Poor Elon Musk. While all the cool kids were jamming at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue on Thursday night to talk tech with President Donald Trump, he was, well, somewhere else. Although the Tesla (TSLA) CEO says he was invited, his lack of attendance caught Wall Street's attention.

This feels like a metaphor for the real elephant in the room.

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Tesla's stock price has, in 2025, stagnated. Although shares are up 60% from their year-to-date low, they have not flown higher like a rocket ship. Instead, now down "just" 14.5% in the YTD, Tesla has become a rather boring company to watch.

Musk's 2025 has been chaotic to say the least. His much-heralded role as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) turned out to be more of a downward-facing dog. His political involvements have weakened sales in Europe and the U.S., and created consumer backlash to the Tesla brand.

These are not investment developments. But if there were ever a market environment in which pop culture, entertainment, political drama, and the stock market have correlated highly, this is the year. So TSLA has had a lot of news pushing its price around. Is there anything to break the logjam? Let's go hunting for some reasons to buy it now.

I'll start with the daily chart. I've drawn in some horizontal lines to mark 2025's top, bottom, and its most recent short-term peak around $367. It is 8% below that as of Thursday's close, which is more like half that for a typical stock. Because TSLA's beta is more than 2x the market.

There's absolutely nothing for me to go on here, in terms of a strong, price-driven signal.

So let's look at the weekly. It is not much different. TSLA has actually been a quite reliable trading stock on charts just like these. But that was the past few years. Not the current one.

I'm at a disadvantage with no technical catalyst to speak of, but there are other ways to at least try to get a strong sense of where the stock's future path is tilting. So here's a table of fundamental ratios.

Unless you are a connoisseur of 85x cash flow stocks, especially those with low profit margins and forward earnings that look more like passing yard statistics for an NFL quarterback, this too is no help. At least not for bulls.