Elon Musk sent stocks of his electric car company on a freefall on Friday after he went on a bizarre Twitter rant.
The Tesla founder announced that he felt the company’s stock price was ‘too high’, before revealing he was planning to sell of his physical possessions.
The market was quick to react to the 11.am ET tweet and Tesla shares began a precipitous nosedive, falling more than 11 per cent and trading at around $693 as of the afternoon.
At the closing bell, Tesla was trading at $701.32 per share – down more than 10 per cent.
The subsequent share drop erased around $13 billion from Tesla’s market value and nearly $3 billion from the value of Musk’s stake.
Still, shares remain up almost 50% from the start of April.
When asked by The Wall Street Journal if he posted the tweets in jest, Musk replied: ‘No.’
It’s not the first time that Musk’s tweets have landed him in hot water with his investors.
The billionaire was fined $40million last year after he wrongly claimed in a 2018 tweet that he’d secured funding to take Tesla private.
The Securities and Exchange Commission sued Musk that year after he tweeted on August 7 that he had ‘funding secured’ to take Tesla private at $420 per share.
The number ‘420’ has significance for pot-smokers. In cannabis culture, the date 4/20, or April 20th, is celebrated as a national holiday.
Musk ‘s tweet about leading Tesla to a $420 per share stock price was seen as a joke about marijuana.
Source: DailyMail
