Stocks of the Week to Watch

This week, several stocks attracted significant attention from investors due to notable price movements, particularly a couple that saw considerable changes on Friday. Here are the highlights for the week:

Tesla
On Friday, shares of Tesla experienced a decline after the company’s “Robotaxi Day.” Despite the hype leading up to the event, analysts expressed disappointment over the lack of detailed information presented by Elon Musk and the company.

Morgan Stanley analysts described the event as having a “disappointing” amount of detail, stating, “We were overall disappointed with the substance and detail of the presentation. As such, we anticipate TSLA to be under pressure following the event.”

Analysts from Oppenheimer echoed this sentiment, suggesting that the event resembled a product launch rather than providing insights into its software and business models beyond vehicle sales. They pointed out that the event did not include updates on low-cost vehicle production plans or demonstrations of robotaxi or humanoid capabilities in challenging conditions. As a result, Tesla shares have fallen over 10% in the past week.

SMCI
Shares of SMCI experienced a recovery this past week, rising about 12%. On Monday, the stock surged more than 15% from the previous week’s close after the company announced it is shipping over 100,000 graphics processors per quarter.

Additionally, SMCI introduced a new suite of liquid cooling products, which contributed to the stock’s rebound following recent declines. On Tuesday, the company launched a versatile, high-density infrastructure platform optimized for AI inferencing, and on Thursday, it unveiled a new series of GPU-accelerated systems and storage servers.

China Stocks
Recent financial stimulus measures announced in China led to a temporary uptick in the country’s equities; however, Chinese stocks ultimately fell this week. Traders are now anticipating further measures from the Beijing government over the weekend.

Analysts at MRB Partners commented that China’s earnings outlook remains muted, suggesting it is premature to upgrade local stocks. They attributed the recent rally primarily to “unrealistic expectations” about government stimulus, asserting that while the overall economic outlook is positive, this does not extend to corporate earnings. Furthermore, MRB emphasized that any upgrades to Chinese stocks depend on a broad-based earnings recovery, of which there is currently no evidence.

Microstrategy
Microstrategy shares soared this week, increasing approximately 23%, with a significant portion of that gain occurring on Friday when MSTR rose over 12%. This surge followed the company’s announcement of its intention to become a Bitcoin bank.

According to reports, Michael Saylor informed analysts that the goal is to be the leading Bitcoin bank, suggesting that "Bitcoin is going to go to millions a coin, and then we create a trillion-dollar company.” Even before Saylor’s comments, Microstrategy was performing well, with the stock surging more than 200% year-to-date.