Almost No One Admires This Company, but Everyone Trades Its Stock

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Aug 13, 6:37PM EDT · Published Jul 28, 6:37AM EDT

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Almost No One Admires This Company, but Everyone Trades Its Stock — © Courtesy of Ford Motor Company

Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F | F Price Prediction) was near the top of the Fortune 500 for years. It was among the world’s manufacturing pillars. That has changed over the past decade as Ford’s prospects for rapid growth have disappeared, and tech companies have taken its place among America’s most successful public corporations. However, Ford is the most widely traded stock listed on the two major exchanges, based on the volume of one of America’s largest brokers.

Huge online trading firm Robinhood tracks the companies most traded by its customers. Robinhood almost certainly has the largest trading volume of equities among brokerage firms, and it is famous for the massive trading volume it produced. That makes it an excellent proxy for private investor activity. Ford tops its “leaderboard” of the most widely traded securities. It is no coincidence that Ford’s trading volume is extremely high among all stocks listed on the New York Stock Exchange, at almost 90 million shares a day. As a consequence, investors can get in and out of the stock almost immediately without affecting its share price.

Ford’s stock price is down 53% over the past five years, while the S&P 500 is up 51%. The company has gone through a succession of chief executive officers over the past decades, as it has tried to regain its lead among the global car manufacturers. Nevertheless, its sales have declined so much that it will never match the global car sales of Volkswagen, General Motors and Toyota. Its luxury division, Cadillac, will never catch the sales volume of rivals BMW, Mercedes and Lexus. Its only really successful model is the F-150 pickup, which is the top-selling vehicle in America.

Aside from weak sales in the U.S. market, Ford has failed in China, the world’s largest car market, where its sales have plunged. It is late to the electric and autonomous car business, which Tesla currently controls. Other large manufacturers have tried to catch Tesla in electric car sales. None has been successful.

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Why is Ford the most widely traded stock by individual investors? One reason is the liquidity of the stock, which existed before Robinhood. Another may be its presence as one of America’s best-known but failed brands.
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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.