We’ve harped on investor FOMO (fear of missing out) here on Money and Markets before, and recent action by the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund may be the ultimate case of “missing out.”
The Saudi sovereign wealth fund sold off 99.5% of its shares in Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA) during the fourth quarter of 2019, leaving it with only 39,151 shares to spare, according to public filings and InsiderScore.com. Recent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission showed the fund had 8.2 million shares of the electric automaker at the end of the third quarter last year.
Tesla stock has been on a monstrous tear over the first two days of the week, rising 19.9% Monday with another 23% gain on Tuesday before closing up 13.7% after a massive sell-off. If the fund had sold all those shares Tuesday, it would have made out with over $7.6 billion.
Looking at the fourth quarter of 2019, Tesla’s low point occurred on Oct. 1 when shares were around $241, and the high point for the quarter landed on Dec. 27, when the stock was trading around $435. So that means Public Investment’s sell-off yielded anywhere from $1.9 billion to $3.4 billion, way bellow the $7.6 billion it would have landed if it sold Tuesday.
And so far, the stock hasn’t showed any sign of stopping. Analysts at Ark Invest, and noted Tesla bulls, set the firm’s price target for the electric automaker to $7,000 by 2024.
Apparently, Tesla has done this before as well.
“There’s no telling how high the initial jump can take it, but Tesla is no stranger to parabolic moves,” Banyan Hill Publishing analyst Chad Shoop said. “The stock surged more than 800% in two years from 2012 to 2014. It jumped more than 100% from November 2016 to July 2017. And now, it is up more than 250% since June.”
Public Investment’s website contains guidelines for its trading strategies that says it uses “standardized procedures and guidelines to govern investment decisions, focused on building a diversified portfolio which achieves attractive, risk-adjusted returns over the long-term.”
While the firm may be going for long-term returns, it definitely missed the chance for a huge short-term win.
The fund’s filing also shows that it still owns 72.8 million shares in Uber Technologies (NYSE: UBER).