starting around beginning of September, and then it went all the way from 330 up to where we are now. We had this little correction here right in November when we had the AI bubble talk. That was very stupid. I told you guys that's fake news. But we fell to 390 and then we ran up to all-time highs. But what you see here is that, you know, this is all fumes-based. This is all hot fumes of Tesla talk. You know, we were here, that was in January, were at what was that? I can't even see it. That was at 392. So around 400. But then we dropped all the way down here in April. You know, the whole story, right? And then we went creeping back and then had this run. And this run was based on all the soft catalysts. So you have to understand, we are this run, this run from since September is a serious run that is not based on facts. You know, it is not based on facts because the good numbers in Q3 on sales were like, everyone knew it's kind of fake. Everyone knows the numbers will be bad now because of that, because of the EV credits and so, so on and so forth. So all that was just based on robo taxi hype that suddenly all the Wall Streeters who, you know, didn't get the message in June, now saw rolling in all these videos and people realized, "Oh, maybe FSD really works. Maybe this actually works pretty well." So this is good news for us so far. But the problem with that is these soft catalysts can't be reused. Once you use them, the air is out, right? It's being used.
So, removal of safety drivers, we have seen it in Austin. There is no news anymore. You can't say, "Oh, we removed a second safety driver." No one cares. Now, they have priced it in, like, we know, we know removal is coming or it's happening. Fine. But that doesn't drive the stock anymore. It's in high registration volume in California. You saw these 1,600 or whatever, Model Ys registered with the California FSD commission or whatever this thing is, the DMV. Okay, that's priced in. We know that there's over, there's 1,600 Model Ys registered in California for commercial robo taxi operations with a safety driver, of course. So there's no news here. If it becomes 2,000 cars, no one cares. It's like, yeah, you have a lot of cars, but they still have drivers. They're not deployed. Whatever. Q2 Cybercab confirmation like in April, Cybercab production. We know this is priced in. The market accepts it. Cybercab is coming. Okay, that might be a good indicator. But whatever the indicator is, it's priced in. Cybercab testing in Austin. We know over the weekend and before we see they're driving around. So this is real. But yeah, we know, we know it's real. It's coming. So by definition also priced in. Europe and rest of world acceptance. Yeah. Korea, Australia, and then of course Germany, Italy, France, a little bit of Sweden, Czech Republic, Netherlands, Spain. Good news. Okay, fine. We know Europe FSD is coming and rest of world accepts it more and more. It's all amazing news, don't get me wrong, for Tesla bulls. But we have to understand from a cold-blooded stock perspective, all of this is not news anymore. None of this can be anymore a soft catalyst to drive the stock higher. You could argue they are now out, so they can keep the stock here, but that's a we big argument. Okay, so we are basically running out of new soft catalysts to maintain or extend the hype, cuz we are now right now running on hype fumes. Don't forget that.
Do I think we go much, much higher? Because after the hype comes reality, and reality means this is actually happening. Yes. I think after the hype comes a massive reality check for the bears, and we go to a thousand. But not now. Not in Q1. In Q1, we are running on hype fumes. There will guaranteed be no hard catalyst. So what else could happen? What other soft catalyst can we throw in? I'm going systematically through this whole thing. What other soft catalysts could be coming that help us drive the stock higher or even keep it here? Well, we could talk about Optimus reveal. Maybe there's more videos, but we know there will be no Optimus demo in Q1. At least none I know of. So, there will be no official demo. There might be some more leaks, but we have seen Optimus already. We know it's cool. So, so what? Sure. I'm not saying there is no chance of any kind of soft catalyst on Optimus that drives the stock higher, but I don't see massive news here, right? Maybe you get two, one, two, 3% one day when they reveal something cool, but that's it. Deliveries could outperform. Maybe that happens next week. Maybe it's a surprise and Q4 is actually better than people thought. I don't think so. I think it's worse than people thought. I also think deliveries are rarely a surprise. So, everyone has priced that in. We saw the stock slide when it leaked that it's not that great. Maybe now we surprise on the upside, but I think even in the absolute best where there's some shocking surprise, which I do not expect, maybe we go up 10 or 20 bucks max, and I think that's not likely. I think we stay neutral, nothing happens, or we go down a little bit. I'm not playing deliveries. So, there's nothing here. Robo taxi. What else could happen? More safety drivers removed. Weak. Unless it's a lot. More FSD releases. They're definitely coming in Q1. We know there's a bigger release coming, but actually markets don't care anymore about FSD. They don't care about new, you know, 14.3 released or something. Everyone's like, "Sure, I know it's making progress all the time. We have seen the movie before. It is all great. We already drove the stock to all-time highs because we believe in the general story." But it's time to show some money. Europe and rest of world approvals. Maybe, you know, there's a small 2, 3, 4% boost. Maybe if the Netherlands suddenly say fine in February, that's might be coming up. I don't like any of these as big drivers. I think we really have used up our catalysts. That's what I think. I think the market understands now. Okay, fine. You hyped me up. I kind of buy it that this is happening at some point, but you can't hype me more up that it's coming at some point because I already believe it, but I need to have some evidence. I think that is the situation.
So I think the only catalyst that could truly bridge us or really move us towards this 1,000 price point was 600 for now that, you know, could happen before April, before the hard catalyst is a medium hard bridge into the hard catalyst, right? So basically, once we hit that critical mass, I think then we off to the races. But on the way there, I think the only real catalyst I can see is some bridge point. And with bridge point, I mean, it's beginning of January or end of December. Now, let's say 15th of April or something, we see that inflection point, just to put an arbitrary number in April. What happens in these three and a half months? Well, what happens is we're running out of fumes, and the stock starts dropping because people get nervous. So what could keep it up or push it towards the actual point that happens then in April, if it happens? Well, it would be a bridging catalyst. What's a bridging catalyst? If you say 1,800 robo taxis, that's where we believe the true breakthrough happens, and everyone says, "Damn, this is actually happening. There's cash rolling in like crazy. This will definitely hit the bottom line this year." Well, if we see actually many, many hundreds of robo taxis on the road, I think that gives us a one-time boost. It's a one-time boost when the investor community realizes that we are actually on track for this April, May inflection point that is now becoming more and more widespread. I made this clear again and again, it spreads in the community. So now analysts are saying, "Oh, you know, this number, maybe we should look at May, April." So if we see that this is actually happening, well, that could bridge us from 490 all-time highs, 470, 490 into that 600 or something that we could see in April, and then into the upward rocket ship momentum. So, you know, you understand my model. My my concern is that we are going into that fume phase where we are running out of fumes. And if we get the boost in April, we can easily drop to 400 or below 400 in between if we run out of fumes and all the soft catalysts are used up. So the one bridging catalyst could be that we actually see many hundreds of robo taxis, which in theory we should if we want to hit 1,800 in April. But I think it's a one-time catalyst. It's like a catalyst where the market understands, "Maybe this is really happening." That is the point where we could draw a line into these higher numbers of 600, 700, maybe 600 right now.
The question is, when do we get to hundreds of these robo taxis? Probably not next week. Probably not even in January. Probably maybe not even in February. I think this will happen later than sooner because we are dealing with some exponential inflection point we are waiting for. I think if you want to get to 1,800 to really get into the rocket ship momentum situation for Tesla, when do we get to let's say 300 actual robo taxis without drivers? Not not far before that. Probably a month before, right? It is a very hockey stick inflection point. So that means they will leave us hanging for at least 2 months. All of January, all of February. That's a long time with no catalyst from all-time highs, right? So that is my concern.
Then you also have market risks, of course, always market risks. So if the market and risks in both directions. If the market goes up another 5%, NASDAQ Tesla can go up 10% right from 470, 475 to 510 or 500, even though there's major resistance. So I think sure, can Tesla go up just randomly with the market up to 500? If the market goes up another 5%, sure. But if the market drops, I think Tesla would likely drop more than its beta. So if the market drops 5%, Tesla probably drops 15% or something. And I'm actually not, I'm more skeptical on the market. I'm, I don't have a firm macro thesis right now for January, but I don't totally like where the market is. I don't think the market is in a situation where I would say, "Sure, we are totally preparing for a bull run." I don't think that's the situation. If you look at the NASDAQ, where have we been for 6 months? I mean, look at this. I don't want to be too much of a chart astrologer here, but when you look at that, even as a layman, well, is this a great chart? We had a giant run-up since liberation day with the NASDAQ. Went all the way up here, hit all-time highs right here on end of October, then went into a little micro crash, recovered, went into a second mini micro crash, and now we are back here, little below all-time highs. Where do we go next? I mean, it could go sideways. This is a huge, huge run-up year to date, 22% up in one year. And the year before it went up like crazy, too. So if you look at 2024, look at this. This was a giant year, right? So if we rely on the market to rally from the position we are in right now, I don't know. I don't want to be a chart guru, but is that really a chart where you think, "Oh my god, we are ready to run after all the Santa Claus rally that we saw here now ending the rally, ending the Santa Claus moment and going to January?" If you, if your only hope for Tesla going up is that the market goes up, I don't know if that's a good hope. And that definitely doesn't mean it skyrockets to 550 or something. So that is another concern, the market risk. That is the situation I'm seeing.
So, what am I doing? Let's see how today goes. So this video is coming out a little early, right? We have some, not even pre-market yet. So let's see how it goes. I want to wait. I want to see what happens today. If Tesla keeps dropping, that's not great. I would rather have Tesla going up, right? Because if Tesla goes up, my thesis that I outlined here that it's going to drop becomes stronger, right? Because I want to have it as much up as possible when I actually hedge it. If it goes down more, it just means my thesis was right, but I'm late with my thesis, right? So I don't want to hedge too much if it goes down more to 465 or whatever. So, let's see if Tesla goes neutral or up today. I'm thinking to go a little harder in with going more neutral on my position because I really don't see where we are going here. And one tool how to do that are deep, uh, short deep, deep in the money calls. Right? People always talk about buying puts. I think buying puts is just the worst because you pay all the premium, you lose the premium. Tesla probably doesn't drop that much, and then you just lost your premium. I don't like it at all. If Tesla only moves a little bit down, you lose on Tesla and you don't get anything out of your puts. I don't, I never like being long puts on a super bullish stock, even in these tactical moments where I'm more bearish short-term. Short deep in the money calls are nice, right? So imagine you have a thousand Tesla shares. It's at 475, and you're selling in the money calls, let's say at 450. You get a little premium on top. Free money, and you're safe. If Tesla drops to 450, if you sell 10 of these calls, you're basically market neutral. Beautiful. With a little bit of premium you get for free. If they are, you know, two weeks running, you probably get five, six bucks premium. So you're basically fine. You basically made money. You basically locked in your position at 481. You got six bucks of free money. Let's assume it's six, right? You have two weeks. If Tesla goes sideways or goes not above 481, you made money. You made the right move. If it drops to 450, no problem. You don't lose anything. If it drops to 420, sure, you lose, but you lose much less than if you wouldn't have done that. If Tesla goes to 550, you look really stupid, right? That's where it hurts. Not that you lose money, but you don't make money. You're basically frozen at 481. So that's the risk here, right? So I look dumb if I do this and then we see a giant rally of Tesla. That would really hurt because that eats away from my alpha a lot. So that's how what I have to weigh. And of course, we want to as bulls always skew towards not going fully neutral because there's always this tail risk that Tesla randomly goes up a lot, even though I think it's incredibly not likely. But maybe Elon, you know, pulls a rabbit out of his hat, even though he did that already a bunch in December. So if you go completely neutral and then you have a rally, then you look really stupid. I just think the general risk of a Tesla rally from now, from where we are now, given the situation, giving the start of the new year, is just much lower than it dropping or going sideways. So I'm really thinking about short deep in the money calls to secure my position. When it goes, if it goes down, I'm very happy because then I have no impact or even gains. Get all the cash, can buy more Tesla shares or calls, whatever I want, and just win. If it goes sideways, I also win. If it goes up, I lose. So, let's see how it goes. If Tesla drops today, there are other ways of doing this. You could also sell close to the money calls with two-week runtime. That gives you much more premium, much more premium, more buffer to the upside, but protects you much less on the downside. If it falls more, if it falls 20 more, you probably start losing money. So that's what I'm thinking. I'm really in hedging and locking in mode. I think that's the right alpha move. As you know, all alpha moves are probabilistic. So, you will lose on these things from time to time. And it's all about winning more than you lose. So if I do this four times, one time I do this specific move and Tesla goes to 510, I look like an idiot. I lost money. You know what I mean? Lost alpha. I didn't lose money. But three times I'm right and Tesla drops to 450. Then I win. I lost money once. I made the same amount of money roughly three times. So I made money twice. That's how alpha works, right? So you will catch me from time to time making these moves and being wrong, and you know that you can always go to Pioneer Alpha, definitely visit this website frequently and check how I am doing. So you see here the whole performance of me. This is my performance year to date from Friday. Um, I'm actually underperforming RQ. I'm outperforming ARK 8.33% over the year. I'm definitely massively outperforming with 70 percentage points TSL. Uh, and I'm outperforming Tesla by a ton by 31%. So I made 31% more money, 31 percentage points more money than you would have made with 100% Tesla in your portfolio. So I'm very proud of that. I'm not proud of this that AQ beat me by two percentage points. How is this even possible? But I beat ARK, destroyed TSL. I had a different video on that. You can always check it out. Of course, these loser funds like MSCI World, yeah, I totally outperformed it by 27%. And the Dow Jones I beat by 34%, the NASDAQ I beat by 26%, and the S&P by 30%. I mean, that happens if you make 48%. But the main thing is I beat Tesla because I'm mainly in Tesla. So all my alpha strategies like this one actually were super productive this year. That is a huge beat, and I intend to keep it this way next year, but next week it will be, it will be tricky. So that's why I'm sharing these thoughts. Let's see how the week goes. We will have that every week now, and then we will look on Saturdays back and see what actually happened. There's no place to hide for me because you will have the website. These are all real numbers, not fakeable. You will see exactly what happened here. And how does the week look like on TSLL? TSL is down 3.26%, and I'm down 1.5%. This week I have an alpha of 1.76 over TSL. So very interesting. I hope that was helpful. Be cautious out there. The year is changing into 2026. It's a tricky transition. I would be prepared for some things that happen. So let's see how it goes. I hope that was interesting. See you tomorrow.