Tesla stock ended the week with a wild trading session bobbing into the red and green -- appropriate for the week before Christmas. A definitive reason behind the moves was hard to pin down, but not impossible.
Shares were down more than 5% in premarket trading and opened at about $426, down roughly $10 from Thursday's close. They traded as high as $447, up a little more than $10, before closing down Friday $15.11, or 3.5%, at $421.06.
The midday turn was helped by the market. After opening in the red, the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average closed up 1.1% and 1.2%, respectively. Investors appear to be in dip-buying mode on Friday after Wednesday's Fed meeting sparked a selloff.
There didn't appear to be any good -- new -- reasons for the early and late declines. There were no Wall Street downgrades or target price cuts. That doesn't mean there was nothing investors had to mull over. That's seldom the case with Tesla.
On Thursday, Tesla stock dropped 0.9% after Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul floated the idea that CEO Elon Musk could be Speaker of the House. That would create another significant demand on Musk's time. Based on today's move, it doesn't appear like the market seriously considered the possibility.
"It's a non-starter," says Future Fund Active ETF cofounder and Tesla shareholder Gary Black, adding people might have started to take the idea a little more seriously on Friday. "To me, [Tesla stock] was wildly overbought and long hedge funds needed a reason to take some profits."
Tesla stock came into the week "overbought," which is a trading term that essentially means the stock has gone up a lot quickly. When that happens it can be a sign a lot of good news is reflected in stocks and there aren't many buyers left to push prices higher.
One reason investors could take Paul's tweet more seriously on Friday is Musk's deepening involvement in Washington's day-to-day activities. Late Thursday, the House rejected a spending bill that would prevent a partial government shutdown. Musk has been tweeting about spending and the shutdown in recent hours. His involvement could be unnerving investors.
Then there are car sales to consider. Tesla's European EV sales data were relatively weak in November. Car buyers registered about 26,000 Teslas, down almost 30% year over year.
Still, European car sale figures were released early Thursday and the data only cover one month. The weak November number does mean that Tesla will need a big December and big sales numbers in China and the U.S. to hit its goal of selling about 515,000 cars in the fourth quarter. The current Wall Street consensus forecast is for fourth-quarter deliveries of about 503,000, according to FactSet.
Tesla's Friday drop -- and subsequent recovery -- and additional drop -- could be just the market doing market things. Some profit-taking is reasonable. Coming into Friday trading, Tesla stock was up about 76% so far this year and up about 73% since the Nov. 5 U.S. presidential election.
Shares finished the week down about 3% for the week. The S&P 500 finished down about 2%.
At premarket levels, Tesla stock had added about $515 billion in market value since the election. That's a lot.
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