Tesla stock plunged after Elon Musk tweeted it was “too high” | Hacker News Reader

Tesla stock plunged after Elon Musk tweeted it was “too high”

axios.com

30 pointstaytus43 comments

Just the other day I was defending EM that he has the freedom to express himself. Today I deplore him for making the tweet that impact the stock price and hence financial well being of shareholders, without sufficient explanation. Why is the stock price too high? Or are you just kidding? How should we be interpreting this riddle?

Maybe I'm naive, but isn't the market cap of Tesla twice that of Volkswagen, a company that sells 10 million vehicles each year?

How can the question be "why is the price too high"? I feel like the price of Tesla is as disconnected from any physical reality as that of bitcoin. Pure speculation, in other terms.

The point is that the CEO of a company has certain duties, and tweeting like this goes against them. Consider how easy it would be for a CEO to manipulate the stock market with statements like this to enrich themselves or people they've informed. In addition, Elon Musk has been fined by the SEC before for making statements like this.

I don't agree. The duty of a CEO is to be honest.

He said it was his opinion.

Unfortunately as CEO of a public company, I don’t believe he can make stock moving statements casually, without backing it by information. It can’t be left as an exercise for the reader - if it’s opinion, why does he think so? Or maybe he is j/k. How should we decode this information?

Kidding is hard to differentiate from lying. Opinions are opinions, by definition truthful and subjective.

Not all opinions are honest.

en.wiktionary.org/wiki/in_my_honest_opinion

en.wiktionary.org/wiki/concern_troll

Dishonest opinions are really lies about the true opinion.

That qualifier isn't good enough, of course. He has access to tons of insider information. Anyone can have an opinion, but his is different because people justifiably assume it's an educated opinion.

I’m presuming here that you were defending his “freedom” tweets the other day? If so I’m genuinely curious why you defend his freedom to express opinions that could lead to further deaths and spread of a virus but you deplore him now that his opinion has an impact on money? It seems like a bizzare place to draw a line.

Calling your stock over valued is not unprecedented. Even Mr. Buffet has done so in the past. What is a little unusual is to announce this in the middle of the trading day.

Interesting. In case of Buffet, did he provide additional information to back up his claim? I case of EM, I have no idea if he is kidding or serious. This leads to confusion, loss of value - potentially unnecessarily.

To be honest I don't think anyone can value Tesla with any accuracy, not even Musk. The prudent valuation is to value it as a straight up auto company. But then, what about the tera batteries, the solar roofs, the cybertruck (which seems to have caught on beyond anyone's expectation), the self driving software, the industrial batteries, the domestic batteries and the utility batteries? Throw in implied insurance on the downside due to Musk's equity in SpaceX. What does all this speculation add up to? A lot less than you would think if someone else patents a break through battery that can scale. What are the chances? No one has a clue. For sure though, right now, it's worth more than a straight up auto company and the market reflects that.

It’s not a question so much that Tesla and SpaceX are amazing. It’s just that why does EM have to make stock influencing statements like this. It hurts people financially. Just watch out for that.

Especially after you’ve entered a legal agreement with the SEC to have a general counsel review all your intratrading day tweets that are influential to the stock price

I feel like this is the sort of statement that the SEC (not to mention the board) would frown on.

> statement that the SEC and the board would frown on

True. But, he's not wrong. TSLA has doubled since Jan. yet about the only revenue that's doubled is sales of emissions credits.

Regardless, I would be livid if I was a Tesla employee, the CEO was seemingly trying to depress the share price, and stock options were part of my comp.

Yes, I look forward to their settlement, I'm sure it'll be something like "We'll frown in your direction if you do this again for the 18th time".

Honestly, why are we talking about the SEC as if they have anything to do with anything.

Well, can't Tesla/Elon be sued by shareholders independently of the SEC?

So, do the buyers and sellers actually know what they are doing?

The stock market seems to be running on emotions, more than analysis, which, it always seems to be.

Do you think he’s getting dementia? Three decades of no sleep and stress make Jack a dull boy...

either he's having a nervous breakdown or he knows something we dont...

It's Musk, he has whiny meltdowns on Twitter all the time. The best thing SpaceX and Tesla could do is rid themselves of him.

what do you tweet to your following? expressing emotion isn’t a “meltdown”.

A CEO (and a leader of a country, I should add) have a power with their words that requires them to speak with a different voice. If that's not possible, resigning is an option.

> he knows something we dont

He absolutely knows things we don't, such as today's snapshot of Tesla's financial state, internal projections, negotiations with suppliers, and back-channel info given to him by other powerful people. He was a Trump advisor for a while, so I'm sure he still has connections in federal government from that.

It's his narcissistic disorder. He can't take that the Coronavirus is front and centre in the news instead of him.

He did the same shit when Thai kids got lost in a cave and his highness thought his useless-for-the-purpose invention could free the kids. Yet when a diver criticized him he went on a pedo tirade.

also after the rest of the market tanked ...

The market is down about 2.5% today. Bad, but hardly "tanked". (it had fallen less than that at the time of his tweets)

TSLA is down almost 9% (was 12% at one point).

Not the only thing too high...

He may be in a financial bind. It's not inconceivable that he could be shorting Tesla through third parties. The other nonsensical tweets could be camouflage.

Or, yeah, maybe he's just a little too high.

No, it tanked because we’re in a bear market and there is a massive recession in progress. Who’s gonna buy a Tesla?

The massive plunge in share price coinciding exactly with the timing of the Tweet begs to differ.

The auto industry has been imploding in general. You were a fool if you longed TSLA. I didn’t and am very bearish on it.

Your original comment is incorrect though, it did tank 10% immediately after his tweet, it was literally the catalyst.

Cue something about correlation vs. causation...

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