Tesla board members, executive sell off over $100 million of stock in recent weeks
Tesla board members, executive sell off over $100 million of stock in recent weeks
As Tesla stock has fallen in recent weeks, members of the board and an executive at Elon Musk's company have sold off millions of dollars in stock, according to filings.
Summary
Tesla board members and executives have sold over $100 million in stock since early February as the company's shares decline.
Board member James Murdoch sold $13 million in stock on March 10, coinciding with Tesla's worst single-day drop in five years.
Kimbal Musk sold $27 million in shares last month, and board chair Robyn Denholm offloaded over $75 million through a predetermined plan.
The sell-offs come as Tesla’s stock has fallen nearly 50% since December.
Live by the meme, die by the meme
The wise ones sold as much stock as possible.
Tesla stock is most likely to drop way more. Global sales being down about 50% for February, demands the stock must fall even more.
Even corrupt government contracts can't compensate for the loss of global marketshare every Musk nut was so convinced would increase to a degree where Tesla would be bigger than all other car companies combined.The stock price was always ridiculously high, and it still is.
The P/E ratio is off the charts. Things will get really interesting after the Q1 earnings call on April 29th.
https://www.financecharts.com/compare/TSLA,TM/value/pe-ratio
So uh... Toyota's PE is almost 8, a bit down from its historical average of about 9 or 10.
Tesla's is currently about 115.
Down almost 50% from its highs around 200 during Jan 2025.
If Tesla's actual $$$ stock/share value dropped down to ... lets say a PE of 10... that would be... well ok it is currently still dropping rather rapidly, but lets say rightnnow its $225 per share.
If Tesla 'corrected' to a PE of 10, that's a share value of about $19.57.
About a 91% drop from where it is right now...
... which would wipe out around $700 billion of market cap.
These are ballpark figures based on a hypothetical scenario, this is not financial advice, but yeah, that is a way of looking at how overvalued Tesla is (or could be).
EDIT: Musk himself apparently owns about 410 million Tesla shares, as of Feb 2025.
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/insights/052616/top-4-tesla-shareholders-tsla.asp
So... a 91% reduction of 410m shares * $225 per share...
That would be a personal loss for Musk of about $82 billion, from this exact moment.
That'd put his net worth at about $273b, based on him having a net worth of $355b as of Feb 2025... but his net worth may already be significantly less than $355b, because Tesla has dropped a lot between the date of the source I've found for his net worth, and right now.
EDIT 2
https://www.forbes.com/profile/elon-musk/?list=rtb%2F&sh=7123ba5d7999
Uh wow yeah, ok, between Feb 28 2025 and Mar 18 2025, he's already lost about $34 billion... and is currently at $321 billion.
So... if you take $82 b out of $321, then he's down to around $240 ish.
Sadly... he would be the richest person in the world, even after that, he'd have to get below $210b ish to sink to #2 under Bezos, below about $200b to be #3, also under Zucky boy.
BuT bUt BuT tHiNk AbOuT tHe MaSsIvE dIvIdEnD pOtEnTiAl WhEn ItS tEcH fUlLy MaTuReS! iT mAkEs Me FeEl LiKe I gEt To OwN sUm SpAcEx ToO!!!
Musk basically ate through the massive bump he got after Trump’s Nov 4th win.
The real pain for that stock is coming. It was already way overpriced before the election, and the speculators pumped it up even more.
It is the most overvalued stock in the world and its not even close.
Next up: Mango Mussolini says Tesla is too big to fail and government-finances it.
Capitalism for thee, but Communism for me.
"I have ran my company into the ground with my incompetence and hate mongering, I am a literal nazi, doing the salutes and everything ... everyone hates me, but the business is too big to fail ... bailouts please!"
Mango Mussolini
You cheeky devil. This made me lose my shit.
Best outcome when you're Lemmying on the shitter
Lol
Yeah,h you're right..Elmo will do that, and it will pass too but... Tesla is a mini car maker and a shitty one at that. It has4 models, I believe? What low single digit percentage of cars is a Tesla?
Too big to fail my ass. Let it burn .
Rats fleeing a sinking ship.
This is exactly what I came here to post!
I wanted to join the selloff party so badly, I traded all my Total Market ETF holdings for (Tesla-free) Large Cap Value ETFs, and with the change left over I bought the cheapest Tesla Puts I could find.
I just love that open pessimism for Friday's Put contracts!
I recognize that these are words. That's probably why I'm poor.
I am mostly a disciple of Boglehead investing philosophy.
A seminal resource early in my adult life was The Wealthy Barber, which I think still stands up well as a sensible guide to low-stress, long-term investing.
An ETF is basically a thing you buy, like shares of stock, but each share of an ETF is made of a blend of a bunch of stocks. VTI is an ETF run by the brokerage Vanguard that tries to track the entire US stock market, weighted against how large a company is. You should try to find ETFs with a low "expense ratio", which is basically the management fee for a blended fund. VTI is really low, something like 0.03%. So you pay vanguard $3 for every $10,000 gained (I think it works like that, anyway. All I know is it's low and that's good).
I don't endorse playing with Options Contracts unless you have an iron stomach and incredible self discipline. It's legalized gambling in my view (although it has other valid uses, like hedging against losses...but it's an advanced tool and can wreak havoc on savings when used poorly).
So real talk, and of course I'm not going to toss my life savings (ha hahahahaha ha cries in american) into it but: how advisable is short selling Tesla right now and is there a reasonably "safe" way to do it? I know it always involves risk, especially in the event of a margin call, but for someone who is only slightly versed in these matter: how advisable would such a move be?
Is it possible or likely for a reverse-Gamestop ploy to take place?
I personally will never short anything. I'm not smart enough to do it right, I proved that to myself when I tried to actively invest. Were I to play the market again, if I were pessimistic about a stock, I would opt to buy Put Options to bet against it. Those come with their own risks, including being able to time the market in addition to its direction. I've seen others say you can buy positions in a ticker that tracks the inverse of Tesla, but it insulates you from the worst case of selling short (i.e. theoretical infinite loss, or at least way more loss than you could afford); it can only drop to zero for a 100% loss, but not more. At least, that's my understanding, but I could be wrong. The advice I give myself is to just not play, except in the most boring way.
Looking into the sale by James he shared in his form 4 filing that his sale was to cover the transaction cost in exercising his non-qualified stock options (NSO). This sale results in closing part* of his NSO grant and acquisition of 477,011 shares. The net cash value of the sale comes out to $196k. This should result in ordinary income tax of roughly $42M.
* I’m not actually sure how NSOs work here. It’s unclear to me if there are still exercisable options in this grant or any other outstanding grants.
The shares were sold to cover the exercise price relating to the exercise of stock options to purchase 531,787 shares, which are scheduled to expire in 2025.
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/000177134025000004/xslF345X05/edgardoc.xml
Are we still pretending this wasn't the plan all along? I predicted this a long time ago, and I'm a dummy.
Here it is. The only part I missed was Musk leaving the company. But the day is still young.
Sounds like someone had some put options come up...
Rats, sinking ships, etc.