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Tesla Faces U.S. Criminal Probe Over Musk Statements

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Re: Tesla Faces U.S. Criminal Probe Over Musk Statements

#251

Post by mandeepj »

danso wrote: post #49
Asparagirl wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s important to note that Elon screwed over the “longs” (people holding TSLA stock) too, not just the shorts. Many people and funds bought more TSLA stock in the $350’s range on the assumption that of course the company could/would go private at $420/share. After all, hadn’t the CEO just said so?

I was reading r/TeslaMotors that day and a long made the astute observation that shorting the stock after Musk's announcement when it hit around $380 was the most logical thing to do, because at most you'd be out 10% if Musk were telling the truth. If I had a trading account I think I might have gone for that.

> If I had a trading account I think I might have gone for that.

It does not take that long to open a trading account or you could have taken one of your friends help to execute this trade

Re: Tesla Faces U.S. Criminal Probe Over Musk Statements

#252

Post by rayiner »

chollida1 wrote: post #5

The sad piece of karma in all of this is that Musk tweeted in an effort to destroy the shorts. His tweet turned out to: - give the shorts a big dip in his stock, - an investigation by the SEC - an investigation by the DOJ - the backing off of a deep pocketed investor in the Saudis - Him potentially being personally liable, which would mean having to step away from SpaceX and Tesla if he was found guilty of fraud. Thi…

All great points. This is a lot worse than it probably seems to most people on HN. Imagine a prosecutor telling a jury that Elon funds a lavish lifestyle (with lots of details of the excess) with loans against his Tesla stock. That shorts of the stock threatened him personally, because of those loans, and alleging that he threw the $420 figure out there to counter-act the shorts. That’s a terrible narrative to have to deal with. The responses are not exactly things that would play well to a jury (“no, it was a marijuana joke!”).

Re: Tesla Faces U.S. Criminal Probe Over Musk Statements

#253

Post by losvedir »

kitebox wrote: post #156
abalone wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He clearly wanted to pump up the stock price and screw short sellers (he threw lots of indicators in the public space), and his statement was clearly and knowingly false. There was no secured funding. No this is not textbook at all. See previous citation from the SEC re: intentionality as a key element in criminal fraud. "Clearly and knowingly false" is just a serious-sounding way to say a misstatement. Did Musk no…

not to mention that what his tweet said was "Secured funding." (many news organizations misquote it as "Funding secured.") In English, the sentence "Secured funding" is ambiguous in meaning: as a shorthand sentence, it could mean "we would only use secured funding for a transaction like this". "Secured debt" is a thing, and therefore secured funding is a thing. Unless he clarified it someplace else in a way that was…

Am I missing something? The tweet[0] says no such thing.

[0] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1026872652290379776?ref_...

Re: Tesla Faces U.S. Criminal Probe Over Musk Statements

#254

Post by diminoten »

overcast wrote: post #210

The frequency of these bizarre actions by Musk are going up. Is he seriously just cracking under the pressure of having way too much on his plate? The dude is obviously a genius, but he's turning into a mad genius.

Random events tend to appear clustered.

Re: Tesla Faces U.S. Criminal Probe Over Musk Statements

#255

Post by diminoten »

ivraatiems wrote: post #101

I'm curious - supposing HN had the power to decide, would you replace Elon Musk as CEO of Tesla? What kind of future does the company have without its founder? Personally, I think I would be much more confident in Tesla, and much more likely to buy a Tesla product, if he were not in charge.

I think it's insane, the idea that we might have enough knowledge of Tesla as a company to make a decision like that.

I get it's a hypothetical and we're just navel gazing, but to even think our answers would be even remotely valid feels fairly arrogant.

Re: Tesla Faces U.S. Criminal Probe Over Musk Statements

#256

Post by [deleted] »

stephengillie wrote: post #194
lgeorget wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I'm a bit off-topic but sometimes I really fail to understand the USA culture. You can make the most outrageous and racist comments because of "freedom of expression" but making speculators lose their shit with a couple of tweets is a "textbook crime" for which you should "go to jail".

Freedom of expression doesn't mean freedom from consequences - just not from government.

[deleted]

Re: Tesla Faces U.S. Criminal Probe Over Musk Statements

#257

Post by lamontcg »

Latteland wrote: post #82
zwerdlds wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shorts drive the price down, making it more expensive for the company to borrow from the market by selling stock. They have to sell more shares to receive a similar amount.

Also the shorts try to push the stock down via endless false rumors (there are real challenges to tesla of course) about bad cars, crashes, fires, etc, and those false rumors must prevent some people who just don't have time for so much drama from looking into them.

Haters gonna hate. A lot of that news is just to sell clicks and has nothing to do with short selling. Other people hate Musk for reasons not having anything to do with self-interest in the stock price and want to bad mouth him. And the only way to do with those rumors is to be successful. Going to war with people bad mouthing you never works.

Re: Tesla Faces U.S. Criminal Probe Over Musk Statements

#258

Post by onetimemanytime »

danso wrote: post #83
chollida1 wrote: post #5

The sad piece of karma in all of this is that Musk tweeted in an effort to destroy the shorts. His tweet turned out to: - give the shorts a big dip in his stock, - an investigation by the SEC - an investigation by the DOJ - the backing off of a deep pocketed investor in the Saudis - Him potentially being personally liable, which would mean having to step away from SpaceX and Tesla if he was found guilty of fraud. Thi…

The small upside of this is that maybe Musk will be convinced to settle the libel suit that was announced yesterday [0]. For the suit filed in the UK, the max loss would be ~$400K (unless it goes to trial and he ends up paying Vern Unsworth's legal costs), and it would spare us the sad spectacle of Musk trying to prove that Unsworth is a pedo. [0] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/cave-rescuer-su...

This lawsuit is peanuts to Musk, money wise. Say he settles it for $20 million, that's nothing. And maybe Musk hires dozens of detectives that find out later that Unsworth went with underage girls (a lot of Europeans with some money do over there.) Still it's very petty of Musk to pick a public fight with a "commoner"

Re: Tesla Faces U.S. Criminal Probe Over Musk Statements

#259

Post by anticensor »

ivraatiems wrote: post #223
rootusrootus wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Toyota/GM/Ford/VW/etc did not become big, successful corporations by dictating to consumers what they want to buy.

No, but they might be able to remain big, successful corporations by preventing consumers from buying anything else.

You described it indirectly but end result is same.

Re: Tesla Faces U.S. Criminal Probe Over Musk Statements

#260

Post by tedunangst »

dmix wrote: post #228
vkou wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He also goes on personal crusades against members of the press, or just some random people that have said something mean, but true about him. (Vern Unsworth) He is very open to fans who give him good press, but closes up, and dismisses boring questions from haters and non-believers and shorts. Now, there is certainly a bit of a track record with a recent American presidents for this sort of thing. I'm not sure you wa…

What is the middle ground here? Are all public figures supposed to completely hold back all views and follow some unspoken social rules? It's one thing not to make dumb mistakes that hurt your company but the end result of this outrage/apology tour culture we're developing and forever expanding the scope of is going to create a completely risk averse, milquetoast, and boring culture where honesty from public figures…

> he has nothing left to prove to the world as a billionaire with multiple successful companies.

Has anybody told musk this? He doesn't seem to act like it.

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