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EV stock leader

Tesla

They took a beating over the past two weeks, for reasons related to both the company and what’s happening in the financial markets. But a separate factor pushed them lower on Friday.

Tesla (Ticker: TSLA) stock was down about 2% at midday Friday at $215.13, while

Standard & Poor’s 500
It was 0.2% f

NASDAQ Composite
decreased by 0.4%. The loss at the close would mark the sixth consecutive decline for Tesla stock and the 13th in the past 14 trading sessions.

The market deserves some of the blame. Heading into Friday trading, the Nasdaq is down about 7% for the month, and Tesla stock tends to be more volatile than the index. It rises faster when things are good and drops more when conditions are bad.

Elon Musk deserves some blame, too. On a Tesla second-quarter earnings conference call in July, Musk reiterated his position that growth in sales volume was more important than Tesla pricing. This raised fears of further price cuts and an erosion of profit margins.

After cutting prices aggressively to start 2023, Tesla reported operating profit margins of just over 10% in the first half of 2023, down from about 17% in the first half of 2022.

For those stubbornly clinging to the idea that Tesla price cuts are somehow good for Tesla’s valuation, look at Tesla stock versus its peers since Tesla’s July 19 call.

Active Futures ETF

(FFND) co-founder, Tesla shareholder Gary Black, in a tweet on Thursday.

Tesla stock has fallen about 25% since then. Shares of other big tech companies are down about 3% on average over the same period.

general motors

(GM),

Ford Motor

(F) f

excellent

STLA shares fell about 12%, on average.

It seems that the events in China were behind the downfall of Tesla. China real estate company

Evergrande

I applied for Bankruptcy protection In the United States on Thursday, which led to a drop in Chinese stock indexes. the

Shanghai boat
decreased by 1%, while HK

Hang Seng
decreased 2.1%.

The strength of the Chinese economy is important because China is the world’s largest market for new cars and new electric vehicles. Tesla is the second largest manufacturer of electric cars in China after

BYD

(1211. Hong Kong). BYD shares fell 3.8% in offshore trading on Friday.

If there is good news for investors after the pullback, it is that Tesla stock is nearing some technical support. After breaking $240 a share, “the area between the February and March highs would be the next potential stop,” says stock technical analyst and CappThesis founder Frank Cappeleri. That’s from $208 to $218 a share.

“The next support… is around $200 based on the 50% retracement of the uptrend to date,” says Katie Stockton, Fairlead Strategies founder and market technician. The 200-day moving average is near $197 and is gradually rising higher.

Cappelleri and Stockton do not make fundamental connections on Tesla stock. They use stock charts to get a sense of where things are going in the short and medium term. Charts can tell investors a lot about where investors have bought and sold stocks in the past and when a lot of good or bad news has been reflected in stock prices.

Cappelleri support is adequate where Tesla stock is trading. If he’s right, Tesla stock has no further downside to go.

Heading into Friday trading, Tesla stock was still up 78% so far this year.

Write to Al Root at allen.root@dowjones.com