• The electric vehicle sector is having a rough session, with the startup names leading the list of decliners.
• Decliners include Faraday Future Intelligent Electric Inc. (-9.7%), EVgo Inc​. (-7.9%), Nikola Corporation (-7.9%), Fisker Inc. (-7.2%), Arrival (-6.8%), Quantumscape Corp. (-5.9%)and Lucid Group Inc (-3.0%) with thirty minutes of trading left in the day.
• Traders say that balance sheets are attracting more attention in the auto sector amid the intensifying push by auto majors into electrification, especially with the revenue timelines for some of the EV entrants several years out. The infrastructure bill is also drawing notice. While $7.5B is being set aside for charging stations and another $2.5B for electric buses, those marks are short of what analysts were expecting last spring.
• On the other side of the startup timeline is Tesla Motors (-0.1%), with production already ramping up. Shares of Tesla are outperforming the sector on the day and for the year.
• Tesla's fundamentals have improved to the point that the EV stock's Seeking Alpha Quant Rating ranks in the top quarter of all consumer discretionary stocks.
• Meanwhile, the auto stock that has racked up the strongest YTD gain is not a startup, but one of the Detroit majors.