Tesla shares drop by 5% after CEO goes on Twitter proposing a sale of 10% of his stock

Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) stock dropped by around 5% today when the company’s CEO took to Twitter that he was considering selling around 10% of his Tesla stock. As a result, Tesla share prices dropped to around 5.5% to $1,155. This was a significant drop from the $1,222 closing price they recorded when the markets shut on Friday. 

The drop in share prices was caused when the billionaire asked his Twitter following of 62.5 million people whether he should do away with some of his Tesla stock. He did this in the form of a Twitter poll where he asked his followers to vote either “No” or “Yes.”

Official Twitter statements 

On Saturday, Elon Musk launched a Twitter poll and said, “Much is made lately of unrealized gains being a means of tax avoidance, so I propose selling 10% of my Tesla stock. Do you support this?”

The billionaire CEO gave his followers the chance to either vote “No” or “Yes” to this move. He claimed that he would abide by what his followers voted for on this poll, regardless of how it went. Over 3.5 million followers responded to this poll. A vote of “Yes” was received from 57.9% of them. 

Previous statements

Elon Musk had previously mentioned that he wanted to let go of a large chunk of his shares during the fourth quarter of this fiscal year. In September, at the Code Conference held in Beverly Hills, Elon Musk said that he’ll have a marginal tax rate that’ll be more than 50% when his Tesla stock options expire. He claims that he already had the intention to sell soon. 

Musk said:

I have a bunch of options that are expiring early next year, so … a huge block of options will sell in Q4 — because I have to or they’ll expire.

Other former and current Tesla board members, like Antonio Gracias, Ira Ethrenpreis, Kimbal Musk, and Robyn Denholm, have also sold a lot of their Tesla stock.