5 Most Widely Held Stocks by Individuals

In this article, we discuss the 5 most widely held stocks by individuals. If you want to read about some more widely held stocks by individuals, go directly to 15 Most Widely Held Stocks by Individuals.

5. Tesla, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 88   

Tesla, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) designs, develops, manufactures, leases, and sells electric vehicles, and energy generation and storage systems. On December 27, Tesla announced that it is set to maintain a reduced production schedule at its Shanghai plant in China. The production schedule will start in 2023. The company said it will run production between January 3 and 19 and then it will stop the EV production for the end of the month.

On December 28, Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas maintained an Overweight rating on Tesla, Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) stock and lowered the price target to $250 from $330, highlighting that 2023 is coming up to be a reset year for the EV market, which is what caused its 45% selloff in December, since there was more EV supply than EV demand.     

At the end of the third quarter of 2022, 88 hedge funds in the database of Insider Monkey held stakes worth $7.4 billion in Tesla, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA), compared to 73 in the preceding quarter worth $7.2 billion. 

In its Q2 2022 investor letter, Baron Funds, an asset management firm, highlighted a few stocks and Tesla, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) was one of them. Here is what the fund said:

“In 2014, before we began to invest in Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA), I called Roger to ask whether he thought Elon Musk’s electric car business would succeed. I did not believe that Roger, an owner of dealerships that sell cars powered by internal combustion engines (ICE) would likely have a favorable opinion of Tesla’s prospects. That was principally for two reasons:

First, automobile manufacturing and distribution is unusually complicated, capital intensive, and highly regulated, which makes profitability problematic;

second, cars with ICE motors require extensive annual maintenance, and dealer services revenues, not profits from automobile sales, are the most important contributor to profits of perpetual licensed ICE car dealerships.

Penske Automotive Group is principally an ICE car dealer. Since electric cars are powered by batteries and need little service, franchised dealerships are incented to sell ICE, not EV automobiles. Further, Roger had been a long-term director of General Motors. General Motors’ ICE automobile business would be disrupted if Tesla were successful. (click here to read more…)