Tesla’s Robotaxi Hype Fuels Bullish Price Targets to $500

Considering how much pain investors of Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA) had to endure during the first quarter of the year, there are perhaps not many on Wall Street who thought they'd manage to gain the better part of 50% in less than three months.

However, that's exactly what they've done, largely thanks to CEO Elon Musk's stepping back from White House duties, increased hype around their Robotaxi launch, and a sense that the worst-case scenario has already been priced into the stock. 

As they continue to consolidate with mostly sideways action since the first week of June, it's a good time to take stock of what the summer might look like for the shares of the automotive giant.

While the stock has undoubtedly received its fair share of negative headlines in recent weeks, there are still many reasons to like Tesla for the long term. 

Getting Involved in Tesla 

For investors on the sidelines weighing up an entry or an exit, two very interesting and unusual things took place last week that should be closely watched: Tesla received both a pair of Sell ratings and a pair of Buy ratings. For a stock that the bulls and the bears have closely fought over, this hardly clarifies things for investors trying to make a call.

But upon close examination, there's actually a pretty solid opportunity opening up here, and these calls might even make it easier. Let's jump in and take a closer look. 

Bears Reiterate Their Case

Starting with the bearish updates, which came first at the start of last week, we saw the teams from both Guggenheim and UBS Group reiterate their Sell ratings on the stock. Unconvinced by Tesla's nearly 50% gain in just a few weeks, the analysts there were happy to overlook the potential upside from the company's much-awaited Robotaxi launch, which took place on Monday.

With its price-to-earnings ratio around the 175 mark, Guggenheim's Ronald Jewsikow also sounded the alarm on Tesla's valuation, which has repeatedly been flagged as a reason to be cautious.

Potential 50% Downside

Even though Tesla's shares have always shown signs of not caring about the underlying PE, Jewsikow's price target of $175 must have raised a few eyebrows. Considering that Tesla closed out last week trading just above $320, it implies that a loss of close to 50% is around the corner.

This would result in shares trading back at 52-week lows, which is an extreme forecast for someone who didn't provide much justification beyond stating that the company's fundamentals are "deteriorating at an alarming rate." 

It's true that Tesla's post-April recovery seems to have run out of steam, and it might well be worrying that shares have failed to kick on since their peak in late May, but the stock has still been setting higher highs throughout June, all in the face of their most recent earnings report which was indeed one of their worst updates to their fundamentals in quite some time.

But the fact that the stock has remained consistently higher since then suggests the market doesn't care quite as much about that as the bears might want it to. 

Bulls See Big Upside

On the other hand, by the end of last week, Tesla had received two fresh bullish updates: one from Canaccord Genuity Group and one from Benchmark. The latter boosted its price target to $475, just marginally below Tesla's street-high price target of $500, which came from Wedbush earlier this month.

The teams were unanimous in their optimism around the company's Robotaxi launch, which they see as a key milestone in Tesla's journey to offer the most cost-effective driverless cars.

Echoing much of what his peers have shared in recent months, Benchmark's Mickey Legg wrote that "in our view, the company is undergoing an evolution from a trailblazing vehicle OEM to a high-tech automation and robotics company with unmatched domestic manufacturing scale."

As Tesla stock has shown time and again, it has a stronger tendency to be bought for these kinds of reasons than to be sold due to valuation concerns, as flagged by Guggenheim. The fact that the stock is up close to 50% since missing analyst expectations in its May earnings report by a wide margin tells you a lot about how Tesla investors view the longer-term opportunity. 

As July approaches, it's expected that Tesla will keep generating mixed opinions, as it has historically. However, the ticker tells the story, and so far, at least, it's telling us that the stock wants to, and will, go higher.

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Value vs Growth Ratio Hits Cycle Low—Top Value Picks to Buy

The benchmark process is at the core of measuring financial market performance, and seeing a single stock or asset class perform on its own offers very little information to investors unless it is benchmarked against another useful and related name or space, where the entire methodology comes into play. 

Today, one specific ratio could send value stocks flying next.

In a world where the most exciting stocks on the market have seen their valuations rise to stratospheric levels, other high-quality businesses have been left behind and forgotten during this rally.

Times like these offer investors some of the best opportunities to close the performance gap as long as they land on the right side of the equation. Today, that side suggests that value stocks will outperform.

By tracking the performance ratio between the iShares S&P 500 Value ETF (NYSEARCA: IVE) and the iShares S&P 500 Growth ETF (NYSEARCA: IVW), investors can see how the past couple of quarters have created a gap that can be exploited. Within this space, it is stocks like PepsiCo Inc. (NASDAQ: PEP), Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE: BRK.B), and even Coca-Cola Co. (NYSE: KO) that act as some of the best picks moving forward.

An Inevitable Rotation Swings in Favor of Pepsi Stock

Given that this ratio is now at a cyclical low, it is the law of the market that a catalyst down the line might shift things back into balance. Whether it's trade negotiations, geopolitical conflicts, or economic data within the United States, there is a high likelihood that an event will occur to shift the sentiment and capital rotation back to discounted value.

This is where Pepsi stock comes into play, as it not only trades at a low 72% of its 52-week high but also on a forward price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of only 16.4x today, the lowest valuation multiple seen for the company since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Logic will argue that this business is doing much better than it was even before the pandemic, and today’s economic conditions are nowhere near what they were back then; lockdowns and uncertainty could surely justify such a discounted multiple for Pepsi, though the reasoning is lacking for it to go back to such a cheap multiple in today’s market.

This creates a massive opportunity for investors to start accumulating positions in Pepsi stock for the coming months and quarters, but it will be the value-to-growth ratio that ultimately tells them when this rotation begins. It looks like some of the “smart money” corner has already begun rotating ahead of this broader sentiment shift, according to institutional flows.

Those from UBS Asset Management have now built a stake worth up to $1.7 billion in Pepsi stock, which acts as a reiteration of this upcoming shift happening sooner rather than later, something investors must consider in their views.

Momentum and Upside Already in Berkshire Hathaway

Whenever anyone thinks of a value play, Berkshire Hathaway is always at the top of the list, which might explain why this holding company now trades at 90% of its 52-week high compared to many others in the value space. If sentiment is expected to change and rotate into value stocks, it’s logical to see this name lead the way first.

More than just momentum relative to its highs, investors can see that as far back as March 2025, analyst Kevin Heal from Argus placed a valuation target of up to $575 for Berkshire Hathaway stock. The fact that this view hasn’t changed since then says a lot about how Wall Street feels about this stock and its future, but that’s not all.

Compared to today’s prices, this valuation calls for not only a new 52-week high to be broken through but also up to 18% additional upside potential. Chances are that, when the rotation happens, there will be a lot more updates coming from other analysts expressing where they see the true value of Berkshire Hathaway heading.

Premium Investors Go for Coca-Cola

There are some in the market who would argue Pepsi stock is very cheap today for reasons that are yet to be known, and that’s a risk most aren’t willing to take. If that is the case, then the opposite view can be taken regarding premiums, and this is where Coca-Cola comes into play, with a steep 28.2x P/E valuation compared to the consumer staples sector's average of 19.6x.

However, some of the reasons why Coca-Cola is trading at 90% of its 52-week high should be the same ones that could lead Pepsi higher, so having both in a watchlist could yield great results with less volatility. A weakening dollar, a pending rotation into value, and momentum will all serve as bullish factors for these international consumer names.

In fact, it appears that investors from UBS Asset Management did their homework on both Pepsi and Coca-Cola, as they also built up a position of $2.2 billion in Coca-Cola as of the same dates when they established a position in Pepsi, indicating that this rotation is more than just a thesis.

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Biotech Catalyst Alert: NKTR, CDTX & WGS Rallying With Big Gains

The biopharmaceuticals space is notorious for sudden, sharp rallies, and for precipitous sell-offs as well. The industry is crowded with names, many of which are tiny firms working toward developing a small number of drug candidates and lacking a means of achieving profitability until one or more of those products make it to market. 

As such, there can be a revolving door of healthcare names for investors to watch, and the most talked-about companies are often ones with pending trial data or other major developments on the horizon.

Three such firms Nektar Therapeutics (NASDAQ: NKTR), Cidara Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ: CDTX), and GeneDx Holdings Corp. (NASDAQ: WGS) have recently experienced rallies that are likely to put them on healthcare investors' radar. What's more, these companies all have strong votes of confidence from bullish Wall Street analysts as well.

Rezpeg Phase 2b Trial Successes Send Nektar Shares Upward

Nektar develops immunotherapy drug candidates such as rezpegaldesleukin (Rezpeg), a candidate for the treatment of systemic lupus erythematosus and ulcerative colitis, among other conditions. Indeed, one of those other conditions, atopic dermatitis (eczema), has been most notable for Nektar in recent days. 

With success on both primary and secondary goals in its recent Phase 2b trial and a Fast Track designation from the FDA, Rezpeg appears poised to help to address eczema for the roughly 10 million patients across the United States facing this condition. Shares rallied after Nektar's announcement of the latest trial results.

Nektar's latest impressive rally began on June 23, 2025, and sent shares more than tripling in value in the span of five trading days. However, it's important to note that the rally already showed signs of faltering in the same week in which it began. Besides that, Nektar's share price at the peak of the rally was just under $30 per share.

This is still dramatically lower than its all-time high of more than $1,500 per share from early 2018, and lower than the price of the stock for essentially all of its trading history up until the last two years. Nonetheless, six out of seven analysts view NKTR as a Buy, with upside potential of about 227% based on a consensus price target of $84.17.

Major Advance in Non-Vaccine Flu Preventative for Cidara

Cidara is known for innovative therapies such as rezafungin acetate, a treatment for invasive fungal infections, and drug-Fc conjugates, or drugs that use human antibody fragments. CDTX shares reached their highest level since spring 2021 in late June, when they climbed by almost 150% in about a week. The spike aligned with the company's positive phase 2b trial results for CD388, a non-vaccine for the prevention of seasonal influenza.

Investors have long seen CD388 as a key component of Cidara's pipeline, and this latest data, including a noteworthy 76% symptomatic influenza protection rate for 24 weeks for a single 450-milligram dose, indicates that a phase 3 trial is likely not far off. Should CD388 reach the market, it is likely a game-changer for the biopharma space.

CD388 could either aid traditional vaccines or supplant them as a once-per-season preventative for seasonal flu, with a massive potential market.

While analysts are widely bullish on CDTX (all nine rating the stock have assigned it a Buy), investors should note that the company also issued $250 million in new stock the same week as the CD388 announcement in a potentially dilutive move.

Promising Partnership and AAP Guidance, But Other Concerns Remain for GeneDx

GeneDx is known for its Centrellis platform, utilizing AI to conduct genomics-related diagnostics. Investors have had sky-high hopes for the company that have not necessarily come to pass. In fact, despite topping analyst predictions for first-quarter sales by about 10% and raising guidance to suggest at least 30% year-over-year (YOY) revenue gains for FY 2025, WGS shares plummeted by almost 50% around the start of May 2025.

In the last several days of June, the stock surged by nearly 40% to recapture some of that decline.

The latest rally coincided with GeneDx's announcement of a partnership with Galatea Bio to provide genetic testing for common diseases, including cardiovascular diseases and, eventually, hereditary cancers.

It also aligned with updated guidance from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommending exome and genome sequencing as first-tier tests for children with intellectual disability and global developmental delay. 

Both of these factors are likely to drive business for GeneDx.

Six out of eight analysts rate WGS a Buy, but investors should beware of its comparably high valuation, a recent and potentially concerning sequential volume decline, and the threat of competitors in the difficult genomic diagnostics space.

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