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Is Elon Musk trying to commit ‘suicide by SEC’ by taunting the agency?

latimes.com

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Re: Is Elon Musk trying to commit ‘suicide by SEC’ by taunting the agency?

#21

Post by LiquidSky »

jjoonathan wrote: post #10
sokoloff wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To what end though? Is there anyone plausibly in the market for a Tesla car that doesn’t know about the company and cars at this point? I’d guess their unaided awareness within target market must be over 50% and aided over 95%.

How many people haven't heard of Coca Cola? How much do they spend on advertising regardless? Brand awareness requires upkeep.

The old saw that any publicity is good publicity isn't true. Tesla being in the news because their leader is committing securities fraud and acting increasingly erratic isn't helping the brand anymore than Coca Cola being in the news for giving people food poisoning.

Re: Is Elon Musk trying to commit ‘suicide by SEC’ by taunting the agency?

#22

Post by ceejayoz »

colordrops wrote: post #15
baby wrote: post #9

This sounds like a targeted campaign to discredit Musk. Careful about what you read.

Your comment is (currently) downvoted, but it's a perfectly reasonable suggestion considering plenty of evidence of entrenched interests doing everything they can to take down Musk, obviously including the massive short position against Tesla, and the oil industry writer for the NY Times intentionally driving in circles in a parking lot to cause the car to run out of battery: https://www.tesla.com/blog/most-peculiar-…

"There are powerful people who'd like to see Musk fail" and "Musk doesn't do himself any favors calling people pedos and whatnot" can both be true.

Re: Is Elon Musk trying to commit ‘suicide by SEC’ by taunting the agency?

#23

Post by stefanmichael »

LiquidSky wrote: post #18
baby wrote: post #9

This sounds like a targeted campaign to discredit Musk. Careful about what you read.

Why this bizarre cultish paranoia? He's in this mess because he committed securities fraud. He got a slap-on-the wrist sweetheart deal and he can't even stick to that. He's done all of this to himself, and he can't seem to stop.

it's not really paranoia when you factor in how much short interest the $TSLA stock has, there are literally tens of billions of dollars to be gained if the people with these short positions can discredit or shift public opinion on musk

Re: Is Elon Musk trying to commit ‘suicide by SEC’ by taunting the agency?

#24

Post by gowld »

LiquidSky wrote: post #16
thaumasiotes wrote: post #4

I liked Matt Levine's analysis: > probably what will happen is that Musk will go to court and the judge will yell at him and he will say he’s sorry and then six minutes later he’ll tweet “my fingers were crossed and I am NOT sorry” and he’ll go on TV that night and be like “you know what I have contempt for? Court,” and everyone will just be like “ehhhhhhhhhh good enough.” ( https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles…

No, this doesn't seem right. Musk is clearly burning through the good will he'd built up. There's going to be a limit to how much his aura can shield him, and it seems like he's really pushing to find that limit.

Why do you think he's being intentionally descructive asnd not just not caring what anyone (including the government) thinks?

Re: Is Elon Musk trying to commit ‘suicide by SEC’ by taunting the agency?

#25

Post by ceejayoz »

stefanmichael wrote: post #23
LiquidSky wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why this bizarre cultish paranoia? He's in this mess because he committed securities fraud. He got a slap-on-the wrist sweetheart deal and he can't even stick to that. He's done all of this to himself, and he can't seem to stop.

it's not really paranoia when you factor in how much short interest the $TSLA stock has, there are literally tens of billions of dollars to be gained if the people with these short positions can discredit or shift public opinion on musk

That's fairly minuscule, really. Short sellers can't make Musk bash the SEC or call people pedos; that's on him.

Musk himself has $55.8B in compensation tied to market cap at stake, which gives him equally self-interested reasons to balance things out. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/21/tesla-shareholders-approve-e...

Re: Is Elon Musk trying to commit ‘suicide by SEC’ by taunting the agency?

#26

Post by elihu »

xvf22 wrote: post #3

I'm honestly unsure what he has to gain by doing this. I can't imagine that the departure of the counsel isn't related. Maybe the GC announced he was leaving and that rattled Musk somehow? Very strange.

Sometimes people do things that neither they nor anyone else gains from.

Re: Is Elon Musk trying to commit ‘suicide by SEC’ by taunting the agency?

#27

Post by justin66 »

baby wrote: post #9

This sounds like a targeted campaign to discredit Musk. Careful about what you read.

Their plot to trick Musk into agreeing to the terms of a legal settlement with the SEC and then breaking those same terms was fiendishly clever.

You know. Them.

Re: Is Elon Musk trying to commit ‘suicide by SEC’ by taunting the agency?

#28

Post by pbreit »

LiquidSky wrote: post #17
Tomminn wrote: post #11

This is a partial transcript of the Q4 2018 earnings call. There is a strong case to be made that the information was not market moving. Operator Thank you. Our next question is from Colin Rusch with Oppenheimer. Colin Rusch Thanks so much. Can you talk a little bit about the geographic dispersion for the guidance for 2019, where you're expecting the Model 3s to sell through as well as the other models? Elon Musk Wel…

It doesn't matter if it's market moving. Or rather, the terms of his settlement are that all of his communications need to be pre-approved by counsel to determine what is market moving. He didn't get the pre-approval so he's broken the agreement.

The actual settlement notice says "put in place additional controls and procedures to oversee Musk’s communications" which appeared to happen in this case. [1]

Also, since the 500,000 number was already public and referring only to Model 3s, it's entirely plausible that 500,000 total cars for the year is not material. The SEC conveniently leaves out this exculpatory evidence.

1: https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2018-226

Re: Is Elon Musk trying to commit ‘suicide by SEC’ by taunting the agency?

#29

Post by jjoonathan »

LiquidSky wrote: post #21
jjoonathan wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many people haven't heard of Coca Cola? How much do they spend on advertising regardless? Brand awareness requires upkeep.

The old saw that any publicity is good publicity isn't true. Tesla being in the news because their leader is committing securities fraud and acting increasingly erratic isn't helping the brand anymore than Coca Cola being in the news for giving people food poisoning.

I tend to agree. I limit my claims to "advertising can still make sense even if 100% of the target market is already aware of the product."

Re: Is Elon Musk trying to commit ‘suicide by SEC’ by taunting the agency?

#30

Post by gowld »

jjoonathan wrote: post #10
sokoloff wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To what end though? Is there anyone plausibly in the market for a Tesla car that doesn’t know about the company and cars at this point? I’d guess their unaided awareness within target market must be over 50% and aided over 95%.

How many people haven't heard of Coca Cola? How much do they spend on advertising regardless? Brand awareness requires upkeep.

When I'm in the market for a $50-$100K car with a depreciation lifespan of 7+ years which requires ongoing factory-provided service for its netire lifespan, I'm not excited to become aware of a car company whose founder/CEO behaving erratically in ways that make the government threaten to trigger a collapse of the company.
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