Liam Denning, Columnist

Tesla: Nothing Really Matters, Anyone Can See

Caught in a landslide of cash burn, mission creep and growing losses.

August 3, 2016 at 10:36 PM UTC

Liam Denning is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering energy. A former banker, he edited the Wall Street Journal’s Heard on the Street column and wrote the Financial Times’s Lex column.

Provide news feedback or report an error

Site feedback:

Take our Survey

This article is for subscribers only.

Let's face it: Tesla's earnings just aren't that important. For one thing, would you look at this chart and conclude this company's stock has jumped more than seven-fold over the same period?

Tesla stock is utterly indifferent to whether the company's losses are bigger or smaller than analysts predict. Wednesday's miss, at 77 percent, was the biggest ever, according to figures compiled by Bloomberg -- and the stock initially traded up after hours. I looked back at the prior 24 quarters and compared the amount by which Tesla beat or missed the consensus forecast with the next day's share price move, using data compiled by Bloomberg. The correlation coefficient was all of 0.0374 -- or, among friends, "zero."