Tesla is truly the stock of the times. Having more than doubled in value in the last year, the company has become a magnet for the full range of investors from retail traders to hedge funds and institutions.
Data from Koyfin reveals that ~$40bn of Tesla shares changed hands yesterday — more than twice as much as the next most-traded stock, and way more than other mega-cap giants like Apple, Amazon and Microsoft. Put another way, the amount traded in Tesla yesterday was equivalent to the volume traded in 307 members of the S&P 500 Index (which is a group of 500 of the largest companies).
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A great piece in the FT reveals that the story goes much deeper. We've charted just the vanilla equity trading volume, but the volume traded in financial derivative markets (options) is even more off the charts, with more than $240bn a day recently being bet on Tesla by its army of fans, or detractors (who presumably think the company is overvalued).
Why Tesla has captured the zeitgeist so strongly is probably worthy of a much longer piece, but the short answer is easy to get your ahead around: Elon Musk. The meme-sharing, Dogecoin-loving, Technoking of Tesla (his words, not ours) is controversial. He instills a sense of belief, or strong dislike, in most people — and it's meant Tesla has become the instrument of choice for many to speculate in.
