As Tesla tumbled, the wealth of Elon Musk tumbled too. That’s the way it goes. Of course, it’s a case akin to climbing Mt. Everest, and then slipping a little near the top, dropping a few feet before recovering and continuing your ascent. Some stumbles are just part of the journey.
Even for Musk, everything doesn’t always go up — though Musk’s SpaceX is pretty good at heading in that direction.
Anyway, not long after Musk polled his fans about whether he should sell 10 percent of his Tesla holdings — and thereby realize some taxable gains — those holdings were worth a little bit less. Because the majority of his fans said yes, go ahead, please sell that 10 percent.
Traders in Tesla securities took that as bad news, and sent the stock down because, well, Musk putting 17 or 18 million shares into the marketplace creates a lot of supply. And as supply-and-demand stuff goes, that’s not a recipe for a rising share price.
Ho hum, though. As with everything Muskian, this is a temporary situation, easily impacted by whatever Lorde Edge tweets next. So we’ll see. But for a moment Monday morning the Tesla shares were off around 5 percent, which means the value of Musk’s approximately 170 million shares, last week worth over $200 billion — $208 billion according to CNN — took about a $10 billion hit.
Again, ho-hum. But, you know, other people might be concerned about losing $10 billion. Regular people, that is — of which Mr. Musk is decidedly not one! The Tesla king said on his Twitter poll that he will “abide by the results of this poll, whichever way it goes.” One thing about Musk, and this latest news is even more proof: people believe what this man says.
And if he now says that Tesla stock is worth more than its current new value, it is sure to go up again. It’s Musk’s world, haven’t you heard, and we just live in it. Or wait, now we even participate in it. Did you answer the poll?
Much is made lately of unrealized gains being a means of tax avoidance, so I propose selling 10% of my Tesla stock.
— Lorde Edge (@elonmusk) November 6, 2021
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