Michael Burry Builds A Bear Army With Tesla “Wildly Overvalued” Call

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
By Douglas A. McIntyre Published

Quick Read

  • Tesla (TSLA) trades at 294x trailing earnings and 192x forward earnings with a $1.43T market cap.

  • Tesla’s net income fell 36.6% year-over-year to $1.37B despite 11.6% revenue growth.

  • Michael Burry called Tesla ridiculously overvalued as operating margin compressed to 5.8%.

  • The analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 stocks and Tesla wasn't one of them. Get them here FREE.

Michael Burry Builds A Bear Army With Tesla “Wildly Overvalued” Call

© 2025 Getty Images / Getty Images News via Getty Images

Shares of Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA | TSLA Price Prediction) slipped 1.2% to $424.98 on December 2, 2025, as retail investors rallied behind Michael Burry’s latest call that the electric vehicle maker is “ridiculously overvalued.” The famed investor’s assessment ignited a viral discussion on Reddit’s r/investing, where a post titled “Michael Burry Calls Out Tesla Stating They Are ‘Ridiculously Overvalued'” exploded to 1,550 upvotes and 295 comments in under 24 hours. The sentiment score registered at 12, marking “very bearish” territory as traders increasingly question whether Tesla’s $1.43 trillion market cap can hold.

Michael Burry Calls Out Tesla Stating They Are ‘Ridiculously Overvalued’
by
u/[user] in
investing

The Reddit discussion captured the retail investing community’s growing skepticism. One top commenter observed: “Burry has been right before when everyone else was wrong. The Big Short wasn’t a fluke.” Another user added: “At 294x earnings, you’re not buying a car company – you’re buying a religion. And religions don’t trade on fundamentals.” A third pointed out: “The math is simple: Tesla would need to become more profitable than Apple and Google combined to justify this valuation.”

The Valuation Math Behind the Bear Case

Burry’s thesis finds substantial support in Tesla’s fundamental metrics. The company trades at 294x trailing earnings and 192x forward earnings, multiples that dwarf traditional automakers by a factor of 30 or more. With a price-to-sales ratio of 14.96 and EV/EBITDA at 108, investors are paying extraordinary premiums for a business generating just 5.31% profit margins. The PEG ratio of 8.59 suggests massive overvaluation relative to growth, particularly troubling given that quarterly earnings declined 37% year-over-year in Q3 2025.

Reddit’s investing community is connecting the dots:

  • Net income fell 36.6% YoY to $1.37 billion despite 11.6% revenue growth
  • Operating margin compressed to 5.8%, down from healthier levels a year ago
  • Analyst consensus price target of $392.93 sits 9% below current levels

Trading Activity Reflects Growing Doubt

Tesla experienced extreme volatility through November, dropping 16.5% from $468 to $391 in three weeks before recovering to current levels. Insider activity tells a revealing story: while Elon Musk acquired 423.7 million shares in November (likely compensation-related), director James Murdoch disposed of 60,000 shares at $422.68 in September. The stock now trades 12% below its 52-week high of $488.54, with prediction markets showing upside price targets already achieved. Burry’s call crystallizes concerns that have been building across retail forums for weeks, from Chinese robotics competition to political risks surrounding Musk’s government involvement.

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

Continue Reading

Top Gaining Stocks

D Vol: 40,093,161
CTSH Vol: 15,305,850
NOW Vol: 51,219,247
EPAM Vol: 3,526,955
FICO Vol: 429,362

Top Losing Stocks

REGN Vol: 2,996,891
CTRA Vol: 73,319,495
GLW Vol: 16,928,378
STX Vol: 5,005,840
PWR Vol: 1,768,375