Tesla stock’s post-election boom just powered the shares to an all-time high

Tesla stock beat its previous all-time high Wednesday, as investors and analysts foresee major gains from self-driving vehicles, robots, and CEO Elon Musk’s relationship with the next president.

The stock has been a tear over the last month after Donald Trump won the presidential election, aided by Musk’s generous spending. The stock climbed to a new record of $424.88 per share before closing at $424.77 on Wednesday. In pre-market trading Thursday, the stock is slightly up, bringing the price to almost $426 a pop.

The previous record for intraday trading was $414.50 per share on Nov. 4, 2021. Trading closed that day at $409.97, which was the stock’s split-adjusted all-time closing high.

“As foretold in the prophecy, Musk wrote in a post on his X Wednesday afternoon as the stock hit $420 a share. In 2018, he said he was considering taking Tesla private at that price, which is a marijuana reference.

In recent weeks, investors have been excited by Trump’s potential actions that could aid the automaker, including streamlining autonomous vehicle regulations and ending the $7,500 consumer tax credits for electric vehicles. But Tesla will likely face a hit in sales if the credits are nixed and the company’s technology isn’t ready to take advantage of eased regulatory changes concerning driverless cars, according to experts.

Tesla has also benefitted from a number of positive analyst reactions to the stock surge, with many raising their price targets.

Morgan Stanley’s (MS+0.46%) Adam Jonas joined the party on Tuesday, adding Tesla as a “top pick” and raising the firm’s price target to $400 per share from $310. He warned that killing the EV tax credit could slow adoption and that “higher competition with tariff hikes are an inflationary wild-card.”

Goldman Sachs (GS-0.83%) on Wednesday raised its price target to $345 from $250, noting that it expects Tesla to face near-to-medium term headwinds to its auto businesses.

Cantor Fitzgerald’s Andres Sheppard raised the firm’s price target to $365 per share from $255, citing bullishness on Tesla’s robotaxi plans and a potential federal framework for self-driving vehicles. Bank of America (BAC-1.16%) analysts, who raised their price target to $400 per share from $350, pointed to a recent visit to Tesla’s Texas factory, which gave them “increased confidence” in Tesla’s core EV businesses and the Optimus humanoid robots.

Musk has been forecasting an eventual price of $250,00 to $30,000 per robot, as well as a long-term scenario where they add $20 trillion to the company’s market capitalization.

Tesla’s market capitalization was almost $1.3 trillion as of Wednesday.

Wall Street analysts are “tripping over each other” to raise their price targets, wrote The Future Fund Managing Partner Gary Black on Tuesday, pointing to a chart showing that the average price target is still $260 per share. “How does a highly paid WS sales team get on the phone and tell clients to buy a stock with little or no upside?”

He also raised his price target — to $380 per share from $300 — on Monday, citing his “increased conviction” that Tesla will launch an affordable electric hatchback in 2025.

While some analysts have expressed caution over aspects of Tesla’s business, others have gone a bit further to dampen investors’ enthusiasm. UBS (UBS-0.21%) analyst Joseph Spak wrote in a report late last month that the rise is “mostly driven by animal spirits/momentum (which has happened multiple times in TSLA’s history).”

The company’s stock has repeatedly been criticized for behaving like a meme stock, given Musk’s massive influence over Tesla influencers and retail investors. In the past, analysts have even noted that they have “painfully” discovered that memes shared on Reddit can affect the stock more than actual financial metrics.