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> "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 twe

> "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," I'm sorry, whose fault is it that Wall Street react to tweets? I mean really, If I'm long on Tesla (I'm not, I own none of their stock unless it's somehow tied up in my 401K) am I selling all my stock because Elon said he thinks it's too high? No, that would be stupid. Sounds like day traders/HFT's are the ones that choose to react to this stuff and then get burned and I have zero compassion for that. Live by the sword...

arcticbull 7y ago
That's a totally fair point. Seriously, how many TSLA investors don't know who Elon is, how he acts, or his ongoing settlement with the SEC over tweeting?
jariel 7y ago
It has nothing to do with Wall Street or Tweets. It has to do with insiders and public information regarding a publicly-traded company worth many billions of dollars. Musk has an agreement with said investors and is bound by a bunch of rules he has agreed to. He's a fool and it could really hurt him someday. He really needs to stop tweeting about the stock.
gowld 7y ago
Elon Musk is the CEO of a publicly traded company, with all the rights and responsibilities that entails. He can take the company private and delist the company if he doesn't want to follow the rules of the stock market. Koch Industries, for example, is privately held.
daxorid 7y ago
> whose fault is it that Wall Street react to tweets? He's not permitted to tweet anything that may materially impact the stock without prior board or general counsel approval, per his contempt agreement. Obviously Jay Clayton is going to let him get away with it just like his prior violation of the Consent Decree, but for the brief period of time that the market forgets the SEC is toothless when it comes to Musk, this is nominally a big deal.
- xoa 7y ago
  >He's not permitted to tweet anything that may materially impact the stock without prior board or general counsel approval, per his contempt agreement. Isn't the actual SEC agreement a lot more specific than that? This first article [1] I found in a quick search from last year has a specific list, he has to have it cleared for including any of: • any information about the company’s financial condition or guidance, potential or proposed mergers, acquisitions or joint ventures, • production numbers or sales or delivery number (actual, forecasted, or projected), • new or proposed business lines that are unrelated to then-existing business lines (presently includes vehicles, transportation, and sustainable energy products); • projection, forecast, or estimate numbers regarding Tesla’s business that have not been previously published in official company guidance • events regarding the company’s securities (including Musk’s acquisition or disposition of shares) • nonpublic legal or regulatory findings or decisions; • any event requiring the filing of a Form 8-K such as a change in control or a change in the company’s directors; any principal executive officer, president, principal financial officer, principal accounting officer, principal operating officer, or any person performing similar functions Were there other more general terms? If not, does pure opinion of "lol it's up too high" actually violate the letter of any of those? I guess it could be argued that maybe he's saying that due to information he knows that other people don't, but it's not itself disclosing anything at all. May get an investigation, but if internally there has been nothing of material impact (and he didn't benefit in any way) and it's just Elon Musk going off I'm not sure it's a matter for the SEC vs the board and shareholders. But his genius/drive and crazy/lack of control are pretty well known quantities at this point and tied together. If he's not violating any actual laws and a majority of shareholders are fine taking the bad with the good vs other mixtures of bad and good (safe and conservative but low vision for example) that seems like it'd be up to them? ---- 1: https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/26/elon-musk-sec-agree-to-guidelines-on-twitter-use/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/26/elon-musk-sec-agree-to-gui...
  - crazygringo 7y ago
    His tweet is literally a "projection, forecast, or estimate" of "numbers regarding Tesla’s business" (the stock price) "that have not been previously published in official company guidance". It's also absolutely "any information about the company’s financial condition or guidance". I don't see any way this doesn't fall in the list of bullets. Saying the stock price is too high is nothing but a guidance as to the company's financial condition.
social_quotient 7y ago
Suppose a stop loss or trailing stop would have exited your position. 128 ETFs have Tesla in them and 55 have it as a top 15% position. Those ETFs likely have rules based on the sort of drop we saw today. It’s easy to speak personally about not being an active trader but a careless tweets like this have consequences and can hurt people. The only argument to be made is that Elon doesn’t understand the effects of a tweet like this but I think we all know he’s a pretty smart guy.
- remarkEon 7y ago
  Oh I'm sure he absolutely understands the effects of a tweet like that, but I don't think he cares. Said differently, perhaps this is his way of pointing out the absurdity of Wall Street and all the financial engineering that goes on there. Or maybe he wants to sell the company and thinks it needed to drop X% before a buyer would emerge.
  - jariel 7y ago
    " perhaps this is his way of pointing out the absurdity of Wall Street and all the financial engineering that goes on there." There is nothing absurd about the fact he's an insider, and has access to the vast amounts of information, that people have trusted him with billions of dollars and that the flow of information is governed by rules, and it's an issue if integrity. It's a lot of money and responsibility, it's not a joke. Nobody is concerned that he Tweets weird things about his GF, that's fine, but he can't tweet things that need to carefully communicated, it's just irresponsible.
- tenpies 7y ago
  The other part of that equation is that if I'm a fund manager, I have a fiduciary duty to my clients. Tesla has had a ton of red flags this week: * General counsel quit * Board no longer has insurance, Musk is "insuring" with . . . Tesla shares * The Q1 financials are extremely suspicious * Musk's meltdown during the ER call * Musk's actions in the NASA conference * Musk's meltdown on Twitter * Musk's meltdown basically guaranteeing another SEC investigation As a professional, you really have to check if it's in your client's best interests to continue to be exposed to this.
lend000 7y ago
If anything, the market is pricing in the risk that Elon Musk will be removed as CEO by the SEC for another potential violation of public securities laws.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
crazygringo 7y ago
> am I selling all my stock because Elon said he thinks it's too high? No, that would be stupid. Literally nobody knows more about what's happening at Tesla than Elon Musk does. If he thinks it's too high, that's incredibly material information. It's entirely rational to think it's equivalent to "I saw the non-public reports of sales projections and turns out they're plummeting" or something similar. And therefore that Tesla is overvalued and you ought to sell, and buy back again only when it's at a price that takes that into account. It's Wall Street's job to react to all publicly available information at the moment it becomes available. Statements by a CEO are very much included in that. What the heck do day traders or swords have to do with it? Stock prices are determined mainly by large funds, like the ones that invest people's pensions.
- edoceo 7y ago
  Or sell way OTM puts and hope they expire worthless
- LeifCarrotson 7y ago
  Sure, use whatever material information you like to decide your estimate of what you think the company is worth. But if one tweet is worth 1/9th as much as all the other public information you've used to arrive at that estimate, then I don't have a whole lot of faith in your number.
- deadbunny 7y ago
  To be fair TSLA is insanely priced, it was overpriced at ~250 and has only grown exuberantly this year.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
DSingularity 7y ago
Really? You don’t think the words of the CEO of Tesla matter?
mandeepj 7y ago
> Elon said he thinks it's too high He also said it's too high when the stock was around 200

arcticbull 7y ago

That's a totally fair point. Seriously, how many TSLA investors don't know who Elon is, how he acts, or his ongoing settlement with the SEC over tweeting?

jariel 7y ago

It has nothing to do with Wall Street or Tweets. It has to do with insiders and public information regarding a publicly-traded company worth many billions of dollars. Musk has an agreement with said investors and is bound by a bunch of rules he has agreed to. He's a fool and it could really hurt him someday. He really needs to stop tweeting about the stock.

gowld 7y ago

Elon Musk is the CEO of a publicly traded company, with all the rights and responsibilities that entails. He can take the company private and delist the company if he doesn't want to follow the rules of the stock market. Koch Industries, for example, is privately held.

daxorid 7y ago

> whose fault is it that Wall Street react to tweets? He's not permitted to tweet anything that may materially impact the stock without prior board or general counsel approval, per his contempt agreement. Obviously Jay Clayton is going to let him get away with it just like his prior violation of the Consent Decree, but for the brief period of time that the market forgets the SEC is toothless when it comes to Musk, this is nominally a big deal.

xoa 7y ago
>He's not permitted to tweet anything that may materially impact the stock without prior board or general counsel approval, per his contempt agreement. Isn't the actual SEC agreement a lot more specific than that? This first article [1] I found in a quick search from last year has a specific list, he has to have it cleared for including any of: • any information about the company’s financial condition or guidance, potential or proposed mergers, acquisitions or joint ventures, • production numbers or sales or delivery number (actual, forecasted, or projected), • new or proposed business lines that are unrelated to then-existing business lines (presently includes vehicles, transportation, and sustainable energy products); • projection, forecast, or estimate numbers regarding Tesla’s business that have not been previously published in official company guidance • events regarding the company’s securities (including Musk’s acquisition or disposition of shares) • nonpublic legal or regulatory findings or decisions; • any event requiring the filing of a Form 8-K such as a change in control or a change in the company’s directors; any principal executive officer, president, principal financial officer, principal accounting officer, principal operating officer, or any person performing similar functions Were there other more general terms? If not, does pure opinion of "lol it's up too high" actually violate the letter of any of those? I guess it could be argued that maybe he's saying that due to information he knows that other people don't, but it's not itself disclosing anything at all. May get an investigation, but if internally there has been nothing of material impact (and he didn't benefit in any way) and it's just Elon Musk going off I'm not sure it's a matter for the SEC vs the board and shareholders. But his genius/drive and crazy/lack of control are pretty well known quantities at this point and tied together. If he's not violating any actual laws and a majority of shareholders are fine taking the bad with the good vs other mixtures of bad and good (safe and conservative but low vision for example) that seems like it'd be up to them? ---- 1: https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/26/elon-musk-sec-agree-to-guidelines-on-twitter-use/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/26/elon-musk-sec-agree-to-gui...
- crazygringo 7y ago
  His tweet is literally a "projection, forecast, or estimate" of "numbers regarding Tesla’s business" (the stock price) "that have not been previously published in official company guidance". It's also absolutely "any information about the company’s financial condition or guidance". I don't see any way this doesn't fall in the list of bullets. Saying the stock price is too high is nothing but a guidance as to the company's financial condition.

social_quotient 7y ago

Suppose a stop loss or trailing stop would have exited your position. 128 ETFs have Tesla in them and 55 have it as a top 15% position. Those ETFs likely have rules based on the sort of drop we saw today. It’s easy to speak personally about not being an active trader but a careless tweets like this have consequences and can hurt people. The only argument to be made is that Elon doesn’t understand the effects of a tweet like this but I think we all know he’s a pretty smart guy.

remarkEon 7y ago
Oh I'm sure he absolutely understands the effects of a tweet like that, but I don't think he cares. Said differently, perhaps this is his way of pointing out the absurdity of Wall Street and all the financial engineering that goes on there. Or maybe he wants to sell the company and thinks it needed to drop X% before a buyer would emerge.
- jariel 7y ago
  " perhaps this is his way of pointing out the absurdity of Wall Street and all the financial engineering that goes on there." There is nothing absurd about the fact he's an insider, and has access to the vast amounts of information, that people have trusted him with billions of dollars and that the flow of information is governed by rules, and it's an issue if integrity. It's a lot of money and responsibility, it's not a joke. Nobody is concerned that he Tweets weird things about his GF, that's fine, but he can't tweet things that need to carefully communicated, it's just irresponsible.
tenpies 7y ago
The other part of that equation is that if I'm a fund manager, I have a fiduciary duty to my clients. Tesla has had a ton of red flags this week: * General counsel quit * Board no longer has insurance, Musk is "insuring" with . . . Tesla shares * The Q1 financials are extremely suspicious * Musk's meltdown during the ER call * Musk's actions in the NASA conference * Musk's meltdown on Twitter * Musk's meltdown basically guaranteeing another SEC investigation As a professional, you really have to check if it's in your client's best interests to continue to be exposed to this.

lend000 7y ago

If anything, the market is pricing in the risk that Elon Musk will be removed as CEO by the SEC for another potential violation of public securities laws.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

crazygringo 7y ago

> am I selling all my stock because Elon said he thinks it's too high? No, that would be stupid. Literally nobody knows more about what's happening at Tesla than Elon Musk does. If he thinks it's too high, that's incredibly material information. It's entirely rational to think it's equivalent to "I saw the non-public reports of sales projections and turns out they're plummeting" or something similar. And therefore that Tesla is overvalued and you ought to sell, and buy back again only when it's at a price that takes that into account. It's Wall Street's job to react to all publicly available information at the moment it becomes available. Statements by a CEO are very much included in that. What the heck do day traders or swords have to do with it? Stock prices are determined mainly by large funds, like the ones that invest people's pensions.

edoceo 7y ago
Or sell way OTM puts and hope they expire worthless
LeifCarrotson 7y ago
Sure, use whatever material information you like to decide your estimate of what you think the company is worth. But if one tweet is worth 1/9th as much as all the other public information you've used to arrive at that estimate, then I don't have a whole lot of faith in your number.
deadbunny 7y ago
To be fair TSLA is insanely priced, it was overpriced at ~250 and has only grown exuberantly this year.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

DSingularity 7y ago

Really? You don’t think the words of the CEO of Tesla matter?

mandeepj 7y ago

> Elon said he thinks it's too high He also said it's too high when the stock was around 200