Musk has offloaded shares worth $40 billion in the world’s most valuable carmaker since late last year, with $15 billion of that coming after he made similar promises not to sell in April.
That, along with concerns about his distraction with newly bought Twitter and a slowdown in China’s economy, have set the electric-car maker’s shares on course for their worst year since going public in 2010.
The stock was last up 2% on Friday, recovering from a fall of as much as 3.5% earlier in the session, its lowest since September 2020.
“I won’t sell stock until I don’t know probably two years from now. Definitely not next year under any circumstances and probably not the year thereafter,” Musk said on Thursday.
“If this was another CEO of a Fortune 500 company making that statement, market would be confident that ‘he said it, so he’s not selling’,” said Dennis Dick, head trader and market structure analyst at Triple D Trading.
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Known for tweeting about his plans extensively, Musk most recently asked in a Twitter poll if he should quit as the head of Twitter. In 2018, he got into trouble with regulators over a tweet about taking Tesla private.
“Musk looks rattled, vowing not to sell more stock and floating the idea of share buybacks. Short-sellers are firmly in control and there is a lot of hesitation by retail to buy this dip,” said Edward Moya, senior market analyst at OANDA.
