Elon Musk’s Tesla Motors (NasdaqGS: TSLA) has been a boon for clean energy exchange traded funds, but the recent pullback has made Tesla a liability for the ETFs with a heavy tilt to the electric car maker.
The universe of legitimate “Tesla ETFs” boils down to the Market Vectors Global Alternative Energy ETF (NYSEArca: GEX) and the First Trust NASDAQ Clean Edge Green Energy Index Fund (NasdaqGS: QCLN), which have a 9.1% and 7.2% allocation in TSLA, respectively. [Tesla ETF Time Again]
However, GEX has dipped 3.5% and QCLN has declined 4.4% over the past month while TSLA plunged 11.9%. TSLA is now trading below its short-term 50-day moving average. In comparison, the S&P 500 is only down 0.2% over the past month.
Tesla stocks have come under fire as industry experts began to question the rationale behind the so-called gigafactory, especially as the market for electric vehicles remain less than 1% of the total U.S. market, Mike Ramesy reported for the Wall Street Journal.
Panasonic Corp, Tesla’s primary supplier of lithium ion cells, has also refrained from committing on the gigafactory idea, Bloomberg reported.
Tesla has also come up against a wall in Arizona, New Jersey and Texas where the company is barred from selling cars directly to customers, according to Bloomberg.