He could have done this with any number of pretenses that didn't require signing a binding legal agreement to buy Twitter.

Generally, this is far too complicated and involved to be any kind of effective scheme. He has professional managers and lawyers who could have easily come up with dozens of ways to sell tsla stock without this public legal morass.

The situation most likely is as it seems: He wanted to buy twitter for personal reasons and is in the process of doing so.

I concur with everything except this part...

*** He wanted to buy twitter for personal readons [reasons] and is in the process of doing so. ***

I suppose that he wanted to buy Twitter. Perhaps it was for personal and business reasons. I simply don't know.

Also, at this point it seems like he might have decided not to purchase Twitter.

Nonetheless, the following comment which you successfully refuted...

*** Am I the only one who thinks it's obvious he was pretending to buy Twitter to try cover his cashing out of massive amounts of tesla? ***

was ridiculous.

We don't need to call names, just present the arguments and let others judge.

Could it be that he actually wanted to buy Twitter at a discount, but mis-calculated how much TSLA stock would drop? Maybe it was attractive at 10-20% of his net worth, but the price got too high.

This is my thinking, he didn’t anticipate the market would tank as bad as it did and now the math on the deal isn’t what it was before all the multiple compression both for Tesla and Twitter. People saying he wasn’t serious about it from the start are off the mark.

Exactly. Everyone is serious at one price and a tire kicker at another price.

Due to the market drop the dollar figure is now more expensive relatively speaking. I would not be surprised if some lawsuits fly back and forth and the deal winds up going through at a valuation that is similar in relative terms to the offer when it was made but different numerically.

I have no idea why Twitter would agree to that. It seems to me the more likely outcome is that Musk will use lawsuits as a disincentive to prevent Twitter from forcing him to go through with the deal, and he will back out at the cost of a massive penalty payment.

It isn’t without precedent there were pending acquisitions during the COVID crash in 2020 that got renegotiated to a lower price.

> a valuation that is similar in relative terms to the offer when it was made but different numerically.

I have no idea what that means. You think they negotiate to 53.69/share so Musk can save some face?

Both Twitter's value and the value of the stuff that underlies Musk's wealth has dropped.

So they could agree to a new lower price and Twitter shareholders would still make the same money relative to the recent value of the stock and Musk would take a similar ding relative to his net worth.

It's like if you agree with someone's heirs to buy something after the current owners croaks but the current owner takes long enough to croak that the market for that thing changes. The typical path forward is to re-adjust so the deal is just as fair for both parties as it used to be and get on with it. But because of the dollar figures involved here the parties will sue each other instead of exchanging emails/texts like normal people looking to buy and sell stuff do.

> So they could agree to a new lower price and Twitter shareholders would still make the same money relative to the recent value of the stock

What? So let's imagine I bought 10000 shares of TWTR in 2018 for $25. And now Musk wants to revise the offer down from 54.20 down to 34.20. Why should I accept a $200k smaller return, just to be more "fair to Elon" in terms of the effect on his net worth?

Or worse, what if I bought 10000 shares close to the peak? Why should I accept a $200k larger loss on the stock?

He made a contract to pay a certain price - it's in no way a wash to shareholders if he wants to pay less. He just made a bad deal. Nobody forced him to sign a contract to acquire Twitter at that price.

I am not a financial markets expert, but many who are seem to believe at least some of TSLA's drop is due to Elon's clowning around with Twitter. So it's a self inflicted wound (which he seems to be doing a lot of these days).

Yes that is the common sense, simple, sane theory about what is going on here.

It doesn't make Elon look great, but some of the other theories…

- he wants to feed his ego because he doesn't already have enough to feed his ego

- he wants to make money because he doesn't have enough money

- he wants to grief twitter because it's such a good tool for him and he uses it every day

- he wants to get more people to preorder cars since the waiting line is only a year right now

...are just bonkers.

It's not just that TSLA drop.

If Twitter had gone through the current tech market drop, without Musk hanging over it, it could easily be down 60-70%, maybe even 80%.

Twitter is a terrible business on paper with the current board. It wouldn't have done well in this tech crash.

Musk must be pretty annoyed that if he had waiting about 30 days he could have gotten twitter for 60% less money.

Regret was never a valid reason for annulment of a contract.

It is when buying stuff on Amazon…

No, even then: You are still operating within the parameters of your contract with Amazon when you return something, the contract is not annulled, it is merely another clause in the same contract that gets triggered.

Consumer law gives you certain protection varying from place to place because it is impossible to verify what you buy online, but a bid on the stock of a public company is not an Amazon purchase and hence does not have the same kind of protections.

And in a way that is Elon's play: to claim that he put that bid in with important information being withheld by the company that would have had a material effect on the bid price. A reasonable person might take the position that Elon should have done his due diligence before making that bid.

I always love when these stunts are hitting reality, be that legal, regulation or physics. Because it always fun to watch them crumble. It just doesn't happen often enough, ignorance and endless (VC) money go a long in ignoring those limits without consequences.

Yes, that's a very good point. I once saw my little kingdom threatened by a funded start-up, fortunately they were really out of control and they didn't last long enough but in that time they burned through 30 million worth of funding and for a while it looked like we might lose the battle before they ran out of funding.

Situations like this are my main beef with VC funding, we reached a point where it is not the most innovative or the best idea / solution / business wins but the one that can burn through the most money.

WeWork failed at that, and even the slightest increase in intrest rates might doom thosr businesses. We will see so.

Good that you survived so, facing of against 30 million in funding isn't easy, regardless of how stupid that money is.

No, it definitely wasn't easy. What really helped is that we always remained financially very responsible during the whole run of that business, matching expenses to income with some room to build up a nest egg just in case. We weathered 3 major downturns including the .com bust which is one of the things I'm pretty proud of.

It definitly is something to be proud of. Shows that business success is a marathon.

So to sum up, regret is sometimes a valid reason for annulment of a contract.

Yes, but it is not applicable in case of contract to buy Twitter that Musk entered into.

No, regret is a valid reason to withdraw from a contract if that option is stipulated in the contract.

It's an execution of the contractual terms, not an annulment of the contract.

There are many places where the right to undo online purchasing contracts is not baked into the purchasing contracts, but based on the law of the land (e.g. Germany). U get the item, decide u don’t like, and undo the contract.

No.

Is the Tesla stock drop having a significant impact?

The whole tech field, including Tesla and Twitter has seen stock prices drop.

Yes Musk can leverage less money, but he also has to spend less to buy Twitter.

No they signed a contract about the price, and it's fixed at $54 a share. Which is why the current theater...

Speaking personally, for the last 3 months or so I've watched my retirement investments lose more than I made each month. I can't really pull out of the stock market unless I want to just eat a 9% inflationary loss. I suppose if I had the platform to talk one stock down to buy it while talking another up to sell it, I'd resort to games too.

Don’t worry about it. You’ll see this happen a bunch of times before you retire.

Best not even to look at the amounts until your close to retirement and need to adjust your investments.

Huh? I keep seeing people make this point, but the premise is defective. Investors clearly reacted negatively to Elon's Tesla stock sale, despite the Twitter 'excuse'. Furthermore, if Elon wanted to minimize Tesla sell pressure, his initial Twitter deal proposal wouldn't have been missing $21B of financing, which made investors think Elon would need to sell more stock in the future.

He could have justified the stock sale in plenty of other ways, including reallocating funds to his other companies, without forcing himself into a $44B deal.

He's like a kid who starts a grass fire so nobody will notice he broke a window playing baseball.

To what end?

If he sells a lot of Tesla stock it could cause a run. If he does it with a pretence he might avoid the run and preserve his stock price.

I think this theory is right.

And as much as he trash talks Warren Buffet, I think he was basically following his advice of “buy what you know.” He just got burned by amazingly bad market timing.

He obviously has insider knowledge of Tesla, a finger on the pulse of his market and saw warnings about world economic conditions. He predicted the stock was going to take a hit, probably needed some money for his other ventures and wanted to sell fewer shares at a higher price. That way he keeps more control of the company. Occam's razor says the simplest explanation is probably right.

That makes no sense - he predicted the stock market crash - and then started twitter buyout at pre-crash prices ?

What makes you think twitter shareholders would sell for less? If you made a 1B dollar investment in twitter ten years ago, what return would you look for? If you didn’t get it from the present offer what would you do? Would you lobby 5 other massive shareholders that twitter will be worth more in 6 years and there is no need to sell or would you sit on your hands and hope for the best?

TWTR stock has basically gone no where since the IPO in 2013. Look at the 10 year chart. It's in the same range as it was in late 2013, right after the IPO. (I am a Twitter stock holder.)

What stocks “do” on the stock market is not the subject. The subject is: what ROI do you expect as an investor? Not a short term speculator. But an an investor who allocated a portion of the portfolio to TWTR with a long term time horizon.

I’ve been an investor in Twitter since shortly after the IPO. It’s done shit.

That is not what Occam's razor says and is a very complicated, explanation anyway.

> What is it with the Musk hate?

Repeated promises and claims which turn out false.

He is extremely arrogant and annoying. For example used "Pedo Guy" as insult at Twitter toward someone who committed crime of disagreeing with him, proceeded to claim that this does not mean "pedophile" in court.

And claimed that this person "married" 12 year old girl (actually, she was 32 years old).

Also, Musk has bunch of annoying fans.

(that is among some legitimate reasons, many hate him BECAUSE he is successful)

> dozen other things that will save humanity

That is really overstating it, and case of annoying fanboyism.

(personally I appreciate some achievements and see his role in that - without giving 100% credit to leader, confused why people praise some projects already, but see no reason to engage in fanboyism or Musk hate)

> Why do you bring it up?

Because someone asked why some people hate him?

> It was years ago

Falsely accusing people of being pedophile and raping 12 year old is not something where saying "sorry" is sufficient to never bring it up.

> What claims “turned out false”?

Are you really unaware of numerous missed promises, deadlines etc?

I didn’t know that at the time, as Elon had a better reputation then and I presumed that as a billionaire he would have access to interesting information. The fact that he was willing to double down on the claim suggested a source to his confidence.

Its ok to not defend bad behaviour from people you otherwise admire.

Was that before or after he hired a PI to investigate said person to see if he could find any dirt to defame him further, after continuing to double down on the pedophile accusations, further calling him a child rapist, and marrying a 12 year old.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/elon-musk-hired...

Doesn't sound like a one off lightly lobbed, 1 in 50000 fluke to me.

Throwing out grave insults because someone on the internet doesn't like your idea is a pretty good tell of the sort of character he is, even if it was 4 years ago.

Adding to the list of reasons to dislike him, there's him trying to get a lawyer who interviewed him for the SEC fired from his new unrelated job.

> What claims “turned out false”?

Here is a small subset: https://elonsbrokenpromises.com/

That site is BS though. It takes estimates and misquotes them as "promises."

When asked when "full self-driving" would be available, he said

> 3 month maybe

THAT is an estimate, but then he continued

> 6 months definitely.

THAT is a promise.

It continues like that.

Also, as CEO of Tesla, and with his Twitter account listed as an official source of information, he cannot just willy-nilly make "estimates“ completely and utterly removed from reality. This is misleading investors and customers, for which he repeatedly got in trouble.

To put it politely the best possible interpretation of what you have said is that you are very confused and have poor reading comprehension, and because of this you are mistaken.

First, that is not at all what he was asked. The question is quoted right on the site you seem to think is so great.

Second, what he said did come true. The two levels of functionality did and do differ significantly, such as with summon and lane changes.

The other quotes on the site are even weaker sauce.

> It was years ago.

Not original commenter, but, so what if it's a while ago, from appearances it's not like his character has changed that much from being a major dickhead. He dismissed Covid as nothing because it would've been bad for his factories' output (he didn't say this but let's draw conclusions). Oh that's 2 years ago, also old news?

"Suddenly" is a bit reductive, no?

https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/utes3n/comment/...

I find it hard to believe that someone so rich, yet so petty will "save humanity".

> What is it with the Musk hate?

After he accused a random guy of being a pedophile because he saved a dozen kids, after he lied about making Tesla a private company, after he lied about Tesla accepting bitcoins as payment (just to speculate on BTC), it should be evident to everybody that Musk is not to be trusted. It wouldn’t surprise me if he pretended to buy Twitter to speculate on price changes with some weird derivatives.

None of what you claimed is true. Why are you doing that?

at least "accused a random guy of being a pedophile" is true, though "because he saved a dozen kids" part is not true

nevertheless, "accused a random guy of being a pedophile" is damming

Wow the one with the most money has to pay the most taxes? A wonder. Why is this the first time tho?

In the US you only pay capital gains tax on stock when you sell. So it can look like you made a big profit year after year if the stock you own goes up, and it looks like you didn’t pay any tax. But that money isn’t available to you until you sell, and that’s when the tax comes into effect. This applies to everyone, and so it can look like a tax dodge, but it’s just the way things are accounted.

Actually, that stock appreciation value IS available to you. You can get a very low interest (sub 1%) loan using your stock as collateral. If you have enough stock (like the very wealthy), you can just keep doing this and paying off the interest with more loans.

Then, when you die, your estate can take advantage of the step up rule. Which means that instead of using the original value of the stock you bought as a basis to calculate your profits, the basis is "stepped up" to the value of your stock on the day you died. After which, your estate can sell the stock and pay no taxes and then pay off the loans you lived off of your whole life.

And that is exactly why companies with founders that own lots of shares are no longer paying out dividends and trying to make a profit. They simply put everything possible back into growing the stock price eternally. Because dividends are taxed. Stock appreciation, if you are rich enough, is not.

Pro-tip: use the money you borrow to pump the price of your stock to increase your leverage

Amazing tip, thanks!

> Wow the one with the most money has to pay the most taxes? A wonder. Why is this the first time tho?

Because he didn't have money before; he had paper wealth. Some media pretends that they're the same to keep you clicking. Now he's sold, he pays tax on it, because he gained capital.

I dislike people who don't apply the same rules they apply to others to themselves such as Musk saying you have to be in the office 40+ hours per week when that isn't physically possible for him to do given how many companies he runs.

I also dislike those who get lots of help from others to become rich and powerful then use their power to stop others from getting the same help, which he has done.

> What is it with the Musk hate?

HN users consider themselves consumers first and foremost. The investor, techno-utopian believer, fanboy of companies..they are all sides which are secondary to the consumer one . At least on HN.

Despite all the media frenzy and fanfare about mr.Musk, the American consumer received next to nothing from him in terms of quality of life. And it's not like he's a young crypto-bro still finding himself. Guy is 50, has been doing this for 30 years. When I say "doing this" I mean offloading overpriced equity onto bigger fools using lies, deception and cult of personality.

Teslas for example still account for less than 1% of total vehicles sold globally in FY21. And it has been a slow year...also mr. Musk has been at the helm of Tesla for 20 years now. Less than 1% in 20 years...it means that the consumer is getting nothing.

He converted the worldwide car industry to electric. Every single large car manufacturer was forced by Musk to abandon fossil fuel.

He sells more top tier cars than all German car makers combined, for five years already.

And that’s nothing compared to what he does for space flight and the long term survival of conscience in the universe.

You seem to be very badly informed.

> Every single large car manufacturer was forced by Musk

Dude, business ain't politics.

You have to be the person signing off the quality of life if you want people to shake your hand and pat your shoulder.

Musk is signing off quality of life for essentially nobody (1% of total vehicles sold globally in FY21) and those who are on the receiving end, they already have plenty of quality of life given that Teslas are basically luxury vehicles.

Real quality of life for everybody is Microsoft being used everywhere ranging from Bel Air to subsaharan Africa, same for Google, Facebook, Amazon. Even financial companies, you can find an HSBC or a Barclays branch in Lagos or Accra or Abuja, just as you can find them in NYC or LA for God's sake.

Another type of quality of life is Pfizer/Moderna 4$ vaccine injected in the arms of everybody in the developed world within 24 months from the emergence of a new virus, and AstraZeneca 0.10$ vaccine taking care of the developing world and especially India when they were burning bodies in the streets.

> You seem to be very badly informed.

You seem very insulated in your bubble of wealth and internet echo-chambers. Numbers don't lie. Musk companies are defacto non-existent in the real world. They provide quality of life to essentially nobody, and in fact you basiclly don't see them anywhere outside of places where huge amount of wealth is concentrated.

Narrative and headlines is the only metric in which such companies dominate.

Because it’s in the interest of people who view themselves as aspiring elites to be anti-anti-establishment. Don’t let the term hacker fool you; it’s been culturally appropriated to mask the corporate ponzi scheme that is venture capitalism.

your snark is unwarranted and incorrect... when Gates and Bezos held the title of the world's wealthiest, they did not pay the most in taxes.