Small private investors are investing in Volkswagen’s share. The ambitious sales targets set earlier by the German automaker attracted the attention of investors in forums such as “Wall Street Bets” on the internet platform Reddit. Volkswagen is now the new Tesla.
It also ensured that the shares of Tesla were exchanged for that of Volkswagen, which recently became Germany’s most valuable listed company. On Thursday, the German car maker won 15 percent in stock market value. The stock rose to the highest level in 12.5 years, eventually closing at a loss.
The last time Volkswagen experienced such a jump was in 2008 in connection with the acquisition by Porsche. Volkswagen’s ordinary shares often move more strongly than average. This is because only a small part of the pieces is freely negotiable. About 90 percent of the ordinary shares are held by major shareholders such as Porsche, Lower Saxony and Qatar.
According to experts, Volkswagen will become a serious competitor of Tesla with its new platform. There is also a high probability that Volkswagen, aided by plans to cut costs such as a redundancy scheme for older workers, will exceed its target profit margin of 5.5 to 6.5 percent.
Rival BMW is also increasingly focusing on electric mobility, with which it gets the hands of investors together. The shares of the Munich-based car manufacturer rose to its highest level in three years.
This is not the first time that Reddit investors have moved. Previously, they pushed stocks such as those of GameStop and AMC Entertainment’s movie owner. Private investors encouraged each other via internet forums to invest in the shares, in order to undermine large investment funds that speculated on a fall in price.
