What happened
Shares of electric car titan Tesla (TSLA -1.06%) had tumbled 4.1% by noon EDT on Monday on a bevy of news reports that were at least tangentially related to the stock.
Image source: Getty Images.
So what
This weekend, Elon Musk hosted Saturday Night Live. That should have been good news for Tesla -- the CEO did manage to plug his company in everything from the opening monologue to multiple skits. But Tesla's competitors didn't let the opportunity go to waste, either.
Over the course of the 90-minute show, Ford Motor Company (F -0.41%), Volkswagen (VWAGY), and Lucid Motor company's Churchill Capital Corp IV (CCIV) purchased air time to advertise their competing electric cars to folks tuning in to watch the Tesla CEO.
And speaking of competition, in another development that probably should have been good news for Tesla investors, Wedbush Securities took the opportunity to plug Tesla stock this morning. It said that "underlying consumer EV demand looks robust in China, Europe, with the U.S. playing catchup," and that "April and May demand look strong" for EVs, reports TheFly.com. Unfortunately, in the course of recommending once again that investors buy Tesla stock, Wedbush also described rising competition from EV rivals such as Ford, Volkswagen, and Lucid. And it highlighted the chip shortage that is slowing automotive production around the globe, and reminded investors of Tesla's PR crisis in China!
Now what
So what started out as an endorsement of Tesla stock, and a prediction that Tesla shares will go to $1,000, may have ended up just spooking Tesla investors further.
The last thing investors want to hear, when investing in a stock that costs 665 times earnings (and apparently not from any earnings selling cars), is more bad news on what was supposed to be a good-news day.
