- Mullen said its new spoofing complaint will replace its short-selling litigation announced in August.
- Law firm says spoofing litigation could amounts to “billions” in compensation.
- MULN trades lower for fourth consecutive session on Friday.
- Traders wait for December 15 shareholder vote on reverse split.
Mullen Automotive (MULN) stock lost ground for the fourth session in a row on Friday despite the broader market seeing gains across categories. MULN stock lost 5.13% on Friday, closing at $0.1480 . All three major indices – Dow Jones, S&P 500 and NASDAQ Composite – closed up near 0.4%.
Nonfarm Payrolls for November were released before the market open on Friday and led to some selling initially. The report said there were 199K new hires last month, which was well above the 180K consensus, and the Unemployment Rate ticked down from 3.9% to 3.7%. A tighter labor market had investors concerned that the Federal Reserve would be less likely to cut interest rates on the perceived schedule.
The University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index, however, saved the day when it came in at 69.4. This was much higher than the 62 consensus figure, and markets have rallied on news that the US consumer is growing much more optimistic.
Mullen Automotive stock news: Mullen once more attacks MULN manipulation
On Friday morning, Mullen announced it had filed a new spoofing complaint against several broker-dealers it contends have been involved in manipulating its stock price over the past two years.
The complaint, filed in US District Court for the Southern District of New York on Wednesday, alleges that UBS Securities, IMC Financial Markets and Clear Street Markets engaged in or allowed spoof trading that manipulated the MULN share price.
Spoofing occurs when rogue traders submit large market orders but cancel them before being executed. By creating false supply or demand signals in the market, traders can initiate price movement without taking a resulting position. Spoofing is often associated with high-frequency trading schemes.
“[Mullen] believes that the spoofing litigation has exponentially greater potential to recover damages based on the nature of the claims and the duration of the 2-year period when the spoofing is alleged to have occurred. In connection with the decision to file the spoofing complaint, the [Mullen] has voluntarily dismissed the lawsuit originally filed on Aug. 29, 2023,” Mullen said in a statement, ending its earlier short-selling litigation in favor of the spoofing lawsuit.
The latest news follows on the heels of Mullen’s Wednesday announcement that its legal representatives had uncovered evidence of spoofing that had led to 5 billion MULN shares trading at artificially-deflated prices in the two years following its debut on the NASDAQ exchange in November 2021.
“In the 21 years our team has been prosecuting market manipulation cases against Wall Street, I believe this could be one of the largest and strongest spoofing and market manipulation cases we have handled,” said Wes Christian of Christian Attar Group, one of the two law firms working in conjunction on the litigation. “After working with our consulting and investigative experts, I believe the damage model could be in the billions of dollars.”
EV stocks FAQs
Electric vehicles or EVs are automobiles that use rechargable batteries and electric motors to accelerate rather than internal combustion engines (ICEs). They have been around for more that 100 years, but battery technology research & development was meager for much of the 20th century. Lithium-ion battery technology became advanced enough to produce EVs at scale in the late 1990s and 2000s, and sales have been steadily increasing since then Tesla’s Roadster was unveiled in 2008. EVs are viewed as a means of reducing carbon emissions since battery electric vehicles (BEVs) themselves produce zero emissions. Other vehicles called plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) utilize both battery electric power and ICEs as a backup.
EVs are growing from a small base, but they rose from 9% of global new auto sales in 2021 to 14% of the total in 2022. This was a 65% YoY growth rate, and the industry delivered 10.2 million EVs worldwide in 2022. Projections show this number climbing above 16 million in 2023. Across the world, market shares differ greatly among nations. Nearly 88% of Norwegian new car sales in 2022 were EVs. On the other hand, the United States, where much of the modern innovation in EVs was forged, had less than 8% of new vehicle sales go to EVs in 2022. The largest EV market in the world, China, saw 30% of the market go to EVs that year.
We know you’re thinking Elon Musk, but he’s probably more like the father of the mass-market, contemporary EV. All the way back in 1827, a Hungarian priest named Anyos Jedlik invented the electric motor and used it the following year to power a vehicle of sorts. French scientist Gaston Planté invented the lead-acid battery in 1859, and German engineer Andreas Flocken built the first true electric car for the public in 1888. EVs made up about 38% of all vehicles sold in the US around 1900. They began losing market share rapidly after 1910 when gasoline-powered vehicles grew much more affordable. They largely died off until new research programs in the 1990s led to gradual private sector investment in the 2000s.
China’s BYD is by far the largest manufacturer of EVs in the world. In 2022 it sold 1.8 million EVs and in the second half of the year made up 20% of the global market. The asterisk given to BYD is that the vast majority of these vehicles are hybrids. Tesla’s 12% market share is often treated as more significant than BYD, because it only sells BEVs and is the most famous EV brand in the world. Volkswagen, BMW and Wuling then round out the top five. As a new sector with heavy investment though, many startups have flooded the market. These include China’s Nio, Li Auto and Xpeng; a Swedish-Chinese manufacturer called Polestar; and Lucid and Rivian from the US.
Mullen stock forecast
Mullen stock is trending down on Friday back toward the $0.15 level where it found support at the end of Thursday. MULN stock briefly shot up to near $0.20 in Friday’s premarket, but that euphoria didn’t stick in the regular session.
Bulls will watch to see if MULN can hold to the $0.15 level. If so, then a break above $0.17 may incline some to ride the wave up to the former support at $0.2210.
Despite the spoofing litigation’s possible billion dollar payday – which is a lot for a company with a $64 million market cap – most traders know the thin likelihood of that payout is far in the future if at all. For now, traders are focused on the reverse stock split shareholder vote scheduled for December 15. There’s little urge to purchase shares ahead of reverse splits.
MULN 1-hour chart