Tesla is the market’s most controversial battleground.
It’s both hated and loved, but never ignored.
It’s one of those names that tells you everything you need to know about risk appetite, growth sentiment, and how investors are putting money to work.
In many ways, this is the bellwether stock of speculative growth.
When it breaks out, it’s rarely just a Tesla story—the sympathy bid ripples across the entire EV complex, here and abroad.
Right now, the setup is as consequential as it is clean.
The stock has been carving out a massive base for the past four years, and price is currently coiling above the upper bounds of that range, setting the stage for a major breakout.
Here’s a look at the weekly:
A decisive move out of this pattern isn’t just bullish for Tesla— we expect it to spark powerful rallies across some of the most speculative corners of the market.
Battery stocks, charging names, LiDAR developers, even Chinese EVs and lithium — they all move when Tesla does.
Last year, when it tried to break out, the complex was lagging.
This time, it’s different. The sympathy names — the highest-beta, highest-risk stuff on the board — are leading in a big way. This bodes well for a breakout.
Here’s how our Tesla Sympathy Trade Composite looks overlaid with Tesla:
This kind of frontrunning tells us the market is positioning for a big bull run across the entire EV complex.
If the move is for real this time, we want to be where the juice is.
Here’s our Sympathy For The Tesla universe sorted by proximity from 52-week highs:
There are many angles to this trade, and we’ll cover how we're getting exposure to each sub-theme with trade ideas on a variety of these names.
But first, let’s discuss the one who invited everyone to the party, Tesla Inc $TSLA:
Here it is coiling in a tight range right above its prior-cycle highs from 2021.
As long as it holds 415, we want to be buyers, targeting 600, with a secondary objective of 900 over longer timeframes. You can also use the current bull flag for confirmation, which triggers around 470.
As for the sympathy trades, we’re already seeing some serious momentum under the surface.
Battery names were the first to react after Tesla’s initial thrust. That was the early tell:
If TSLA breaks higher again and completes this massive base, we expect to see follow-through in the next tier of sympathy stocks.
Most battery names have already broken out and are extended in the near term.
Here’s T1 Energy $TE, which we still like and think is actionable at current levels:
This $700M battery and solar manufacturer is undergoing a global rebranding as it completes a multi-year rounding bottom.
After a strong initial thrust, the stock may need time to digest its recent gains — but the price structure remains bullish. As long as we’re above ~3.35, this looks like a classic retest of the base breakout level.
We can either buy on strength above 4.30, or against that former resistance around 3.
As long as TE remains above that level, we’re targeting 7 on the next leg higher. Above there, and the old all-time highs of 16 are in play.
Now, let’s talk about the best setups.
With most battery stocks already extended, the fattest pitch on the tape is LiDAR.
As far as sympathy trades go, batteries are intuitively easier to understand… They power the cars. But LiDAR? What even is that?
Well, for modern EVs, LiDAR is basically a laser-powered depth camera that constantly builds a 3D map of the road so driver-assist/autonomy can spot cars, curbs, and pedestrians—even in low light.
But forget all that. Here’s what we really like about it:
Notice the significant dislocation between LiDAR and Battery stocks recently.
These two groups have a very strong historical correlation; one doesn’t go without the other. At a high level, this is really the same trade.
As such, we’re looking for a major catch-up rally from LiDAR over the coming weeks and months.
Here are some of our favorite setups from that group, as well as some international names and competing EV makers likely to catch a bid if Tesla breaks out.
