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SEC Sues Musk and Seeks Ban for His Tweets on Go-Private Deal

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Re: SEC Sues Musk and Seeks Ban for His Tweets on Go-Private Deal

#431

Post by peteey »

not2b wrote: post #406

He was trying to bankrupt the short-sellers, and he was doing it by lying: the price would soar, their options would be called, and they'd lose their shirts, all for a lie. When you're head of a public company, that's a crime. Not only will the SEC come after him, but the short sellers can probably sue him too. I have huge respect for his engineering ability, but he has messed up badly. He's overextended and it seems…

The law says a lot of things. I'm ok with short sellers losing their shirts regardless.

Re: SEC Sues Musk and Seeks Ban for His Tweets on Go-Private Deal

#432

Post by johannes1234321 »

joering2 wrote: post #385
refurb wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone should read the complaint and realize that everything you email and text will be found by the govt if they decide to investigate you.

Protonmail.

That might be technical protection, however the way the SEC gets access to mails is not on a technical level, but by sending out a letter "please send us all your mails on that topic" and if the response on such a request is not convincingly consistent you get into even more trouble.

Re: SEC Sues Musk and Seeks Ban for His Tweets on Go-Private Deal

#433

Post by neurotech1 »

dabockster wrote: post #408
diminoten wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought his tweet was legal, assuming he wasn't lying about any of it, which indications are he wasn't. Maybe I don't understand...

In the US, you're not supposed to say anything publicly that can manipulate the stock price. For a person in Elon Musk's position, it is incredibly easy to drum up hype about a stock from a public media source (in this case, Twitter) then secretly sell off stock at the higher price causing it to dip further than it was at before. This is called pump and dumping and is very illegal in the United States (read up on The…

Any evidence he actually sold stock during the spike, that wasn't already scheduled?

Re: SEC Sues Musk and Seeks Ban for His Tweets on Go-Private Deal

#434

Post by arcticbull »

EGreg wrote: post #380
threeseed wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just revisionist history and completely wrong. Steve Jobs pretty much set Apple on the premium goods track when he returned. The iMac, iPod, iPad, iPhone were all developed under his watch and all were premium priced. Apple has pushed the margins higher but that's only because the market can absorb it. Computing is more central to people's lives and they are willing to pay a premium for a good experience.

You are wrong. Apple’s pace of innovation has slowed dramatically. This latest phone is but one example. Here is what would have happened under Jobs: http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=234

Ah it’s every second year again huh? When innovation is dead and nobody knows if it’ll ever be back. Until next September that is...

Re: SEC Sues Musk and Seeks Ban for His Tweets on Go-Private Deal

#435

Post by toomuchtodo »

dragontamer wrote: post #428
toomuchtodo wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let’s be real then. Tesla is actually attempting to ramp energy storage and EVs as fast as possible. No one else is even trying. Nissan has sold 300k Leafs in 7 years. Tesla sells that many EVs in a year at their current run rate. Ford isn’t even going to sell sedans in the US anymore, only low gas mileage trucks. The president of Fiat Chrysler asked people not to buy their EVs, as they lost money on each one. The Vo…

> Let’s be real then. Tesla is actually attempting to ramp energy storage and EVs as fast as possible. I know we've talked about this before. But +100MW-hrs here and there is nothing. Yeah, 300MW in Australia is impressive for Lithium Ion. But... https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/07/24/business/ener... This singular $3 Billion project will give 2GW of power. If the lake holds 8-hours of water, that'd be 16-GW-…

Yeah, we argue this all the time :) you can’t stick hydro storage just anywhere, yet you can ship cargo containers full of powerpacks to anywhere in the world in a week or two. The Hornsdale Power Reserve was built in 90 days. Tesla is building a 700MW-1.1GW facility with PG&E to replace 3 natural gas generators (in the Southwest US, solar and batteries are cheaper than natural gas).

Utility scale battery storage will lead the day. Raw materials go into your factory, out come battteries good for at least a decade, that can perform energy arbitrage and frequency response for grid services. And every year it keeps getting cheaper to build. Hydro storage construction is always going to be geoconstrained, time consuming to construct, and expensive.

Just my two cents.

Re: SEC Sues Musk and Seeks Ban for His Tweets on Go-Private Deal

#436

Post by zekevermillion »

The subtext is that Elon intentionally bumped the stock price to screw over short sellers like Jim Chanos. But the rationale behind 10b5 is to protect investors from fraud. Right, we are not concerned with protecting short-sellers who spend all day on twitter making up negative stories about their targets. So the underlying rationale here has to be that Elon's $420 tweet harmed regular investors who purchased TSLA at inflated prices during the time between his initial tweet and the announcement that there would be no go-private transaction.

The irony of SEC enforcement power is that the harsher they come down on the company or its execs, the more damage they do to the very investors they are charged with protecting. And I tihnk that is why you often see relatively modest settlements. Ya know, unless the board of Tesla is tired of Elon, I think there is a decent chance they are able to reach a settlement where Elon is not barred from serving as an officer or director.

Re: SEC Sues Musk and Seeks Ban for His Tweets on Go-Private Deal

#437

Post by arcticbull »

rl3 wrote: post #252
SkyMarshal wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think Apple products are any different without Jobs, the problem is they’re nothing new either. With Jobs you knew he loved and lived technology and was always looking for cool new things to do with it. Most of his product launches did just that and brought some excitement about possibilities. Current Apple products are meticulously, exactingly designed and built, but they’re losing the excitement and expecta…

> Current Apple products are meticulously, exactingly designed and built, ... I disagree. Look at the MBP keyboard issues, or the declining quality of OS X. Under Jobs that shit wouldn't fly. Other roles aside, one of Jobs' most important functions was that of acting as a sanity check to ensure that the constiuent parts of any given product came together as a cohesive whole.

Yeah, it would have flown, and did. Remember when the MacBook first came out and every 5th it 6th white one had a dark yellow film? Or how the touch pads had waves and wobbles in them? The MacBook Pro exploding and misshapen batteries? The MacBook Pro thermal paste issues and how they ran at up to 100C and shut themselves down? Every time some big new production change happens there are teething problems no matter who’s in charge.

Re: SEC Sues Musk and Seeks Ban for His Tweets on Go-Private Deal

#438

Post by dnautics »

romed wrote: post #178

As I said nine days ago in this box and was roundly downvoted therefor: "Good chance that Musk will get placed on the bad actors list and will be unable to serve as an officer or executive of Telsa." What I don't understand is how this took 10% of the price of Tesla shares. How is it possible that this event, which was a 100% certainty, was not already baked into the price?

...and your flaw was in believing the market is efficient.

Re: SEC Sues Musk and Seeks Ban for His Tweets on Go-Private Deal

#439

Post by FighterMafia »

dabockster wrote: post #402
UpshotKnothole wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point his biggest goal should be avoiding prison, which with the DOJ investigation and the sheer stupidity of his actions is very much on the table.

Yep. Musk is looking at possible insider trading charges. The DOJ will absolutely throw a rich guy in federal prison for that since the damage to the economy can be enormous.

Hard to be insider trading if he didn't make any trades. Which he didn't.

Re: SEC Sues Musk and Seeks Ban for His Tweets on Go-Private Deal

#440

Post by adrianmonk »

jiveturkey wrote: post #319

Page 21: "Prayer for Relief" interesting that this kind of language is accepted legalese par. 80.IV and 80.V seeks both civil penalties and removal from office. Is it feasible that Musk/Tesla can negotiate only penalties, thus keeping him on the board? Given Musk's position of power over the board, and importance to the company, I could see the board agreeing to it, but would the government.

The language doesn't surprise me particularly.

"Pray" is an old word that means to ask. Hence "prithee", which is kind of a mashed together "pray thee" (which means "ask you"). And "prayer" is noun form of that verb.

Yes, the words are really old (archaic-sounding if not actually archaic), but that happens all the time in legalese.

And yes, they have religious connotations, but they are also used in secular ways. For example, from Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet": "I pray thee, good Mercutio, let's retire: The day is hot, the Capulets abroad".

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