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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

#451

Post by RussianCow »

neurotech1 wrote: post #433
dabockster wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Not that I'm aware of, but stock manipulation is illegal whether or not you actually sell any shares.

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

#452

Post by RussianCow »

diminoten wrote: post #421
detaro wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The SEC complaint claims that "Musk knew or was reckless in not knowing that each of these statements was false and/or misleading because he did not have an adequate basis in fact for his assertions."

That's good to know -- I think, based on some random article I read a month ago or so, he can beat that charge, because he had concrete knowledge about the Saudi Sovereign Wealth Fund being interested in helping take Tesla private. Again, I could be wrong, and I really wish I could remember where I found that article...

Musk's tweet said "Funding secured", which has a very different implication than a company simply "being interested".

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

#453

Post by _drimzy »

zekevermillion wrote: post #436

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…

> Right, we are not concerned with protecting short-sellers who spend all day on twitter making up negative stories about their targets.

This doesn't make sense. We don't go after them because they don't have any authoritative powers/inside knowledge about the company, so a reader cannot be misled by them. If an exec of a company short sells a huge chunk of the company and plants a misleading negative story about the company, SEC will go after them too.

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

#454

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#455

Post by hinkley »

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.

From what I understand Ives was distracted during this design cycle. Now that the headquarters are built I’m waiting to see if all of this crap is fixed in the next iteration.

But it’s getting easier and easier to skip a generation of laptop these days. My old machine is just starting to get slow enough that I notice. That’s a big problem for manufacturers.

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

#456

Post by jiggliemon »

propman wrote: post #384
WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #363

The book The PayPal Wars: Battles with eBay, the Media, the Mafia, and the Rest of Planet Earth, details Musk's time at Paypal and pretty much describes him as an eventual hindrance rather than a help. He was eventually ousted from the company. Peter Thiel was the one that was able to nurse the company to success. He was vital to get the company started but eventually, he was difficult to work with. Looks to me that…

I can only think of Elon as the only person to create THREE multi billion dollar companies in wildly different industries. Elon is a fantastic CEO AND visionary. I personally know people who could be making double specifically work at spacex because they believe in his vision. Elon is able to get Supreme talent and productivity for pennies on the dollar. He’s able to market Tesla and spaceX to billions with such a po…

Howard Hughes: RKO, TWA, Las Vegas

The numbers are smaller, due to inflation. But any of these successes in today’s money would be a billion dollar venture.

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

#457

Post by compcoffee »

greenshackle2 wrote: post #285
compcoffee wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the price dips too low, it's potentially catastrophic for the company and him. Shorting a stock doesn't magically make its price drop.

More buys = higher price. More sells = lower price. Shorting is selling* . This is neither magic nor controversial. * And buying back later of course. But in the meantime, does a short-sell look any different than a sell on the order book?

Every transaction has a buyer and a seller.

Shorting is selling? Selling to whom? Ah, right, a buyer.

Telsa share price has risen through extreme short interest for years. How?

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

#458

Post by btown »

stcredzero wrote: post #224
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.

This is just revisionist history and completely wrong. Steve Jobs pretty much set Apple on the premium goods track when he returned You are revising what I actually said, and about that you are completely wrong. I never denied that Jobs set Apple on the premium goods track. However, he was one of the major forces keeping it from devolving into being only a peddler of luxury goods. Tech innovation does better with goo…

People responding in this thread are failing to realize that there are two types of luxury goods (to obviously oversimplify): luxuries built on hype, and luxuries built on quality/craftsmanship. (Said craftsmanship can be innovative or traditional, but there's the sense of pride in the work that carries through in both situations.) One (though not all) of the nuances that the parent post evokes is that Jobs challenged the company to be more than just a hype machine.

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

#459

Post by anonytrary »

dabockster wrote: post #405
anonytrary wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elon Musk has always had a disdain for the responsibility of running a public company, it seems perfectly reasonable that he tweet, in exasperation, that he wishes to make the company private. Why do so many people in this thread want the only guy making (rockets && green cars && batteries && solar && ...) to fail so badly? The guy smokes weed once on camera, now he's a witch and needs to be hunted down? We care abou…

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…

> In the US, you're not supposed to say anything publicly that can manipulate the stock price

Not quite. You can't intentionally say things for the purpose of manipulating the price, you can still say things if they affect the price -- it is impossible not to, since every little thing a CEO does affects the price to some extent (econophysics?).

The lawsuit would have to prove that Musk tweeted with the intention of manipulating the price. Seeing as Musk has always been wary of being public, it seems unlikely he engineered the tweet to do this. Occam's Razor would suggest that he's getting sick and tired of being public (ironically, for this exact reason) and tweeted that he would rather just take it private to avoid this sort of drama.

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