Tesla Is Retail Traders' Choice, JPMorgan Says. Are You Buying?Tesla NASDAQ:TSLA has endured a soul-crushing experience over the past three months or so. The stock is down 50% from the record high of $480 hit in December (more than $700 billion in market cap washed out). Even insiders have sold a big chunk of their holdings.
But over the past three weeks (12 trading days to be precise), investment bank JPMorgan NYSE:JPM says, retail traders just couldn't get enough of it.
Retail net buying activity in TSLA stock. Source: JPMorgan
They’ve consistently been buying the dip, and then the dip of the dip and then… you get it. Every new dip is seen as a buying opportunity to the daredevils among us who try to catch a falling knife.
In the latest issue of “Retail Radar” — JPMorgan’s weekly report revealing where the retail money is flowing — the banking giant traced a net $12.5 billion of retail cash poured into stocks or stock-related investments last week.
As much as $4.2 billion went into ETFs (diversification, nice), where a cocktail of ETFs with a broad selection of stocks took the lion’s share along with some gold ETFs . Still, the big chunk of the pie went into individual equities — $8.3 billion of cold hard cash was injected into the retail-trading darlings Tesla NASDAQ:TSLA , Nvidia NASDAQ:NVDA and other Mag 7 members.
🤿 Buying the Dip
Here’s what the bank said:
“Single stocks accounted for +$8.3B of the inflow. TSLA (+$3.2B, +3.5z) and NVDA (+$1.9B, +1.1z) collectively contributed more than half, and the rest of Mag 7 contributed another $1B. Notably, they have been buying TSLA for 12 consecutive days, adding $7.3B in total.”
The 3.5z and the 1.1z describe the standard deviation of the retail traders’ net flows compared to the 12-month average. (Keep reading, it gets even better.)
Did you hear that? Tesla dominated the charts. Day trading bros have kicked in a total of $7.3 billion into Elon Musk’s EV maker over the past 12 cash sessions. It even won some praise from JPMorgan analysts who said this endeavor represents “the highest magnitude among all past ‘buying streaks’ in over a decade.”
Here’s the best part:
“Retail investors returned as aggressive buyers on Wednesday, breaking the $2 billion threshold in the first half of the day (the 2nd time this year), and ending the day at $3.7 billion inflows (+7z),” JPMorgan noted (Wow, 7 standard deviations above the mean). “We observed their allocation into ETFs/single names are at 30/70% during a typical heavy buying day. Among single names, NVDA and TSLA led the inflows.”
JPMorgan also estimated that retail traders’ efforts to snatch the W this year are just bad.
“We estimate retail investors’ performance is down by 7% year to date (vs. -3.3% loss in S&P). Most of the drawdown came from March as they increased their holdings in Tech.”
Retail traders' performance, year to date. Source: JPMorgan
🤙 The YOLO Moment
Buying Tesla shares right now is the ultimate YOLO play. We’re only a week away before Tesla announces what’s shaping up to be the worst delivery figure in years. After a few cuts to delivery targets, considering Europe’s sales took a huge L earlier this year, analysts now predict first-quarter deliveries to land at an average of 418,000 vehicles.
Goldman Sachs NYSE:GS , for one, is bigly bearish on the number. It trimmed its target by 50,000 to 375,000 cars. If true, it would mean that Tesla’s business is shrinking by 3% compared with Q1 of 2024 when deliveries hit 387,000 units.
For the year, analysts expect sales to land anywhere between 1.9 million and 2.1 million. With looming competition in the global auto space , Tesla will need to work extra hard to meet these numbers. In 2024, Tesla rolled 1.8 million vehicles off the assembly line and into customers’ hands (down 1% from 2023).
👀 Are Retail Traders Buying the Dip?
What better place to gauge retail traders’ sentiment than the absolute best trading community out there? Let’s hear it from you — share your thoughts on Tesla! Have you been buying the dipping dip that just keeps carving out new lows? Or you’re a freshly minted Tesla bear after all the havoc and drama around Elon Musk? Off to you!
