After a strong 2024, Tesla is facing a sobering new year's hangover.

Last year marked a major comeback for Tesla and its chief executive, Elon Musk, who ascended to the president-elect’s inner circle and unveiled his flashy magnum opus. But it turns out that under the hood, Tesla’s key metric—car deliveries—was lagging behind.

Tesla announced its first-ever annual sales decline today. The EV maker sold 1.79 million vehicles in 2024, below the 1.8 million sold in 2023. That’s including its record fourth-quarter sales of 495,570 vehicles, up from the 484,507 sold in the fourth quarter of 2023.

The stock sank over 6% on the news. Today's drop follows a 63% gain for the carmaker over 2024, most of which took place in the fourth quarter of the year.

In other bad news: A Cybertruck filled with gas canisters and fireworks mortars exploded outside the Trump hotel in Las Vegas, killing one person and injuring others. The FBI is investigating the incident as a potential act of terrorism, and although the vehicle itself was not the cause of the explosion, pictures of the Cybertruck engulfed in flames have not helped Tesla’s stock today.

The EV race revs up

Tesla was once the unchallenged king of the EV market, and still accounts for almost half of all EVs sold in the US. But today’s numbers are just more evidence that competitors such as General Motors, BMW, and China’s BYD are cutting Tesla’s lead.

Just yesterday, BYD reported stellar deliveries for the last year. The company delivered 1.76 million EVs in 2024, outpacing its 1.6 million deliveries in 2023. Its fourth-quarter sales of 595,000 vehicles beat Tesla’s sales in the same period, marking the second quarter in a row where BYD dethroned the EV king.

Sales growth for EVs is slowing at large, making the battle for narrow market share even more cutthroat. But Musk and his most loyal followers investors have always been more captivated by flashy new tech instead of boring old sales metrics.

Wedbush analyst and Tesla bull Dan Ives essentially shrugged off the poor numbers and maintained his outperform rating in a note today, choosing to focus on the big picture. “Taking a step back, over the last decade we have never viewed Tesla simply as a car company...instead we have always viewed Musk and Tesla as a leading disruptive technology global player, and the first part of this grand strategic vision has taken shape over the past 5 years,” Ives wrote. “We believe Tesla remains the most undervalued AI play in the market today,” he added.

Seems like one way to play off poor EV sales is to hope investors forget about the “vehicle” part altogether.—LB

🟢 What’s up

• Looking to take up golfing in 2025? Topgolf Callaway Brands jumped 14.50% following an upgrade from Jefferies analysts, who believe the golf equipment maker is oversold.
• Unity Software popped 9.08% thanks to a cryptic post on X by meme stock ringleader Roaring Kitty featuring Rick James.
• Constellation Energy kicked off the new year on a high note, announcing it has secured $1 billion in contracts to supply nuclear energy to the US government. Shares rose 8.44%.
• Synaptics climbed 8.07% on the news that the semiconductor designer is partnering with Alphabet to power AI devices.
• MicroCloud Hologram is an unabashedly amazing name combining corporate jibberish. The tech maker rocketed 17.65% higher today on news that it has made significant progress in developing its quantum computing technology.

What’s down

• Carvana was the target of a scathing report by short-seller Hindenburg Research, which accused the online car seller of “accounting manipulation and lax underwriting” that helped propel its stock surge in 2024. Shares fell 1.87%.
• Boeing kicked off January 2025 the same way it kicked off January 2024: Selling off in the face of a horrifying accident involving one of its planes. Shares sank 2.90%.
• Neumora Therapeutics plunged 81.42% following the failure of its depression treatment navacaprant in a Phase 3 trial.
• SoFi Technologies sank 8.25% on a downgrade from analysts at Keefe Bruyette, who think the fintech company’s valuation is “overstretched.”

With the end of 2024 came the finale of the first annual Brew Markets Fantasy Investing league. We laughed, we cried, and we sent an avalanche of gifs in the communal chat.

They say great minds think alike, and the winners of the league had one thing in common: They didn’t trade much.

Our first place winner, Dan S., took the allotted $100,000 and ended up with a net worth of $493,689 over the course of the game—but what’s even more impressive is that he earned those gains with only two stocks. He bet big on aerospace manufacturer Unusual Machines, and also bought shares of Real Brokerage Inc.

Ben M. took second place, with his two investments in quantum computing company D-Wave Quantum Inc and Canadian cannabis firm High Tide giving him a net worth of $366,483 by the end of the game.

And the bronze medal goes to Heaven W., who only bought shares of one stock over the course of the entire game: space firm Intuitive Machines. Heaven ended up with a net worth of $319,297.

The lesson? Companies with the word “Machines” at the end of their name ended up being a good play. But more importantly, you don’t need to be a frantic day trader to see gains. Making a few key, smart trades and letting time do the rest of the work for you can be more effective than monitoring your portfolio day in and day out. And it certainly helps when your picks catch the market’s momentum.

Race to the bottom

Let’s give a toast to our loyal readers who caught our eye for the amount they were able to lose over the span of the game.

Many of our players would have been better off putting their $100,000 into a high-yield savings account, but J M managed to take the cake by ending the game with just $6.70. How? It turns out buying one stock only works if it's a winning pick. J M picked a biotech play, Edgio, that unfortunately went bankrupt and got delisted from the Nasdaq in September.

To our winners—congratulations! And for those of you who lost money, keep on reading Brew Markets, and next year you’ll be on top.—LB

• What’s a few billion between friends? The SEC wrote off $10 billion in fines that it hasn’t been able to collect over the past 10 years.
• Chinese stocks sold off following the news that domestic manufacturing activity took a bigger hit in December than economists expected.
• Mortgage demand plummeted 22% in the final two weeks of December. It’s usually the slowest month of the year, but high mortgage rates and low housing supply took a toll.
• 26 restaurant chains declared bankruptcy in 2024. Here are all the closures announced by some of the biggest restaurants in the country last year.
• The flow of Russian gas through Ukraine was protected by a five-year agreement that ended yesterday, cutting off Europe from the key commodity.
• Anyone on the East Coast already knows this, but this January is going to be a cold one. That’s great news for natural gas, but not so great for homeowners heating their homes with natural gas.

We just wrapped up our very first-ever Brew Markets Fantasy Investing League, and even if your name wasn’t highlighted in the story above, we’re still proud of each and every one of you. Remember, it’s not about winning, it’s about having fun.

Now, the big question: Are you ready for more fun?

A lot of you loved the league, so we’re considering how best to approach round 2. But to do it right, we need your input.

Do you want a fantasy league that runs for the entire year? Just one quarter? Maybe something fun for March Madness? Let us know what you think we should do for the next iteration of our Fantasy Investing League by filling out the survey here.