Tesla Stock Is Going Down, Yet Musk’s EV Giant Outshines Nvidia in Interactive Brokers’ Trade Rankings

Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) emerged as the most actively traded stock on Interactive Brokers' (NASDAQ: IBKR) platform for the week ending March 25, 2025. The electric vehicle giant saw gross activity of over 659,000 trades, surpassing Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) and Palantir Technologies (NASDAQ: PLTR), which ranked second and third respectively. This marks a notable shift from two weeks prior when Nvidia topped the list with over 715,000 trades.

Declining Net Buying Activity

Interactive Brokers' Chief Strategist Steve Sosnick highlighted a significant reduction in net buying activity among clients over the past two weeks. While 23 of the top 25 stocks showed net buying activity, the magnitude has decreased substantially compared to earlier data.

For example, Tesla's net stock purchases dropped from 68,057 on March 11 to just 10,097 on March 25. Similarly, Nvidia saw its net purchases decline from 119,031 to 23,706 during the same period.

“What a difference a couple of weeks can make,” Sosnick commented. “This is not to say that our customers have flipped to the sell side. “Over the past week, 23 of the 25 most active stocks on the IBKR platform showed net buying activity, and the other two showed only tiny biases to selling.”

“Yet the magnitude of the net stock buying has shrunk to only modest levels, while call options activity is slightly biased to the sell side and put options activity is essentially flat. We don’t normally include prior data in these weekly notes, but we are including the table from two weeks ago to illustrate the distinctions,” he added.

Sosnick attributed this trend to a blend of profit-taking and diminished confidence in dip-buying strategies following recent market volatility. He noted that gross trading volumes across stocks and options have also declined sharply—total gross activity fell from approximately 4.4 million trades on March 11 to just over 3.2 million trades by March 25.

Interestingly, the exact same two companies made it onto the list of the most popular equity instruments on eToro, another retail trading platform. The only difference is that Nvidia took the top spot, while Tesla came in second.

Options Mixed, Leveraged ETFs Remain Popular

Options trading mirrored these shifts in sentiment. Call options activity leaned slightly toward selling, while put options remained relatively flat. For Tesla, call buys totaled 48,404 compared to call sales of 52,258, indicating a slight bearish bias. Nvidia exhibited similar trends with call buys at 31,576 and call sales at 32,476.

Leveraged ETFs continued to attract significant trading interest among Interactive Brokers’ clients. TQQQ (ProShares UltraPro QQQ) ranked fourth overall with gross activity of over 121,000 trades. TSLL (Direxion Daily TSLA Bull), SOXL (Direxion Daily Semiconductor Bull), and SQQQ (ProShares UltraPro Short QQQ) also remained prominent on the list.

Market Sentiment and Trading Behavior

Sosnick commented on the evolving market sentiment: “Our customers remain loyal to their favorite names like Tesla and Nvidia but are trading with less confidence than they had just weeks ago.” He added that Tesla's recent rally of over 12% appeared driven by Fear of Missing Out (FOMO), potentially fueled by traders who had reduced their exposure earlier.

Nvidia, on the other hand, saw a steeper decline, with gross stock activity dropping 35.7% from 572,297 to 356,266—a reflection of cooling interest in the AI darling. Other big names weren’t spared either: MSTR (MicroStrategy) slid from 5th to 9th, with its total gross shrinking 40.2% to 103,118, and even flipped from net buying (+2,873) to net selling (-2,052). SPY (SPDR S&P 500 ETF) and AMZN (Amazon) each dropped four spots, landing at 11th and 12th, respectively, as their gross activity fell 38.3% and 34.1%.

Despite these declines, Interactive Brokers’ clients continue to show strong interest in high-profile tech stocks and leveraged ETFs. The data suggests that while traders have scaled back their activity amid market uncertainty, they remain engaged with their preferred assets.

Why Tesla Stock Is Down?

Changes in IBKR investors' behavior also align with significant fluctuations in Tesla's stock price on Wall Street. Just last week, I wrote that Tesla's shares had risen for the fifth consecutive session, reaching near-monthly highs.

However, the $288 level tested at that time turned out to be a local peak, which was retested last Thursday. On that day, a bearish pin bar appeared on the chart just below the 200 EMA, with an almost invisible upper wick. This immediately triggered a 3.5% drop in Tesla's stock price on Friday, closing the week at $263.60.

Since the beginning of the year, the electric vehicle manufacturer's stock has fallen by nearly 35%, lagging behind the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100, which has declined by just under 10% over the same period.