Elon Musk’s Tweets Wiped $14bn off Tesla’s value

  • AUTHOR: isbah
  • POSTED ON: May 2, 2020

If there is one person who is suffering massively due to coronavirus, it’s Elon Musk. After creating a controversy by asking the government to lift social distancing rules, he has successfully managed to wipe $14bn off the carmaker’s value. Those of you who know about his highly amusing Twitter presence should know that he did this by tweeting about the share price being too high.

Not only that, but his tweet also knocked $3bn off Mr. Musk’s own stake in Tesla as investors decided to bail out of the shares.


Source: Getty Images

“Tesla stock price is too high imo,” he said, one of several tweets that included a vow to sell his possessions.

In other tweets, he said his girlfriend was mad at him, while another simply read: “Rage, rage against the dying of the light of consciousness.”

No one knows what’s going on with him but if this continues for long, then Mr. Musk would soon go bankrupt in the market. Well, as bankrupt as it is possible for a multi-billionaire.
The Wall Street Journal managed to ask Elon Musk whether he was joking about the share price or not and he replied with a big fat “No”.

Source: Twitter

Tesla’s share price has surged this year, putting the electric carmaker’s value at close to $100bn, a mark that would trigger a bonus payment of hundreds of millions of dollars to the entrepreneur.
We view these Musk comments as tongue in cheek and it’s Elon being Elon. It’s certainly a headache for investors for him to venture into this area as his tweeting remains a hot button issue and [Wall] Street clearly is frustrated,” Wedbush Securities analyst Daniel Ives told Reuters news agency.

Earlier in 2018, Mr. Musk said that he might have secured substantial funding and will, therefore, make sure that Tesla is removed from the stock market. This led to swings in the share price as he was planning on making the company private. The Securities and Exchange Commission judged it a market-moving comment, fined him, and forced Tesla to put in place checks to ensure it did not happen again.

However, last month a federal judge said that Tesla and Musk are bound to face a lawsuit by shareholders regarding the tweet as it suggested that Mr. Musk was planning to make the company private without involving the board.

Earlier this week he tweeted to his 33.4 million followers some strong criticism of US stay-at-home restrictions because of the coronavirus pandemic. In 2019 he found himself in court after tweeting that a British diver was a “pedo guy“.

Updated May 2, 2020
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