Tesla revs up to fifth place among Wall Street giants as share surge rolls on

Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) ended up overnight as the fifth most valuable company on Wall Street after a renewed surge of interest from investors. 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 Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) at US$765bn. Tesla is now just eclipsed by the band of trillion-dollar behemoths: Google owner Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) at US$1.21trn, Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN) at US$1.59trn, Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) at US$1.65trn and Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) at US$2.23trn. As the drama in Washington DC abated, US equities hit new record highs, with the tech-powered Nasdaq rising 2.6%, the S&P 500 up 1.5% and the Dow Jones 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 Alibaba Group (NYSE:BABA). A consequence of the gains for Tesla was that founder Musk became the richest person on Earth, 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, and the launch of the new Tesla Model Plaid. 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