Shares of electric vehicle maker Polestar (PSNY +2.84%) had a rough week, even by the volatile standards of electric vehicle stocks. A rapid sell-off left Polestar's American depositary shares down 29.2% for the week by Friday's close.
What drove that decline? The answer isn't obvious, but here's what we know.
This volatility wasn't driven by news
There was no news driving this move. (I covered this company when I was a reporter. If there were news, I'd know about it, and I'd share it with you.)
But here's what I do know: Someone, for some reason, bought a ton of Polestar stock in the last hour before U.S. markets closed on Friday, Feb. 27. Those purchases drove the stock price up from $18.71 at 3 p.m. ET to $23.38 at closing just an hour later. That's a gain of almost exactly 20% in just an hour of trading.
Image source: Polestar.
Was it a fund trading a rumor? A glitch in an algorithm? A trader's mistake? Something else?
Whatever it was, it was unwound pretty quickly. While the stock stayed up in that range on the following Monday, the share price fell below $20 in early trading on Tuesday and spent the rest of the week bouncing around the teens.
Here's a six-month chart for some more context.
We can see that the stock sold off after Polestar reported its third-quarter results on Nov. 12 -- and again after a reverse stock split took effect in December. But there was no news driving the most recent sell-off.
There may be more turbulence ahead
The takeaway here is that Polestar's recent price gyrations aren't driven by its fundamentals. Shareholders may need to hold tight at least until Polestar reports its full-year 2025 results later this month.
