Tesla Stock Plunge: Retail Investors Share What Led Them to Sell

• Tesla stock has plunged as much as 53% since December.
• Some retail investors have exited their positions and avoided the stock’s plunge.
• They told Business Insider what signs prompted them to sell early.

In investing, a selling opportunity often becomes painfully obvious only after the price of a stock drops dramatically. But for some retail investors, the writing was already on the wall for Tesla stock even before its precipitous plunge in 2025.

Investor exuberance swelled after President Donald Trump’s election and into the new year, sending Tesla stock surging. However, the stock has been on a downward spiral this year, sinking as much as 53% from its all-time high of $479.86 in December to $248.71 on Friday’s close.

While some retail investors are doubling down and holding, others have exited their positions. Business Insider spoke with three former Tesla shareholders to see what led them to sell their shares and avoid the stock’s bloodbath.

Musk’s cult of personality

One common thread that influenced all three investors’ decisions is Musk’s controversial personality.

Mikhaela Delahunty bought three shares of Tesla in August 2023. She sold them a year later, in August 2024.

“When Elon started having this alliance with Trump, I started to think about branding and how this would all play out for the typical Tesla consumer and the typical Tesla buyer,” Delahunty, a PR specialist, told BI.

Dan Chan is a corporate magician who sold his Tesla shares in early January, before the inauguration. The biggest factor in his decision was Musk’s leadership style and his political involvement.

Chan’s familiarity with Musk goes way back — he was an early employee at PayPal in 1999 when Elon Musk was CEO. There, Chan signed a petition to remove Musk from PayPal.

Musk’s political foray — through his extensive election spending for Trump and his DOGE plans — became the last straw for Chan. Chan thought Musk’s leadership style and affiliation with Trump would rattle investor confidence and lead the stock to sell off, leading him to exit his position. Chan had been holding some of his shares since 2016 and realized a 1,900+% gain on some of them, documents viewed by BI revealed.

Chan sees similarities between what Musk is doing with DOGE now and what he did at PayPal.

“The reason why he actually got booted from PayPal is he wanted to change the stack of the programming language midway when we were bleeding money,” Chan said. “He does things that are very rash, which is not good for government because when you say something and you switch it, people can’t focus on their work when their jobs are at risk.”

Business owner Jonathan Goodman bought Tesla stock during the pandemic because he believed the company was an industry leader in the electric vehicle space. Initially, Goodman thought Musk’s outspoken personality was a boon to the stock, but ultimately, it was Musk’s continued affiliation with the president that made…