Tesla stock could plummet below $100 if the S&P 500 enters a bear market, according to a prediction from Motley Fool contributor Anthony Di Pizio. He points to Tesla's sky-high price-to-earnings ratio and a slowing autonomous-driving push behind Waymo as reasons the stock could echo its 75% collapse during the last S&P 500 downturn.
Tesla stock could fall below $100 if the S&P 500 enters a bear market, Motley Fool contributor Anthony Di Pizio predicts, pointing to the stock's stretched valuation relative to the broader index.
Tesla's valuation towers over the market
Di Pizio notes Tesla trades at a price-to-earnings ratio of 321, 12 times as expensive as the S&P 500 index, as the company's trailing-12-month earnings have fallen to $1.08 per share. The S&P 500 itself carries a Shiller cyclically adjusted P/E ratio of 41.6, its highest since the dot-com bubble in 2000.
The last time the S&P 500 entered a bear market, in 2022 and 2023, Tesla stock plunged 75% to just $100. It later recovered to a record high of $489 last year before slipping back to $348.75, down 1.71% in recent trading.
Di Pizio adds that Tesla's P/E ratio fell below 30 during the 2023 bear market, and history repeating would require the stock to fall 90% to $35 to reach a similar multiple today — though he does not expect a drop of that size.
EV sales recover, but margins shrink
Tesla's first-half deliveries grew 16% year over year to 838,149 vehicles, recovering from declines in 2024 and 2025 as rivals BYD, Geely, and Zeekr undercut Tesla's prices in markets like Europe. However, the growth came with a lower average selling price and a shrinking gross margin, suggesting Tesla is cutting prices to drive volume at the expense of profit.
Robotaxi program trails Waymo
Tesla is also falling behind in autonomous driving, another pillar of the bull case for the stock beyond its EV business. Tesla's vice president of AI software, Ashok Elluswamy, said the company's robotaxi program had completed about 380,000 miles of fully driverless operation across six U.S. states as of June 30. By comparison, Alphabet's Waymo is completing over 500,000 paid, fully autonomous trips every week across 11 major U.S. cities.
Musk thinks humanoid robots could outnumber actual humans by 2040, positioning Optimus as potentially Tesla's most valuable product, but it is not expected to reach meaningful production volume until 2027 at the earliest. The Cybercab robotaxi, meanwhile, cannot scale until regulators grant broader approval for Tesla's full self-driving software.
That leaves Tesla's premium valuation resting on future products that remain years from full commercialization.
Source: The Motley Fool
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