Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

SEC Asks Manhattan Federal Court to Hold Elon Musk in Contempt

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 314 posts

Re: SEC Asks Manhattan Federal Court to Hold Elon Musk in Contempt

#241

Post by chx »

Waterluvian wrote: post #22
spectramax wrote: post #3

At this point, the board of directors should just demand deletion of his Twitter account. I admire Elon for his vision, and actually also admire his radical style despite of its unpopular image - I watched the video where he smoked pot on the radio show. It was a really amazing conversation about future of humanity. He just needs to stop tweeting. You may say it’s fixing the symptom, but here if we take Twitter away,…

...Can a corporation demand an employee waive their right to speech as a private citizen? I think even if so, that's a terrible idea.

This is a common misunderstanding, let's recap the first amendment:

> Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech,

A civil contract between a company and individual does not fall under this at all. They could add anything to that contract and it is up to you whether you sign it. If a company demands you to walk to the office like someone out of Monthy Python's Ministry Of Silly Walks, they sure can. It's up to you whether you accept it. There are some explicit limitations to this (class discrimination, whistleblower protections etc) but beyond that, it's a free country.

Re: SEC Asks Manhattan Federal Court to Hold Elon Musk in Contempt

#242

Post by reustle »

jijji wrote: post #13

He should really have a public relations spokesman/spokeswoman for this type of messages... Especially since this same situation already happened.

Not sure why you're being downvoted. I totally agree, anyone with that much power and influence should want to make sure they are putting their best foot forward at all times.

Re: SEC Asks Manhattan Federal Court to Hold Elon Musk in Contempt

#243

Post by kosievdmerwe »

golfer wrote: post #220
Aeolun wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems to me he was indeed repeating information that was already public.

No. The range originally mentioned by Tesla in the earnings call was production of 350k-500k cars. He then tweeted about making 500k cars a year -- guiding the world to the extreme top range of the estimate. This is material information, and he misled investors. It's clear cut.

To further highlight this point, which of these three statements would make you the most likely to invest in Tesla:

1) 350k-500k cars a year

2) around 400k cars a year

3) around 500k cars a year

The three statements communicate different information and (3) is the best, since unlike (1) and (2) it implies there's a chance that the production numbers can exceed 500k and would certainly be close to 500k in any case. Whereas, with (1) and (2) it probably won't be.

Furthermore, quoting a specific number, even if you have the word "around" before it, implies new information was obtained narrowing down the range given in the earnings call. Giving investors more clarity on how they should invest in Tesla. This makes it material.

If we can accept the information is material, then it's pointless to argue whether it's misleading or false, since that's not what the SEC is arguing about. Musk has to pre-approve material statements (due to his settlement with the SEC) and, according to internal Tesla policy, get that approval at most 2 days before posting them. The earnings call was on January 30, so even if pre-approval was given then (it wasn't) then it would have expired on February 19 when the tweets were made.

The fact that he misled investors (proven by the fact that he issued a correction 4 hours later), just adds extra ammunition to the SECs argument that Musk should have pre-approved his tweet as pre-approval would have caught the factual errors.

Seriously though, read through the court document, except for the bit at the end of page 9 (where they quote a bunch of cases) it's very simple to read and understand: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5750664-Show-Cause.h...

Re: SEC Asks Manhattan Federal Court to Hold Elon Musk in Contempt

#244

Post by jaimex2 »

burlesona wrote: post #221

To me, the real shame is that he wasn’t able to actually take Tesla private last year. He loves being the public mouth of his companies and clearly can’t restrain himself from tweeting material information. Would be fine if Tesla weren’t public :/

Yep. A deal with the devil they had to make to let Tesla be where it is today.

Musk should just talk about the tech instead of the numbers though. The SEC are under pressure to bite Tesla for anything it does out of line.

Re: SEC Asks Manhattan Federal Court to Hold Elon Musk in Contempt

#245

Post by jaimex2 »

krferriter wrote: post #203
jaimex2 wrote: post #169

Market knee jerked as usual. Good time to buy TSLA shares.

The fact this is how our economy and retirement savings are structured is absurd to me.

Thrown around the worlds largest casino as a facade for investment? Yep.

Re: SEC Asks Manhattan Federal Court to Hold Elon Musk in Contempt

#246

Post by JumpCrisscross »

spectramax wrote: post #3

At this point, the board of directors should just demand deletion of his Twitter account. I admire Elon for his vision, and actually also admire his radical style despite of its unpopular image - I watched the video where he smoked pot on the radio show. It was a really amazing conversation about future of humanity. He just needs to stop tweeting. You may say it’s fixing the symptom, but here if we take Twitter away,…

> the board of directors should just demand deletion of his Twitter account

That’s extreme. Just give the securities lawyer the password. Elon clearly lacks the discipline to work with pre-approval. So have him draft tweets, send them to the lawyer, and then watch them go live. He can read his feed but not write to it.

Re: SEC Asks Manhattan Federal Court to Hold Elon Musk in Contempt

#247

Post by cmroanirgo »

joeyspn wrote: post #61
slouch wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about, "helped every piece of news break faster." I knew about every trade during the run up to today's 3pm NHL trade deadline many minutes and sometimes hours before the stories appeared on nhl.com or sportsnet, etc.

^ This I recently read a group of high profile journalists (mainstream media) stating that "Twitter is where we get the news from"... Twitter has become a sort of real-time news agency. If you follow the correct profiles in your niche/sector not even Reuters can beat the speed of 95% of the events. If there's a newsworthy event, chances are it's first on twitter than in any other media outlet.

> high profile journalists (mainstream media) stating that "Twitter is where we get the news from"...

Wow. This is unbelievably scary.

Imho news should be curated & not first to the wires. News should involve individual fact checking and less web of trust.

I understand how we consumers might want to listen to a journalist's feed, but journalists using it as a source too? It's nothing but a self referential feedback loop otherwise!

One word describes the problem: covfefe

Re: SEC Asks Manhattan Federal Court to Hold Elon Musk in Contempt

#248

Post by kevinpet »

darkpuma wrote: post #215
Dylan16807 wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that change whether it counts as "information"? Harm to investors isn't the criteria for whether this breached the agreement. (And is probably low to zero for a couple tweets outside trading hours.)

Claims about production numbers are 'information'.

Not if they are already known.

Re: SEC Asks Manhattan Federal Court to Hold Elon Musk in Contempt

#249

Post by leesec »

detaro wrote: post #80
blhack wrote: post #64

My knowledge of how publicly traded companies work is very limited, but: Was what he said really that bad? He said: >Tesla made 0 cars in 2011, but will make around 500k in 2019 And then later corrected himself with: >Meant to say annualized production rate at end of 2019 probably around 500k, ie 10k cars/week. Deliveries for year still estimated to be about 400k. This seems like a pretty simple mistake to have made,…

The legal point isn't if what he tweeted was "that bad" or not. It's that after he got caught the last time, in the settlement to end the case he agreed to have Tesla legal review all such tweets in the future to make sure he doesn't do it again. He broke that agreement.

Yes but in this case he'd already said this publicly. Does Elon need to review tweets about things hes already publicly said?

Re: SEC Asks Manhattan Federal Court to Hold Elon Musk in Contempt

#250

Post by InitialLastName »

mabbo wrote: post #170
SimbaOnSteroids wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wouldn't be too hard to give him a twitter clone app that flows through a middleman before going live, git pull requests for twitter if you will.

I've been saying for years that Twitter ought to be offering that as a paid-for feature. They don't even have to charge much for it. Even something as simple as "All tweets have a 120 second delay during which time the following users will be pinged, shown the tweet, and given veto powers on it". I'd pay for it just to have my wife be able to say "Really? You want to tweet another picture of the cat? No."

Jack Dorsey just discussed this concept a bit in an interview on Bill Simmons' podcast. They were discussing the pitfalls of giving users (or others) the ability to edit/delete their tweets.

In discussing having a N-second window where a user can correct typos, Dorsey brought it down to a tradeoff between real-timeness and correctibility. Essentially he feels that much of Twitter's charm as a platform comes from the fact that updates feel "live", so every delay from tweet source to delivery needs to be given a heavy cost in the cost/benefit analysis.

Adding a delay like that as a feature (especially for a figure notable enough to move the stock market with a tweet) would undermine that message completely, by preventing that figure from engaging with the conversation in real time.

Post reply on HN