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A plunge in the stocks of electric-vehicle makers is lashing investors who plowed billions into the sector this year in a bid to surf one of Wall Street’s hottest trends.
Tesla Inc. led this week’s drop in the auto sector that’s battered the holdings of funds focused on this part of the market. That’s painful for traders who poured almost $2 billion into electric car and battery-focused exchange-traded funds in 2021, according to Bloomberg Intelligence. ETF assets in the segment had swelled to a record $4.6 billion before the selloff.
“Clearly electric vehicles are here to stay, but it’s less clear who the winners are going to be,” said Chris Grisanti, chief equity strategist at MAI Capital Management. “The market has been treating all these companies as if they are going to be winners, whereas we know that’s probably not going to be the case.”
Investors have been jumping in following the election of U.S. President Joe Biden, who they expect will unleash a slew of clean-energy policies.
At the same time, automakers are shifting wholesale into EVs. General Motors Co. Chief Executive Officer Mary Barra pledged in late January, after Biden’s inauguration, to sell only zero-emission models starting in 2035. Volvo Cars announced an ambitious goal this week to solely market battery cars by 2030, accelerating its plans following a jump in consumer demand.
“We’re seeing an arms race in EV,” said Dan Ives, senior equity research analyst at Wedbush Securities. “A lot of ETFs are giving investors the ability to invest in not just one EV player, but the whole space.”
Two of the best-performing ETFs have been the KraneShares Electric Vehicles and Future Mobility Index ETF (KARS) and the Global X Autonomous & Electric Vehicles ETF (DRIV). Each lost more than 6.6% of their market value in the past three trading sessions.
KARS just had its best-ever month of inflows and its shares have still gained 2.3% year-to-date, compared with the 0.3% advance of the S&P 500. DRIV has climbed almost 7% in 2021 and already attracted about $560 million of inflows — more than double the amount for all of 2020.