Tesla Inc revs up to fifth place among Wall Street giants as share

() has become the fifth most valuable company on Wall Street after a renewed surge of interest from investors sent its shares higher again on Thursday.

Shares in Elon Musk’s electric company, which was added to the S&P 500 index last month, revved up almost 8% to US$816.04 by the closing bell.

READ: Tesla – a new year, but the same old shorts for Elon?

Tesla’s closing market cap of US$774bn meant its valuation rose by US$56.9bn in the session – or almost the size of General Motors (US$61bn) in the day alone.

This further demand from investors meant the company, which is moving its headquarters this year from Palo Alto, California to Austin, Texas, overtook Silicon Valley neighbour () at US$765bn.

Tesla is now just eclipsed by the band of trillion-dollar behemoths: Google owner () at US$1.21trn, Amazon.com Inc () at US$1.59trn, () at US$1.65trn and Apple Inc () at US$2.23trn.

As the Congressional drama in Washington DC abated, US equities hit new record highs, with the tech-powered Nasdaq Composite rising 2.6%, the S&P 500 up 1.5% and the Dow Jones Industrials Average climbing 0.7%.

There was almost US$40bn of trading volume in Tesla stock on Thursday, according to data from Refinitiv, more than the three next biggest sources put together, being Apple, Amazon and ().

A consequence of the gains for Tesla was that maverick founder Musk became the richest person on Earth this week, overtaking Amazon boss Jeff Bezos.

How strange

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 7, 2021

Also, it means that Morgan Stanley’s upgrade earlier in the week to a price target of US$810 has quickly been eclipsed. 

The next events to look forward to for Tesla followers include the company’s fourth-quarter earnings, which were on January 29 last year, the launch of the new Tesla Model Plaid and, towards the end of the year, the ‘Cybertruck’.

Btw, critical feedback is always super appreciated, as well as ways to donate money that really make a difference (way harder than it seems)

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 8, 2021

The ‘tank from the future’ is currently scheduled for launch in the autumn with bookie Paddy Power offering strong odds of 4/6 that it will happen as planned, with chances of the vehicle being delayed until 2022 relatively short at 2/1.

There were also odds of 20/1 that Musk will name his next child after the Tesla pickup truck.