Tesla Plummets 15%, Twitter Crashes On Musk’s Worst Day Since Election
Pudgy South African Oligarch Losing On Multiple Fronts
Elon Musk had an absolutely terrible start to his week today as Tesla (TSLA) crashed 15.43% in a single trading session.
The immediate catalyst for the decline was a report from investment bank UBS, which confirmed its sell rating on the stock despite massive recent declines and significantly slashed its vehicle delivery forecast for Q1 2025. But also weighing heavily were broader concerns about the American economy and the increasingly irreversible damage CEO Elon Musk is doing to Tesla’s brand with his extreme-right politics.
Tesla has now lost all of the gains made since the U.S. Presidential Election in November, and is down more than 50% from its all time high in December 2024. It is down 43% Year-To-Date, compared to a mere 4.69% decline in the broader S&P500 index.
Meanwhile Twitter (temporarily known as ‘X’ under Musk occupation) crashed several times on Monday, rendering the site unusable for much of the day. Rival BlueSky capitalised on the disaster, experiencing a surge in signups that will likely power it to 33 million users by tomorrow morning.
99 Problems
Musk’s other major business - SpaceX - is also in deep trouble. On Friday, a launch of its troubled Starship rocket failed for the second time in a row. The rocket disintegrated just minutes after launch, scattering debris across the Caribbean and forcing commercial airline delays throughout the region.
Also last week, the Canadian Provence of Ontario announced it would irrevocably cancel a contract with SpaceX’s Starlink satellite ISP service. A perviously announced deal in Italy is now also reportedly in trouble. Starlink’s technology is genuinely best-in-class and is by far the most efficient solution for piping fast internet into remote rural areas or isolated locations like ships at sea. But governments are understandably wary to depend on a service that can be turned off at a moment’s notice by a far-right ketamine-addled billionaire.
Musk himself seems determined to feed those concerns. Over the weekend he insulted Poland’s foreign minister, calling him a “small man”. And today he found the time (in between Twitter outages) to call U.S. Senator Mark Kelly - a former astronaut and U.S. Navy veteran - a “traitor”.
Musk’s companies are in absolute freefall. How long until remaining Tesla and SpaceX investors realise that the CEO needs to thrown off the rocket ship?