Tesla Shares Decline after Twitter poll Supports 10% Stock Sale

Tesla Inc’s shares listed on Frankfurt saw a drop of 9% in early hours of Monday trading. The fall came as investors looked upon CEO Elon Musk’s previous proposed sale of 10% of its holdings in the company after twitter users responded to a poll.

On Saturday, Elon Musk tweeted that the would sell 10% of his stock if the proposal gains approval from twitter users to which 57.9% voted “yes.” Shares listed went down 7.9% to 980 euros whereas the U.S listed shares saw an increase of 73.2%. The NASDAQ composite showed an increase of 23.9%.

The shareholding owned by Elon Musk in Tesla values around 170.5 million shares which means selling 10% of stock would amount to 21 billion. According to Refinitiv Eikon, company shareholders sold $259.62 million of shares up until November. ‘

The poll came after the billionaire tax proposal was floated by the Democrats which aims to increase tax portions on wealthy Americans. The bill would also take into account tradeable assets and stocks held by billionaires. Chris Weston at Pepperstone in Melbourne said, “The last thing you do when offloading a massive exposure is to reveal your hand. The buyers tend to step away when you have an overhang like this, but this is no ordinary story and is Musk’s way of getting back at the proposal to tax the elite with gains on unrealized profits.”

He further said, “I’d be looking for clients to flip to shorting fairly aggressively, although hold periods would be very short-term in nature.”

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