Elon Musk wipes $14 bn off Tesla’s value with his tweet

Recently Tesla founder “Elon Musk” posted a series of tweets that are kind of non-understandable. A tweet by Elon which says that “Tesla‘s stock price is too high” and makes Tesla drop down $14 bn in few hours of his tweet, including knocking $3bn off Mr. Musk’s own stake in Tesla as investors promptly bailed out of the company.

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.” In 2018, a tweet about Tesla‘s future on the New York stock market led to regulators fining him $20m and Mr. Musk agreeing to have all further posts on the platform pre-screened by lawyers.

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On Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported it had asked the billionaire if he was joking about the share price tweet and whether it had been vetted, receiving the reply “No”.

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 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 last year after tweeting that a British diver was a “pedo guy”.

Mr Musk said the promise to sell his possessions included his house, formerly owned by actor and producer Gene Wilder, and bought in 2013.

“One stipulation on sale,” he tweeted, “I own Gene Wilder’s old house. It cannot be torn down or lose any of its soul.”