Tesla Pops For First Time In 3 Days After Musk Reports $4 Billion In Stock Sales

Tesla shares are higher this morning after Tesla CEO Elon Musk, in the midst of the mid-term election fray last night, filed a Form 4 showing billions of dollars in stock sales. It marks the first time Tesla shares are higher in three days.

Investors are likely betting that the selling pressure of the last three days is set to subside, though we won’t know until the cash session opens today whether or not that will be the case. Last night it was reported on a Form 4 that Musk had sold 19.5 million shares of stock for about $4 billion over the last three days.

It has been speculated that Musk needs to consummate the sales in order to support his $44 billion takeover of Twitter, a platform that has seen an advertiser (and revenue) exodus in the days following Musk taking the helm. Musk has also leaned on financing from Binance, Ron Baron’s BAMCO, Andreessen Horowitz, Twitter’s former CEO Jack Dorsey and Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia, CNBC wrote. 

These sales are on top of the nearly $22 billion Musk sold in 2021, according to CNBC. So far this year he sold over $8 billion in stock in April and about $7 billion in August. 

It is unclear if Musk has more stock to sell. In the past he has taken to Twitter to assure investors that he is finished selling, but we’ve seen no such Tweet this time. Yesterday’s Form 4 would have been filed near the time limit for Musk to have to disclose the share sales. 

Short seller and perpetual Musk critic Jim Chanos also made a good point on Twitter last night, pointing out that Musk had already told his followers that he was done selling Tesla stock for the Twitter deal back in August.

“In the (hopefully unlikely) event that Twitter forces this deal to close *and* some equity partners don’t come through, it is important to avoid an emergency sale of Tesla stock,” Musk wrote. 

We were reliably told in August that Elon was done selling $TSLA stock. By Elon. pic.twitter.com/hHgI0hPqpp

— Diogenes (@WallStCynic) November 9, 2022

And even now, we still haven’t gotten an “I’m done selling” Tweet – so who knows what the future holds in terms of more potential sales…