Elon Musk’s claim that his 2018 tweet suggesting that he had funding to take Tesla private at $420 a share was ruled to be false. The judge agreed that “no reasonable jury could find Musk’s tweets on August 7, 2018 accurate or not misleading,” suggesting that the statements were made to manipulate the stock price.
Musk has certainly profited off of those price increases, selling shares worth more than tens of billions of dollars in the aftermath.
Bloomberg ranks Musk as the highest net worth individual in the entire world, though this is largely based off of Tesla’s stock prices, which are now trading at such exorbitant PE ratios that the company would take more than 200 years to earn enough to cover its stock values.
According to data from California from which new car sales are most clearly available, the California New Car Dealers Association (CNCDA) suggests that Tesla is still one of the smallest auto manufacturers in the US by market share, with a slice of just over 4% for 2021, just above Subaru.
Musk now appears to be interested in buying the same platform that got him into trouble, despite still being under a court order in which he is forced to submit to his attorney censoring every single tweet he makes, a penalty for his past fraud.
Ironically, it seems that he did not learn any lessons from the previous case and has been making buyout offers, again, through the same platform, even while he continues to purchase shares valued in the billions, in actions the SEC may again eventually find amounts to price manipulation.