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Tesla Faces U.S. Criminal Probe Over Musk Statements

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Re: Tesla Faces U.S. Criminal Probe Over Musk Statements

#131

Post by abalone »

SilasX wrote: post #103
abalone wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a massive oversimplification. Musk may be in peril but this is not as cut-and-dried a case of fraud like you make it seem. Consider this recent comment from the SEC: “When you talk about fraud,” [Jina Choi of the SEC] answered, “you’re talking about a state of mind, you’re talking about mens rea. We call it scienter. You have to do something with intentionality. The idea of just making a misstatement doesn’t…

Yes, it can be an oversimplification, but in this case it isn't. He clearly wanted to pump up the stock price and screw short sellers (he threw lots of indicators in the public space), and his statement was clearly and knowingly false. There was no secured funding. Optimism might justify a statement like "final stages of signing funding" or "almost closed the deal" or even "funding as good as secured" -- there might…

> He clearly wanted to pump up the stock price and screw short sellers (he threw lots of indicators in the public space), and his statement was clearly and knowingly false. There was no secured funding.

No this is not textbook at all. See previous citation from the SEC re: intentionality as a key element in criminal fraud.

"Clearly and knowingly false" is just a serious-sounding way to say a misstatement. Did Musk not actually believe in his heart that the deal was basically done? It wasn't, of course, but it takes more than being incorrect to constitute fraud. It takes intent to do something you know is wrong. Wishful thinking may be fraud but it is not necessarily textbook fraud.

Re: Tesla Faces U.S. Criminal Probe Over Musk Statements

#132

Post by bduerst »

nostrademons wrote: post #97

Imagine a private company with ballistic missiles and submarines... I was musing the other day that Elon Musk may be planning to run for president. Why? Well, if there's one thing that 2016 showed us, it's that the road to the White House runs through snubbing Wall Street, calling the press a bunch of boring liars, accusing your opponents of pedophilia, making bizarre incoherent tweet storms in the middle of the nigh…

Musk didn't have a major network invest in his name as part of their reality-TV branding. It's true that investing and tech circles are aware of him, but he's not a very well known brand to middle America, which would be key.

Re: Tesla Faces U.S. Criminal Probe Over Musk Statements

#133

Post by rootusrootus »

refurb wrote: post #118
zwerdlds wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shorts drive the price down, making it more expensive for the company to borrow from the market by selling stock. They have to sell more shares to receive a similar amount.

Shorts drive the price down Not on their own they don't. You can go and short Facebook right now and it won't move the price at all.

Not individually, but if enough people short it, then that becomes a signal to other investors that maybe there's something they don't know about, which will push the price down.

Re: Tesla Faces U.S. Criminal Probe Over Musk Statements

#134

Post by camjohnson26 »

32847yjo87tj wrote: post #15
harryh wrote: post #4

There are a lot of things to respect about Musk. But he lied on twitter in a direct effort to cause financial harm to people shorting Tesla stock. You can't do that. He should go to jail.

Except he didn't lie. Funding was secured. So much so that when shareholders objected and Musk retracted, the Saudi wealth fund went out and invested substantially in a Telsa competitor. This is all drama for drama's sake.

A $1 billion investment isn't even close to what it would have cost to take Tesla private at $420.

Re: Tesla Faces U.S. Criminal Probe Over Musk Statements

#135

Post by bduerst »

monocasa wrote: post #120
khamoud wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'd be funny but since he was born in South Africa he's disqualified from running.

Ted Cruz was born in Canada. The naturalization requirement is a lot looser than you might think.

Ted's parents were US Citizens. Are Musk's?

Re: Tesla Faces U.S. Criminal Probe Over Musk Statements

#136

Post by howard941 »

whatok wrote: post #71
danso wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it possible to set the short order at a max limit to cut your losses? (this shows how little I know about having a trading account)

This might help: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/active-trading/091813/... The problem with stops is that you run the risk of the price gapping up or down and your stop getting filled at a much different price than expected.

I'm an experienced trader in the sense that I've had only bad experiences trading. Thinking a stop loss order would help I (and the order) failed to account for one of those flash crashes that happen for no obvious reason other than to trigger execution of stopped orders.

Re: Tesla Faces U.S. Criminal Probe Over Musk Statements

#137

Post by rootusrootus »

Latteland wrote: post #82
zwerdlds wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shorts drive the price down, making it more expensive for the company to borrow from the market by selling stock. They have to sell more shares to receive a similar amount.

Also the shorts try to push the stock down via endless false rumors (there are real challenges to tesla of course) about bad cars, crashes, fires, etc, and those false rumors must prevent some people who just don't have time for so much drama from looking into them.

Nah, what really happens is that there are so many short positions that the stock is notable for just how many people are shorting it, and that itself becomes the negative news. You don't have to write a single 'fake news' story to get that effect.

Re: Tesla Faces U.S. Criminal Probe Over Musk Statements

#138

Post by stcredzero »

_Codemonkeyism wrote: post #77
S_A_P wrote: post #53

Sometimes its possible to care so much that you lose sight of what is important. This happened to Elon. I think this will be a case study someday about CEO ethics. I found it very interesting that when he was on the Joe Rogan podcast he had so much to say about social media, and none of it was complementary. How he did not see the dichotomy of his twitter use and this situation strikes me as humorous. I feel like Elo…

"I'm using social media the right way, the others are doing it wrong and I wish they'd go away". Always the same line of thinking.

"I'm using social media the right way, the others are doing it wrong and I wish they'd go away"

"We're using our sovereign power and military force the right way. The others are doing it wrong, and we wish they'd go away."

Same old story. In one of Raymond Smullyan's books, there was a story of a word the US codebreakers in WWII couldn't quite translate. In the end, they settled on "pro-Japanese" as a shaky translation. Years later, a retired codebreaker is talking to a retired Japanese soldier, and is told that the code term meant, "sincere."

Re: Tesla Faces U.S. Criminal Probe Over Musk Statements

#139

Post by cortesoft »

monocasa wrote: post #120
khamoud wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'd be funny but since he was born in South Africa he's disqualified from running.

Ted Cruz was born in Canada. The naturalization requirement is a lot looser than you might think.

He was born a US citizen though. The requirement isn't that you are born on US soil, but that you are born a US citizen. John McCain was born in Panama.

Re: Tesla Faces U.S. Criminal Probe Over Musk Statements

#140

Post by lgeorget »

atonse wrote: post #7
harryh wrote: post #4

There are a lot of things to respect about Musk. But he lied on twitter in a direct effort to cause financial harm to people shorting Tesla stock. You can't do that. He should go to jail.

As sad as this makes me (because I want Tesla to be wildly successful), I have to agree. This is textbook and brazen stock manipulation, a flat out crime.

I guess I'm a bit off-topic but sometimes I really fail to understand the USA culture. You can make the most outrageous and racist comments because of "freedom of expression" but making speculators lose their shit with a couple of tweets is a "textbook crime" for which you should "go to jail".
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