Is Tesla No Longer A Momentum Stock?

Many tech and biotech stocks rebounded Monday following a heavy selloff last week, but Tesla for some reason has remained stricken

Tesla Motors Inc. (TSLA), a heavily traded momentum stock which zoomed past the much-anticipated $200 mark just two months ago, has been on a downward slide for the last month. The stock has seen almost 20% of its value being lost in that period, partly due to an industry-wide selloff in tech stocks over the last couple of weeks. High-flyers like FacebookInc (FB), Twitter Inc (TWTR) and Netflix, Inc. (NFLX) printed major corrections in the last fortnight or so;Tesla, too, dropped 6% in a day.

But this week, markets opened with investors markedly more bullish on the tech sector. At market close Monday, Netflix had recovered 1.5%, Twitter 2% and Facebook 0.6%, and the three had stood out as large-cap gainers among the other names recovering in the tech sector. Tesla, however, failed to attract any bullish momentum,and the stock closed down 2.8% for the day. The high correlation between price movements in Tesla and other momentum stocks also seems to have loosened up. As the charts below show, the correlation between movements in Tesla’s stock price and the movements in Facebook and Netflix has fallen moving into the month of April.