Tesla Stock Down On Staff Reduction News

News emerged on Friday that Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk had sent an email to his company’s employees announcing that the electric vehicle maker would cut its workforce by 10% and implement a hiring freeze.  

The company’s stock was down 8% in afternoon trading after the news on Friday. The company is a holding in 294 ETFs, or approximately one-tenth of the ETFs listed in the U.S. In aggregate, ETFs hold $65.1 million shares of TSLA.  

It has an outsized weighting in several funds, with the $16 billion Consumer Discretionary Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLY) allocating more than one-fifth of its portfolio to Tesla stock. The ProShares Ultra Consumer Goods (UGE) has an allocation to the stock of 19.53%, while the Vanguard Consumer Discretionary ETF (VCR) weights the stock at 16.65% of its portfolio. While UGE has less than $10 million in assets under management, VCR has nearly $4.7 billion.  

The ETFs holding the most shares of TSLA include some of the largest U.S.-listed ETFs. The $373 billion SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY) holds 8.88 million shares of the stock, weighting it at 1.95% of its portfolio, while the $165 billion Invesco QQQ Trust (QQQ) is close behind, with 8.86 million shares, weighting the company at 4.73%. The portfolio of the $300 billion iShares Core S&P 500 ETF (IVV) includes 6.99 million shares of Tesla stock, weighting it at 2.15%.  

Tesla seems to be a darling of actively managed ETFs, with 76 funds falling into that category holding shares of the company. Cap-weighted vanilla ETFs are not too far behind, with 58 funds holding the stock. TSLA was recently removed from the S&P 500 ESG Index, but 29 ESG ETFs also hold shares of the company. 

TSLA stock is down roughly 41% year –to date. In another email, this time to company executives, founder Musk expressed concerns about the state of the economy, saying he had a “super bad feeling” about it.  

Contact Heather Bell at [email protected]