“Tesla stock price is too high IMO,” Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted, causing the company’s stocks to drop by 12% before closing further at 10.3% on Friday. The automaker recently announced that its stocks were trading at 760.23 but they tanked to 717.64 and even lower after its billionaire CEO tweeted that its shares were selling too high.
In 2018, Musk said he wanted to make Teslas a private affair by selling the shares at $420 each and that he has obtained the finances to implement this. Although the SEC would not comment on the development, Musk told the Wall Street Journal that he wasn’t joking with the tweet. A shareholder lawsuit followed the tweet after the company’s stocks skyrocketed and later volatility later resulted, with shareholders saying Tesla deceived them in the face of Musk’s $420 per share tweets.
A federal judge sustained that the lawsuit had merits. Tesla board of directors paid a $60 million settlement when shareholders filed a lawsuit over the company’s acquisition of SolarCity for $2.6 billion in 2016. Musk may also stand trial for lawsuits that he used Tesla to acquire SolarCity, a solar installation company that many deemed as failed and dying.
After Musk tweeted that Tesla’s stocks were too high, he tweeted that “I am selling almost all physical possessions; will own no house.” He later tweeted to “give people back their freedom,” further saying “rage, rage against the dying of the light of consciousness.” Speculators believe he is referring to the current COVID-19 lockdown situation and the shelter-in-place orders in the country. He is known to stand against the lockdown in effect, saying it is an imprisonment and against the constitutional rights of people to be locked down in their own homes.
Earlier this year, the SpaceX founder threw the cryptocurrency industry into a frenzy by tweeting that “Bitcoin is *not* my safe word.” The tweet created quite a stir in the cryptocurrency community with Musk later laughing out when the Bitcoin tweeter manager rejoined lately that “Bitcoin price is too low IMO.”
Source: cnbc.com