Tesla shares have lost value since the automaker’s three-for-one stock split on Thursday.
Shares in the electric automaker had opened at $302 immediately after the split but by the end of Thursday, they had fallen to $296.07 and $288.09 at close on Friday.
Stock splits like Tesla’s don’t have a material impact on a company’s fundamentals but do allow individual investors to make smaller trades. The carmaker previously made a five-for-one stock split in August 2020 when its shares topped $2,000.
“In typical buy-the-rumor, sell-the-news style, investors tend to drastically scale back purchases of splitting stocks in the weeks ensuing the effective split date, causing price momentum to slow,” Vanda Research analysts described.
Read Also: Tesla Is Now Dominating Luxury Car Sales In The U.S.
While stock splits like this do make it easier for investments to make smaller trades, Reuters notes that the benefits of such splits are becoming less clear as many brokerage platforms allow customers to buy fractional shares, simply a percentage of a share. Tesla shares have lost approximately 11 percent of their value since the three-for-one split was first announced in March and have fallen 16 percent this year.
The split came shortly after it was revealed that Tesla had strengthened its stranglehold over the luxury car market in the United States for the first half of 2022. Between January and June this year, 228,989 new Tesla models were registered across the country, a significant increase from the 142,543 in the first half of 2021. This positioned Tesla well ahead of BMW which reported 157,838 registrations for H1 2022, Lexus with 133,616 registrations, Mercedes with 133,520 registrations, and Audi with 83,471 registrations.
