Tesla stock was down early Thursday, with the market. Despite recent declines, shares remain very popular with retail investors.
Shares of the electric vehicle maker were down 1.14% at $425.70 in premarket trading.
Coming into Thursday trading, Tesla stock was down 3.4%, falling three times and rising once, since Tesla's Nov. 6 annual meeting, where CEO Elon Musk learned that shareholders voted in favor of his trillion-dollar 2025 pay award by a margin of roughly three-to-one.
Retail shareholders played a large role in the vote. A significant chunk of the EV maker's stock is held by individuals, so-called retail investors, who own about 41% of Tesla stock available for trading, according to Bloomberg. For the rest of the Magnificent Seven, retail shareholders own an average of about 25% of the shares available for trading. The average level for stocks in the S&P 500 is about 5%.
Despite the post-meeting dip, JPMorgan reported in its "Retail Radar" report on Wednesday that retail shareholders have bought more Tesla stock than they've sold over the past week, by about $1.1 billion.
AI remains the big theme with retail investors. Nvidia and Tesla were the two most popular stocks for smaller investors, followed by Meta Platforms, AMD, CoreWeave, Oracle, and Apple.
All those stocks are part of the AI data center build-out. Tesla, of course, is working on physical AI applications such as self-driving taxis and humanoid robots.
Recent purchases by retail investors extend the year-to-date theme for smaller investors. Tesla and Nvidia have been two of the most popular retail stocks. Smaller investors have added roughly $20 billion in Nvidia shares and $15 billion in Tesla shares to their positions.
Comments