Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) shares are fluctuating on Friday. TD Cowen reiterated a Buy rating on the stock and kept its price target unchanged at $460. Here’s what you should know.
- Tesla stock is showing downward bias. What’s ahead for TSLA stock?
TD Cowen Keeps Bullish Stance on Tesla
TD Cowen analyst Itay Michaeli maintained a Buy rating on Tesla and held his price target at $460, implying about 32.76% upside from the stock’s current price of $346.50.
The reiteration followed a conversation TD Cowen hosted with autonomous vehicle expert Alex Roy during the firm’s Internet Bus Tour, centered on the outlook for AV ridesharing and the potential for licensing self-driving technology to automakers.
Roy told the firm that Tesla and Waymo remain the two companies best positioned to scale autonomous vehicles nationally, though each faces a different challenge. Waymo leads on safety and rollout scale but must shrink the size of its sensor hardware to make licensing to automakers realistic, while Tesla is working to improve the safety of its software even though it lacks the kind of head-to-head safety data that would let it be compared directly with Waymo.
Roy framed rider behavior as a factor that could work in Tesla’s favor over time, predicting that younger customers will likely accept whatever safety level Tesla offers as good enough for their needs, regardless of how it stacks up against Waymo’s. He also floated a longer timeline for the industry overall, telling the firm a leading U.S. company has roughly a five-year window to lock in dominant national scale.
Michaeli described his overall view on Tesla as cautiously positive, saying the Buy rating reflects confidence in the company’s AV positioning, tempered by the lack of disclosed metrics that would let investors size up Tesla’s safety record against Waymo’s.
Tesla’s Chart Shows a Stock Stuck in Neutral
Tesla’s chart offers some clues as to why today’s pullback hasn’t turned into something sharper. Shares are holding above their 20-day simple moving average of $328.87 and trading roughly in line with their 20-day exponential moving average of $337.65, a setup that has kept the decline from accelerating.
The bigger concern shows up further out on the chart. Tesla remains 9.2% below its 50-day moving average of $370.98, 12% below its 100-day average of $382.73 and 17.1% below its 200-day average of $406.05, a gap that keeps the intermediate and long-term trend tilted lower.
Momentum readings back up that picture of a stock caught in the middle. The relative strength index sits at 45.96, a neutral level that signals the stock isn’t oversold enough to expect a bounce or strong enough to suggest buyers are back in control. The stock’s recent momentum extremes bracket that range, with RSI hitting overbought territory around May’s swing high and oversold territory around July’s swing low.
The moving-average structure still favors sellers over the longer term. Tesla’s 20-day average remains below its 50-day average, and an April death cross, when the 50-day average fell below the 200-day, continues to keep the broader trend cautious until the stock can reclaim those higher averages. Traders are watching $355.50 as resistance, a level that lines up with a zone below the 50-day average where past rebounds have stalled, and $297.50 as support, just above the stock’s 52-week low of $297.38.
TSLA Shares Are Fluctuating
TSLA Price Action: Tesla shares were up 0.07% at $340.21 at the time of publication on Friday, according to Benzinga Pro.
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