Elon Musk sells $3.6 billion of Tesla stock 

Elon Musk announced on Wednesday that he sold another 22 million shares of Tesla stock worth $3.6 billion, raising concerns that the CEO is diverting funds to help sustain Twitter.

The shares were sold on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday this week, according to a filing with a U.S. financial regulator. The reason for the latest sales of shares has not yet been disclosed. 

Since April, Musk has sold more than $23 billion of Tesla stock. Last month, the Tesla CAO sold 19.5 million shares worth $3.95 billion. However, Musk remains Tesla’s largest shareholder with a 13.4% stake. 

According to BBC news, Tesla is one of the worst-performing stocks among major car makers and technology companies this year. On Wednesday, the value of Tesla shares in the Nasdaq index in New York closed below $500bn for the first time since 2020.

Musk bought the social media company Twitter in October after months of negotiations. To help fund his purchase of Twitter, Musk sold billions of dollars worth of Tesla shares. Some have cited the Twitter takeover as one of the main factors pushing the value of Tesla shares down. 

While Musk pledged that he would stop selling Tesla shares to finance the social media company, many speculate that the latest sale was to help prop up the embattled social network that has struggled to keep a steady profit. 

“Beware of debt in turbulent macroeconomic conditions, especially when Fed keeps raising rates,” Musk posted on Twitter, suggesting that he plans to buy some of Twitter’s billions in debt or buy back some of the company’s shares.

“The Twitter nightmare continues as Musk uses Tesla as his own A.T.M. machine to keep funding the red ink at Twitter,” Dan Ives, a stock analyst at Wedbush, wrote in a note to clients on Thursday.