A petition asking US regulators to examine trading in Nio shares has gathered more than 1,100 signatures in less than 48 hours, as the stock of the Chinese EV maker trades roughly 90% below its 2021 peak.
The petition was posted on Change.org on May 21 and calls on the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority and the New York Stock Exchange to conduct a formal review of trading activity in the stock.
Nio‘s American depositary shares trade primarily on the New York Stock Exchange, with secondary listings of its Class A ordinary shares in Hong Kong and Singapore.
UK-based investor, Harvey Grogan, said on Saturday the petition he created had passed 1,000 supporters “in under 48 hours” and set a next target of 2,500.
As of press time, 1,106 shareholders had signed it.
What the Petition Claims
The signatories describe themselves as retail and institutional investors requesting a review into what they call unusual trading patterns.
The petition says investors have observed “what they believe to be unusual and potentially concerning trading patterns” in the shares.
Investors claim “persistent downward price pressure despite company developments and delivery growth” and “significant short-selling activity and abnormal trading volume” among the concerns.
Nio was founded in November 2014, became a publicly listed company in 2018 and announced its first-ever profitable quarter last March.
The petition also points to “large intraday price swings inconsistent with broader market conditions” and what it calls the “potential use of dark pool trading and algorithmic trading practices that may disadvantage retail investors.”
The signatories say there are “repeated periods where investor sentiment and company fundamentals appear disconnected from market performance.”
The petition stops short of alleging illegal conduct.
“We are not making direct accusations of illegal conduct,” it reads, while arguing the patterns “warrant independent review.”
The signatories ask regulators to scrutinize short-selling disclosure, examine trading data “for evidence of coordinated or manipulative practices,” investigate off-exchange and dark-pool activity, and give retail investors more transparency on order-flow practices.
“Retail investors deserve confidence that markets operate fairly and transparently for all participants, regardless of size or institutional influence,” the petition says.
In his May 23 update, Grogan sought to distance the campaign from conspiracy theories.
“This petition is not about attacking individuals or spreading conspiracy theories,” he wrote, framing it as “asking for fair, transparent markets and an independent review of unusual trading activity that many retail investors have observed over time.”
A Stock Far From Its Peak
The campaign reflects the position many Nio shareholders find themselves in after a multi-year decline.
Nio priced its initial public offering at $6.26 per American depositary share in September 2018.
The stock then went through one of the more extreme round trips in recent market history.
After falling near $1 in 2019, it surged more than 1,100% in 2020 as investors poured into EV names, and reached an intraday high around $66.99 in early 2021, with a peak closing price of $62.84 on February 9 that year.
The collapse that followed was steep and sustained.
The shares fell about 69% in 2022 and a further 52% in 2024, and have traded in a range of roughly $3.34 to $8.02 over the past year.
Nio‘s US-listed shares are down about 90% from their January 2021 high.
The Wider Context
The decline the petition attributes to trading dynamics also has more conventional explanations.
Nio‘s 2020 surge came during a speculative wave that lifted the entire EV sector, and the unwind since 2021 has hit nearly every name that rode it, including Tesla, Rivian, Lucid and XPeng to varying degrees.
Nio has also leaned on equity markets to fund itself through years of losses, raising $2 billion through an at-the-market share sale in November 2021 alone, which diluted existing holders.
The company posted years of heavy losses before turning its first quarterly GAAP profit in the fourth quarter of 2025.
The Shanghai-headquartered EV maker expects to report a second quarter revenue of between 32.8 — 34.4 billion yuan, slighly below its record of 34.6 billion yuan in the final quarter of last year — when vehicles deliveries also reached a new high.
Nio reported a record first quarter for deliveries last week and stayed profitable on an adjusted basis, and several brokerages raised their price targets in the days that followed.
A Separate Fight Over Online Rumors
The petition was not the only pushback against perceived unfair treatment to surface around Nio on Friday, though the two are unrelated.
The company said separately that it had reported a campaign of online rumors and defamatory content targeting Nio, its Onvo sub-brand and people featured in its marketing to Chinese police, who have accepted the case.
Nio‘s complaint is the latest in a long-running legal effort against online disinformation; last month Nio said police had arrested a suspect who used AI tools to spread fabricated content across more than 4,000 accounts.
The dispute concerns social-media content in China and is distinct from the trading concerns raised in the investor petition.
A Difficult Week
The petition’s surge in signatures coincided with another leg down for the stock.
Nio‘s US-listed shares closed down 7.14% at $5.20 on Friday, on volume of about 88 million shares, more than double the three-month daily average.
The drop left the company with a market value of just above $13 billion.
The decline was driven partly by a broad sell-off in US-listed Chinese stocks, after Beijing escalated a crackdown on the offshore brokers that channel mainland money into those shares, and partly by a reversal during Thursday’s earnings callwhen management warned of rising raw-material costs.
