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• 00:00Let’s turn to Tesla shares looking to bounce back after their biggest one day drop since 2020. The stock down nearly 45% so far this year, wiping out its gains since President Trump’s election win back in November. Then came out of bad writing. We continue to view Tesla as a core holding long term and see the company as the leader in real world A.I. but a bearish near-term. Ben joins us now for more. Ben. Welcome back to the program, sir. You’re one of the best, so looking forward to this conversation. Walk me through just from your standpoint, what’s leading this stock lower? Is it something bigger than just the name itself or is it Tesla specific? It’s well, it’s market is the backdrop, but Tesla specific, it’s the delivery numbers. It’s as simple as that for Q1. The stock can’t go up until the consensus numbers come down because there’s this narrative that Musk is destroying demand out there. Whether that’s right or wrong, they’re doing a morale y refresh across all four factories. And so about Y typically has 3000 deliveries in the quarter. So let’s just take out two months of that. So 200,000 cars that are being produced are just now being produced. And that’s going to be compared with all of the backdrop of the protests and all the bad stuff going on with Tesla. It’s going to extend that narrative around demand. But then deliveries have never really mattered, right? I mean, it doesn’t seem to matter how much they sell or how much they don’t sell. It’s always about this faith in longer term robotaxis and autonomous driving. Has that belief shifted? Has there been a narrative, a vibe shift among retail investors that could mean a longer lasting dip? I think so. I think over time we’ve seen the lens where Tesla’s value could be longer at some points, and when things get bad, it tends to, you know, refocus very short term. And that’s where we are right now, very short term focus. And I think that when we get a delivery number that’s worse than people are expecting, it’s going to be carried on that narrative of demand being bad because of demand disruption and that affects the long term story. Yesterday, Elon Musk was asked on Fox News about how he was running his other businesses while he was engaged in right sizing the government, and he said with great difficulty. At what point do people get concerned about the fact that their CEO is distracted and doesn’t really have time to manage the company? Forget day to day, but even week to week? Well, it’s a good question. It come up a lot because of Space X and there’s other businesses that he has now that he’s at those and he’s spending his time in Washington, D.C., I think it’s hard to defend what he’s doing a day to day basis and how much is he’ll be involved in. And you have your pundits out there, people that would normally be like on their side saying, hey, 75 bullet points of what you’ve done. I’m not saying that’s right or wrong, but we have someone that, as you well know in the media saying, hey, what you said with five points about what you do just lately, that raises eyebrows. Ben, yesterday we had our last night the president come out and in a truth post say he’s going to go out and buy a Tesla in the morning. He talked about the fact that Elon’s quote, baby is under attack and people want to do harm to Elon. If Trump comes out and buy a tesla, is that bullish or bearish for the shares? I think it’s good that he supports that. I agree that, you know, mosque is an important person in the United States globally, but I think there’s still a lot of people that are indifferent to the mosque at best. And one point that I’d like to make, what we’re talking about demand, is if we read about, you know, people’s cars being keyed or the worst case scenarios, you sort of fire if I’m indifferent or even a mosque supporter, I might pause before I go buy a Tesla. But our call is not that. Our call is the numbers are too high because of production issues in Q1, but that’s going to extend the narrative of demand disruption in the longer term. But it’s not just demand destruction potentially in the United States when it comes to Musk and his political involvement with the president and Doge. It’s we’re also seeing this in Germany and people pushing back because his support for far right a German party. How do you pinpoint potential political erosion of the shares? It’s difficult. And that’s why uncertainty is and that’s why the stock can’t go up until I keep repeating myself, until the numbers come down on the street, because it’s going to continue that narrative. But I think the, you know, Europe Council about 25% sales. I think that demand destruction, what’s actually happening there versus the United States. Now, those numbers get iffy because because they’re having production issues right now. But I think in Europe, people take this a lot more seriously. Would buy a car than the Uber driver, you know, in New York City.