I wonder how Tesla shareholders feel about this situation. It seems like by leveraging with his Tesla shares, he's passing on the risk to everyone who owns Tesla stock. If they have a couple bad quarters or some kind of macro change happens and the price starts going down, Musk gets margin called and has to dump his stock on the market, which could start a spiral of panic-selling or even open Tesla itself to being corporate-raided.
Even though I'm obviously so much smarter than him on matter of acquiring public companies, I'll graciously allow him to do whatever he pleases as long as he continues growing Tesla at 50% compounded rate.
Which he did this quarter, and the one before that and the one before that.
I'll be concerned when that stops happening. Until then I give him my blessing to do whatever he pleases with HIS money.
And how can Tesla keep growing at a 50% rate, buy out all the other car companies in the world? There is a limit as to how many people can afford to buy $60k+ cars. The stock is already far beyond what the company profits will ever be worth. Today it seems like no one cares about profits, but will that always be the case?
Tesla is not about cars. It’s a marketing company and its product is the Tesla share price. This Twitter stunt is just one in a long line of stunts that Musk does to get attention for himself. People invest in Tesla because they want to invest in Musk as an individual.
This media hijacking is similar to the way that Trump got elected in 2016.
I bet that if SpaceX ever went public it would cause Tesla to fall as everybody who wants to invest in “Musk is a genius” would invest in SpaceX instead of Tesla.
Agreed. Also in other countries like mine where EV cars and the climate change issue and environmentalism movement that's being pedalled by the western media arent a thing, mostly Asian countries, Tesla here is more synonymous to batteries and sustainable energy. We've got a presidential election next month and some of the presidentiables, including the one who's most likely to win according to polls, are calling for more Tesla energy adoption for the country during their campaign. Musk diversified his company's products well
Well yeah, of course you would be concerned if that stopped happening, even more so if it means the CEO is suddenly compelled sell a bunch of his stock at a discount to avoid violating his debt covenants. You don’t get any upside from the twitter deal, so unless you think Musk will use Twitter to boost Tesla’s price (suppressing bad news?), it seems like all downside for current Tesla owners.
Read your post again. You talk like you have more money than Musk, which maybe you do but I doubt. You also have a huge ego. I know, I know “when I go look at my bank account I stop caring…”
The USA's politicians can stand to be bullied a lot more than they currently are. Many of them got to where they are now by being bullies themselves - Twitter bullies in particular!
They say the United States Congress is really just Hollywood for ugly people. In a sense, social media is really just Hollywood for smart people. Given Elon Musk's circumstances, and no matter what his motivations, they seem to be the correct ones to maximize his possible outcomes.
I certainly understand the schadenfreude aspect of it. But when I said bullying I mostly meant that as a euphemism for a sort of aggressive lobbying. For instance, manipulating politicians into supporting his companies by threatening to signal boost their opponents during the next election, or promising to suppress them.
