NEW YORK (dpa-AFX) – After profit-taking in post-Christmas trading as a result of the record rally in the previous weeks, Tesla shares are looking to have a good start to 2026. The focus on the first trading day of the new year will be on the electric car manufacturer’s sales figures expected in the afternoon. On the Tradegate trading platform, the Tesla shares changed hands on Friday morning for the equivalent of just under $457. That’s a price increase of a good one and a half percent at the US close on December 31st.
This would still be around ten percent short of the record high of almost $499 on December 22nd, after some investors took advantage of the strong run in stocks to cash in in the rather thin trading after Christmas.
Looking at the delivery figures expected later on Friday, analysts are expecting an average of around 440,900 vehicles for the fourth quarter of 2025, according to Bloomberg data. That would be a decrease of eleven percent year-on-year. However, even weaker sales would not be surprising after Tesla unusually published its own analyst consensus this time, signaling a 15 percent decline.
And the industry experts are not too optimistic about 2026 either. The average estimate for deliveries this year recently fell to around 1.8 million vehicles – after around 1.6 million in 2025. For comparison: just two years ago, the forecast for 2026 was more than 3 million vehicles sold.
The most important reason for the sluggish development is, in addition to Musk himself, who may have alienated certain potential groups of buyers with his support for US President Donald Trump, and above all the competition from Chinese car manufacturers. Competitor BYD achieved its own sales target in 2025 and is now likely to be ahead of Tesla as the world’s largest electric car manufacturer. BYD delivered around 4.6 million vehicles in 2026, including 2.3 million purely electric cars.
However, from an investor’s perspective, Tesla is now less of a bet on electric car sales and more on the business with self-driving robotaxis and humanoid robots.
Shareholders are also counting on Musk to stay on the ball at Tesla and push the projects forward after agreeing to a huge compensation package at the beginning of November. With this, Musk can receive a share package worth a trillion dollars if certain milestones are reached in the coming years.
Hope had driven the Tesla share price, especially in the last third of 2025, so that despite the price collapse well into April, a price increase of a good eleven percent is on the cards for the old year. The price had more than doubled since the annual low in April. This meant that Tesla had a market value of around $1.4 trillion at the end of 2025.
Tesla boss Musk is, among other things, the world’s wealthiest person because of his Tesla share package with assets currently worth more than $600 billion. He also has shares in the space company SpaceX. This will be listed on the stock exchange this year – according to information from the Bloomberg news agency, the aim is to achieve a valuation of more than a trillion dollars./mis/edh/zb
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