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

bloomberg.com

501–510 of 884 posts

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

#501
I thought the most fascinating part of the article was the following exchange:

>"About 20 minutes later, the company’s chief financial officer texted Musk: “Elon, am sure you have thought about a broader communication on your rationale and structure to employees and potential investors. Would it help if [Tesla’s head of communications], [Tesla’s General Counsel], and I draft a blog post or employee email for you?”

Musk responded, “Yeah, that would be great.”

Tesla’s Chief Financial Officer then replied, “Working on it. Will send you shortly.”"

The CFO seems oddly nonchalant with this crazy development. Or is this just sarcasm?

The individual then offers to draft up comms without even first inquiring about that "rationale."? Is this what passed for normal at Tesla or were the "WTF" and exclamation points redacted?

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

#502
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>All Elon had to do was keep his head down and not pick twitter fights.... Do you mean, act like the CEO of a public ally traded company and not publicly make unsubstantiated material statements?

Yeah. As opposed of acting like the leader of the country

Twitter: where the rich and powerful publicly make complete fools of themselves.

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

#503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd hope the company itself would be fine. I really hate this idea of the grand visionary. A good friend of mine who is a mechanical engineer despises Musk. I listened to a bit of his Joe Regan interview and when Regan asked him how he has the time to do all of the things he does, there are smoke jokes about him being an alien, but not once did he say, "Well I have an amazing team of engineers" and credit all the tho…

> I really hate this idea of the grand visionary. ... I listened to a bit of his Joe Regan interview and when Regan asked him how he has the time to do all of the things he does, there are smoke jokes about him being an alien, but not once did he say, "Well I have an amazing team of engineers" and credit all the thousands of people in his organizations that actually do the work. I think Elon's active perpetuation of…

Insightful post. Musk has successfully built a cult around his personal brand,for the specific reason of super-charging his ability to raise capital. A poster above provides news coverage about him memorizing rocket science books. I suspect this was part of a well-orchestrated PR campaign and unlikely. I find it difficult to believe that anyone could or want to do this, let alone achieve it. Particular when that person later makes a schoolboy error exposing himself to fraud which could result in him going to prison, presumably.

That said, and being an entrepreneur and having spent time in negotiations with entrepreneurs, when people start talking about money, everyone hears what they want to hear regardless of what is said. Which is why lawyers can charge what they do. And why - in this - Musk looked a bit inexperienced IMHO.

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

#504

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…

But 10b5 is not just about protecting investors in the company; it's about "the purchase or sale of any security" broadly. Securities representing a short on $TSLA are still securities.

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

#505

you can’t disrupt or otherwise show up all of these players: the us/eu/russian/chinese space industries (and by extension the governments of china and russia), the oil industries of russia/saudi/usa, the major auto manufacturers, power companies, professional car and truck drivers, and the us dealership association (what am i forgetting), all of whom are politically very well connected, and some of whom have their ho…

Looks like a TESLA Denier here. Musk screwed over and pissed off a lot of people. How is the response not justified? Both shorts and longs got hurt by his tweet.

> Both shorts and longs got hurt by his tweet.

The human race has been directed out of an apocalyptic technological cul-de-sac by his hand. I recognize crony behavior when I see it.

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

#506
post #483
post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've started to think Apple is more competitive on laptops than it looks from the price. Every time I've priced out a laptop with similar configuration to my MBP (including a good-quality display, NvME SSD, good battery life), it always ends up costing about the same as an MBP. And then Apple's customer service definitely tips in their favor (I've been spoiled by fast, convenient, competent repair service at the Appl…

Out of curiosity, I specc'd out a Thinkpad T480 as close as I could to the base model MBP, and they are reasonably similar in price (the Thinkpad is $2100 to the MBP's $2400). Thing is, if you drop a few upgrades, such as dropping the CPU speed by a few percent, dropping the dGPU, going to a 1080P screen, and using a SATA instead of NVME drive, you're down to $1400 for largely minor decreases in performance and capab…

I’m sorry but dropping to a 1080p after using a Retina display or even a 2K dell screen is absolutely horrible. If you’re a programmer you spend your day looking at screens - make it nice.

Also, the difference between a SATA SSD and NVMe is night and day.

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

#507
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am an investor, and I have not lost trust (temporarily degraded perhaps, but certainly not irreparably!). I also take the long view; Elon is instrumental to the long-term outcome for Tesla, our species, and our planet.

You sound a bit like Doctor Strange here. Sure he's made some bold moves intended to steer us toward a better future, but the fate of civilization does not rest on his shoulders. Unless we make him President. Don't make him President.

The fate of civilization depends on the individuals that share his trait - the trait to desire most strongly a bountiful and amazing future - knowing that they will be able to successfully build companies such as Tesla and SpaceX without ruthless persecution by the government, the media, and short sellers.

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

#508

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…

[deleted]

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

#509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I mean is, we are concerned with price manipulation. But the theoretical harm of price manipulation is that some investor has overpaid based on the intentionally misleading $420 tweet. The SEC is not primarily trying to protect Jim Chanos from getting screwed on his short position. It is trying to protect the "investing public" more generally. When they talk about damages it's not going to be damages suffered by…

Price manipulation hurts short sellers by causing "short burn of the century"

Yeah, and I believe some of the shorts may have cause to sue (or have already?) directly. But I tend to think the SEC's focus as to damages is not going to be that Elon screwed the shorts. It's going to be that some people bought shares of Tesla at too high a price. I could be wrong, maybe this is more of a general "integrity of markets" kind of thing, and the SEC doesn't care about direct harm at all, they just want to deter other aspiring short slayers out there.

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

#510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Tesla has pulled itself back from the brink and may actually become a profitable car company This is a very very generous assessment of the dire financial situation TSLA is in. At best they have hit their production at the expense of quality which will only temporarily offset their costs. Any sustainable mid-term profitability is a very big question mark at this point.

Tesla Model 3 is the most efficient and best quality electric vehicle I've seen. I've owned one for over 6 months now, and early on it was glitchy and needed a lot of software updates, but for the last 3 months it has been extremely rock solid stable, and I'm pretty certain this car will have great longevity. Not to mention, perfect 5 star ratings in safety from NHTSA. First, I don't like Autosteer (autopilot), as I…

Lots of other cars also have 5 star NCAP ratings. I’m willing to bet at any time a Subaru will be in that list.

Adaptive cruise control and lane tracking are also not exclusive to Tesla.

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