How Musk pitches Tesla’s year ahead will also be a telling signal, Nora told me.  

Part of what makes Tesla so special in Wall Street’s eyes — and what validates its $655 billion market cap — is how innovative the company can be. There is always something on the horizon that’s brilliant, fascinating, and, most importantly, potentially profitable.

For a while, that was the Cybertruck. But that’s a carrot Musk can no longer dangle in front of analysts.

Instead, he’ll need to look elsewhere. One obvious and anticipated innovation is a self-driving feature allowing Teslas to drive without humans.

On Monday, Tesla released a new version of its Full Self-Driving software to a few owners. But despite previously big promises from Musk regarding this version, the early reviews have been underwhelming, Fortune reported.

If self-driving remains a pipedream, that’s bad news for Tesla. Because if analysts can’t point to what’s next for Tesla, they might start pointing somewhere else.