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Contrary to what many believe, Tesla (ticker: TSLA) was founded in 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning. Elon Musk, Tesla's CEO, joined the company after investing north of US$6 million in Series A and was shortly after charged with heading up its Board of Directors.
Tesla is a US multinational organisation primarily engaged in the design, development, and sales of electric vehicles, energy generation, and Artificial Intelligence (AI). According to market capitalisation, it remains one of the world’s largest companies (current: US$727 billion). The company also forms part of the Magnificent Seven Stocks, a powerhouse of market dominance that includes Apple (AAPL), Amazon (AMZN), Alphabet (GOOG), Meta (META), Microsoft (MSFT), and Nvidia (NVDA).
With more than 100,000 employees, Tesla remains a dominant player in the electric car market. The company’s innovative and unique electric vehicle designs, strong leadership, commitment to sustainability, and ability to attract top talent have helped shape its ongoing success.
CFDs, or ‘Contracts for Differences’, offer a unique and cost-effective method of investing in the stock market. At the core of things, CFDs are cash-settled leveraged derivative products, meaning physical delivery is never an option, unlike in the futures and options markets.
Traders and investors worldwide engage in CFD trading largely to speculate on a particular financial instrument or hedge risk exposure. Tradeable markets in the CFD space include currencies (the Forex market), Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs), Bonds, Commodities, Digital Currencies, Global Indices, and individual stocks, like Tesla.
With CFDs, as briefly alluded to above, it is important to understand that you do not take physical ownership of the underlying asset. CFDs facilitate trading of the underlying asset’s price movement, either entering long (executing a buy position) or short (a sell position).
One of the benefits of CFD trading is its leverage facility; by trading on margin, CFD traders can leverage their positions. As a basic example, entering short Tesla with FP Markets at $100 for 10 shares, with a margin requirement of 5%, you would need to deposit 5% of the total position size: 50 USD = (1,000 total position size * 0.05). This permits the CFD trader to trade the equivalent position size of 1,000 USD.
At FP Markets, you can invest in Tesla Share CFDs using a wide range of trading platforms, including MetaTrader 5 (MT5) and cTrader.
Account opening is straightforward and often activated within a few hours.
To open an FP Markets trading account, click the ‘OPEN LIVE' tab in the upper right corner of the main webpage, as shown below:
You will then be directed to the Account Application webpage, which involves four steps: personal details, configuring your account (e.g., which trading platform you intend to use and leverage), and a declaration.
2. Download your Trading Platform
Once the account application has been completed and approved, you will receive the account details through your registered email address (including the account server, the trading account ID, and password). You can then enter the FP Markets Client Portal and proceed to download your preferred trading platform, as per below:
3. Find the Tesla Ticker
The process of selecting the Tesla ticker through MetaTrader 4 (MT4) or MT5 is similar. For this article, we’ll assume you’re an MT5 user.
With MT5, a ‘click to add’ function is available at the lower section of Market Watch (Ctrl+M); typing Tesla and selecting the stock will make the Tesla ticker visible in your Market Watch.
Then, drag and drop the instrument to the chart’s interface on the right, and the chart will open and begin showing updated, real-time prices. Subsequently, chart modifications to suit personal preferences (e.g., background colour, candles or bars, timeframes, and adding technical indicators and drawing tools) will be possible.
4. Place the Buy or Sell Order
Following research, be it technical analysis, fundamental analysis, or a combination of the two, you can buy and sell Tesla in a few ways on MT4 or MT5 (the process is similar).
One of the most common ways of buying or selling a stock CFD on MT5 is to press F9 to open the order window, as displayed below. You are then free to alter settings to suit your trade idea, from trading volume to stop-loss and take-profit levels, as well as type of execution to whether you want to buy or sell the stock.
Another way is to allow one-click trading by right-clicking on the chart interface and selecting ‘One Click Trading’, which allows traders to execute trades with ‘one-click’ (see below), or select ‘Alt+T’. This feature will allow traders to buy or sell and select the volume (stop-loss orders and take-profit orders must be configured in the Trading Terminal [Ctrl+T]).
Examples of long and short positions in Stock CFDs can be found below:
While Tesla is one of the largest companies in the world and is headed by global visionary Elon Musk, the decision to invest in the company will depend on each investor’s investment strategy and goals.
Tesla is rarely far from making a news headline. It is a cutting-edge company focussing on electric vehicles and AI development. The company’s share price has experienced remarkable rallies and declines over the years; all-time highs north of $400 were observed in 2021 from as low as $20 in 2019, with the current price at $216. This makes the stock a possibly rewarding investment, both on the long and short sides.
Released on 23 July, the latest earnings report for Q2 24 largely came up short. While total revenue increased +2% year on year to $US25.5 billion (beating market expectations of $US24.8 billion), net income fell through the floor, down by -45% to $US1.48 billion. Earnings Per Share (EPS) came in at 52 cents, below the 61 cents expected, with free cash flow at $US1.3 billion versus the $US1.9 billion expected. The stock’s share price fell strongly amid out-of-hours trading, closing the session down -12% on Wednesday (24 July).
So, is the Tesla stock in trouble? Technical studies exhibit room for sellers to explore lower levels.
Looking at Tesla from the weekly timeframe, technical analysts using basic support and resistance levels will acknowledge that the stock manoeuvred through support at $234, now a possible resistance to watch. The primary observation on the weekly chart is that there is scope to navigate lower levels until support from $206.
From the daily timeframe, price action is wedged within the limits of a descending channel, comprising a high of $271 and a low of $233. Interestingly, the latest test of channel support failed to find acceptance above weekly resistance at $234, suggesting that buyers lack strength on the daily chart and could be headed for trendline support, extended from the low of $138.80.
This indicates that sellers could remain in the ‘driving seat’ until reaching support made up of daily support from $203 and weekly support at $206.
Owning shares of Tesla – usually ‘common’ or ‘preferred’ – will make you the ‘beneficiary holder’ of the purchased shares, and the investment broker you use will be the ‘nominee shareholder’. You hold the ‘right’ to the shares purchased.
Investing in physical shares means the investor owns a slice of a publicly listed company, in this case, Tesla. The investor is a shareholder, and the invested amount can increase or decrease in value depending on the company’s performance. The investor may also receive dividend payments and have voting rights.
Futures and options contracts are leveraged derivative instruments that, for the most part, are exchange-traded and can sometimes involve taking physical delivery of the underlying asset. So, if you purchased a call option (provides the contract holder with the right but not the obligation to buy a specified number of Tesla shares at a specific price [the strike price] at the contract’s expiration date [or before]) and held the contract until expiration, the call buyer has the right to buy the stock at (or before in many cases depending on the option type) expiration. A premium must be paid to the call seller for this right.
Futures and options are also standardised derivatives contracts. Specific specifications, such as physical delivery details and the contract’s expiration date, are clearly outlined.
ETFs are popular pooled investment vehicles listed on a stock exchange, bought and sold like regular stocks. ETFs can be both passive and active investments, with the former often tracking the performance of major indices. In the stock market, ETFs can also be categorised by sector, for example, and, as a result, the performance of Tesla’s stock and ETFs is unlikely to be the same.
Not only are ETFs low-cost and very often tax efficient, investing in an ETF provides investors access to a broad selection of securities, helping to diversify risk exposure.
1. Does Tesla pay a dividend?
Tesla has never paid a dividend on common stock.
2. What are the major differences between CFDs and physical shares?
There are two primary differences.
First, physical shares involve ownership of the stock – you own a portion of the company as a shareholder – while in CFD trading, you trade the underlying price movement on that stock and never take ownership (CFDs are always cash-settled transactions).
Second, CFDs and physical shares differ in terms of leverage. CFDs offer much higher access to leverage, while physical share dealing is generally unleveraged (though leverage is available, though much smaller than what you get with CFDs).
3. Can I trade Tesla on MT4 or MT5?
With FP Markets, you can trade Tesla via CFD pricing on MT5 and cTrader. Most traders opt for MT5.
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