STORY: U.S. stocks closed mostly lower at the beginning of a holiday-shortened week on Tuesday, with growth stocks dragging the tech-laden Nasdaq down the most.

The Dow closed up factionally, while the S&P lost four tenths of a percent and the Nasdaq shed nearly 1.4%.

Tesla fell a whopping 11.4 percent after a Reuters review of an internal schedule revealed that the electric vehicle maker plans to scale back production at its Shanghai plant.

With Tuesday's move, Tesla's stock has lost nearly 70% of its value this year.

David Bahnsen is Chief Investment Officer at the Bahnsen Group.

“I think the biggest thing though that can be said about Tesla can be said about so many of the big cap darlings that have gotten hammered this year – is you just have to remember how up they were before. Tesla was up 900% from its recent low before the big rally. And so now it's given an awful lot of that back. And a lot of that selloff is related to the fact that it had just gone up way too much. I would never want to bet against Elon Musk, against Tesla, but there are so many unknown variables that will go into what happens from here.”

In addition to production issues, those variables include related price cuts, potential softening demand - and fears that Musk may be too distracted by his recent purchase of Twitter.

In other individual movers, U.S.-listed shares of Chinese firms including JD.Com, Alibaba and Pinduoduo jumped between 1.4% and 4.9% after Beijing announced it was relaxing COVID-related travel restrictions.

And Southwest Airlines tumbled after harsh weather forced the discount commercial carrier to lead its peers in cancellations.

With just three trading days remaining in 2022, all three indexes are on course to post their biggest annual loss since 2008, the nadir of the global financial crisis.