Investors haven’t been big believers in Tesla the last few days.
The stock is down 5 percent in the past week, and falling back into bear market territory after renewed fears over the company’s Model 3 production had investors hitting the sell button. As far as the stock’s future performance is concerned, it all comes down to whether the company can deliver, said Boris Schlossberg, director of FX strategy at BK Asset Management.
“The car itself is so great that if you can just unleash it onto the populace and demand fills what it’s supposed to fill, all of those problems will go away,” he said Wednesday on CNBC’s “Trading Nation.” “So in some ways, it’s sort of the ultimate faith stock and you have to just be a huge believer. … If you are, then it’s probably a great buy here because it will recover.”
Despite the recent drop, Tesla is still up 47 percent year to date, tracking for its best year since 2014.
But in addition to the risks surrounding Tesla’s Model 3 production and delivery numbers, Dennis Davitt of Harvest Volatility Management points to two more factors that could cause investors to lose their faith in the stock.
The first, he says, are interest rates. “As rates keep climbing higher, that’s going to be a concern for Tesla,” he said on “Trading Nation.” “Tesla is very linked to interest rates for all of the borrowing that they have on their debt on their balance sheet.”
The second risk could be Tesla’s new semi trucks that CEO Elon Musk himself unveiled back in November. While orders for the truck are already piling up, Davitt cautions that the semi’s battery could actually be another Achilles’ heel for the automaker.
“If you talk to people who are in the trucking business, the biggest problem with the semi truck is the time to recharge the batteries,” he said. “Semi trucks need to move to make money; sitting idle for 8 or 9 hours while batteries recharge is not necessarily the most efficient use of the capital spent to buy that truck.”
Tesla recovered some of its losses on Thursday, trading at around $315.30.
Tesla’s back in bear market territory, but it could be a great buy here, says market watcher