Tesla's Q2 Deliveries Land This Week. Here Is What I Am Watching

Tesla reports Q2 deliveries in the next few days, and this is the number that actually moves the story. The consensus sits around 406,000, with Barclays higher near 418,000. After a strong run and a fresh Michael Burry short near 416, the setup is tense. I follow this company closely, so here is my framework going in.

The number matters less than the mix

A headline beat or miss will move the stock on the day, but the composition matters more. I am watching China, where local demand and competition swing the quarter hardest, and whether the refreshed lineup is pulling volume without deeper discounts. Deliveries bought with price cuts are not the same as deliveries driven by demand, and margins tell you which one you got.

FSD V14 is the real long term lever

The rollout of FSD V14, including the Lite version reaching older Hardware 3 cars, is the quieter story. Every additional car running the software feeds more real world miles back into the model. That data flywheel is the entire autonomy and robotaxi thesis, and it compounds whether or not any single quarter beats. This is why I hold $Tesla(TSLA.US) as more than a car company.

On the short

Betting against Tesla into a delivery print has a long history of going wrong, because sentiment on this name turns violently. That said, Burry is not shorting the cars, he is shorting the valuation and the broader AI trade. Both things can be true at once: the business executes and the stock is priced richly. I respect the risk without letting it decide my thesis.

How I am positioned

I hold my core through the print rather than trading around it, because I have lost more money guessing quarterly reactions than I ever made. If deliveries beat and margins hold, the shorts get squeezed. If it misses, I want to see whether it was demand or discounting before I react. Either way the autonomy story is a multi year hold, not a one quarter bet.

Not advice, just how I am thinking about it.