Tesla Pops 4% After Musk Says He Has “Sold Enough Stock”

For those wondering when Elon Musk would stop slamming the bid on his own company’s stock, it looks as though the time may have finally come.

Tesla shares are popping 4% in the pre-market session on Wednesday after Musk commented on a Tuesday night Babylon Bee interview that he had “sold enough stock” to reach his plan to offload 10% of his shares in the company. 

Musk sold another 583,611 shares on Tuesday, which brought his total to 13.5% million shares, or about 80% of what he originally intended to sell, Reuters reported Wednesday morning. 

“I sold enough stock to get to around 10% plus the option exercise stuff and I tried to be extremely literal here,” Musk said in his Tuesday night interview, while sipping a White Claw. Musk also commented that he needed to exercise options that were expiring next year “no matter what.”

“California used to be the land of opportunity and now it is… becoming more so the land of sort of overregulation, overlitigation, overtaxation,” he added.

Musk has infamously sparred with Senator Elizabeth Warren over the last week about his tax contributions. After heavy criticism from Warren, who Musk called “Senator Karen”, Musk defended himself last week on Twitter, saying he would be paying more than $11 billion in taxes this year. The number could wind up being a “record payment” to the IRS, according to Bloomberg. 

“For those wondering, I will pay over $11 billion in taxes this year,” Musk Tweeted last night. 

The report claims that Musk could face a tax bill of more than $10 billion for 2021 if he decides to exercise all of his options due to expire next year. 

A lot of the scrutiny on Musk’s taxes came after a ProPublica report in June said that Musk “paid little income tax relative to his outsize wealth”. Musk claims he has an effective tax rate of 53%. 

Recall, we wrote about Musk’s original spat with Warren a couple of days ago. Having taunted Bernie Sanders in November, tweeting that “I keep forgetting that you’re still alive,” after the socialist senator spewed his standard “pay your fair share” diatribe, Musk cranked up the progressive punishment amplifier with Warren, we noted.

Never one to miss an opportunity for some ‘abuse the rich’ populism, Warren tweeted a nasty comment aimed directly at Musk after he won Time’s ‘Person of the Year’. She barked – apparently with little or no concept of the scale of the Tesla CEO’s share sales recently to meet his tax obligations: “Let’s change the rigged tax code so The Person of the Year will actually pay taxes and stop freeloading off everyone else.”

Musk replied: “Please don’t call the manager on me, Senator Karen.”