Jefferies hiked the equity's price target to a Street high of $1,400 earlier
Electric vehicle giant Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) down 3.3% at $1,181.40 at last check, after Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk took to Twitter (TWTR) again. Over the weekend, Musk asked his over 62.9 million followers -- in the form of a Twitter poll -- if he should sell 10% of his stake in the company, which totals over $20.8 billion and equates to roughly one day's worth of the stock's typical daily trading volume. Musk's considered sale comes amid a proposal to levy a tax on billionaires for unrealized stock gains.
Despite Musk's controversial tweets, Jefferies hiked the equity's price target to a Street high of $1,400, after raising estimates across the company's income and balance sheets by 16%. Analysts are mostly bearish on TSLA, with 12 of the 21 in question carrying a tepid "hold" or worse rating, while the 12-month consensus target price of $809.32 is a 31.5% discount to current levels.
Today's pullback has the equity cooling off from a Nov. 4, all-time high of $1,243.49. The 40-day moving average has acted as a consistent level of support for Tesla stock since June, while the $1,130 region seems poised to contain these recent losses. Year-over-year, TSLA remains up 174.7%.
The options pits lean pessimistic, too. At the International Securities Exchange (ISE), Cboe Options Exchange (CBOE), and NASDAQ OMX PHLX (PHLX), TSLA's 50-day put/call volume ratio of 0.82 sits higher than 94% of readings from the past year. This high percentile means that while calls outnumber puts on an absolute basis, long puts have been getting picked up at a quicker-than-usual pace during the last two months.