Tesla Stock Falls Again, Putting Trillion-Dollar Status at Risk -- Barrons.com

By Al Root

Tesla stock had dropped for five consecutive days, including a four-day losing streak since the car maker reported weaker-than-expected second-quarter earnings.

Shares were lower again early Wednesday. All the declines have brought the $1 trillion mark back into focus.

Tesla stock was down 0.3%, at $306.67, in early trading, while the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average were off 0.1% and 0.8%, respectively.

A couple of minor factors were having an impact on shares. For starters, RBC analyst Tom Narayan cut his price target by $20 to $480 on Tuesday. He kept his Buy rating on the shares. Overall, the average analyst price target is now down about $18 since Tesla's earnings report. (The stock was down closer to $67 heading into Wednesday trading.)

Target cuts aren't good news. Big investors buying the dip is better news. ARK Invest's Cathie Wood bought another 40,000 Tesla shares in four funds on Tuesday. ARK has bought Tesla several times since earnings, and the stock remains the largest position in the flagship ARK Innovation exchange-traded fund.

Yet ARK's buying hasn't stopped the slide. Maybe Tesla's technicals can. Shares are now oversold, which is a technical term used by traders that essentially means a stock has gone down a lot, fast. It can also mean all the bad news is in the stock, leaving shares nowhere to go but up -- in the short term.

Oversold status can be expressed by a stock's relative strength index, or RSI. That number for Tesla sits at about 26. Below 30 is considered oversold. Tesla's RSI hasn't been that low in more than a year.

A bounce might offer investors some relief. They could use it. Coming into Wednesday trading, Tesla stock was down about 32% so far this year and down about 6% over the past 12 months, according to FactSet.

All the declines have Tesla getting close to losing its $1 trillion status.

In the past, Tesla stock was worth $1 trillion when shares were about $312. The stock is below that, but there are more shares outstanding today.

The EV maker reported it had 3.95 billion shares outstanding as of July 16. That means the new stock price mark to lose the trillion status is about $253.

A year ago, there were about 3.2 billion shares of Tesla stock outstanding. The difference between the two numbers comes down mainly to CEO Elon Musk. He exercised the options in his highly contested 2018 pay award.

Currently, there are 10 S&P 500 companies worth more than $1 trillion and three worth more than $900 billion. The former group includes the Magnificent Seven and Broadcom, Eli Lilly, and Berkshire Hathaway. The latter group includes JPMorgan Chase, Micron Technology, and Walmart.

Write to Al Root at allen.root@dowjones.com

This content was created by Barron's, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. Barron's is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

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July 29, 2026 10:04 ET (14:04 GMT)