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by daxorid 2239 days ago
> whose fault is it that Wall Street react to tweets?

He's not permitted to tweet anything that may materially impact the stock without prior board or general counsel approval, per his contempt agreement.

Obviously Jay Clayton is going to let him get away with it just like his prior violation of the Consent Decree, but for the brief period of time that the market forgets the SEC is toothless when it comes to Musk, this is nominally a big deal.

1 comments

>He's not permitted to tweet anything that may materially impact the stock without prior board or general counsel approval, per his contempt agreement.

Isn't the actual SEC agreement a lot more specific than that? This first article [1] I found in a quick search from last year has a specific list, he has to have it cleared for including any of:

• any information about the company’s financial condition or guidance, potential or proposed mergers, acquisitions or joint ventures,

• production numbers or sales or delivery number (actual, forecasted, or projected),

• new or proposed business lines that are unrelated to then-existing business lines (presently includes vehicles, transportation, and sustainable energy products);

• projection, forecast, or estimate numbers regarding Tesla’s business that have not been previously published in official company guidance

• events regarding the company’s securities (including Musk’s acquisition or disposition of shares)

• nonpublic legal or regulatory findings or decisions;

• any event requiring the filing of a Form 8-K such as a change in control or a change in the company’s directors; any principal executive officer, president, principal financial officer, principal accounting officer, principal operating officer, or any person performing similar functions

Were there other more general terms? If not, does pure opinion of "lol it's up too high" actually violate the letter of any of those? I guess it could be argued that maybe he's saying that due to information he knows that other people don't, but it's not itself disclosing anything at all.

May get an investigation, but if internally there has been nothing of material impact (and he didn't benefit in any way) and it's just Elon Musk going off I'm not sure it's a matter for the SEC vs the board and shareholders. But his genius/drive and crazy/lack of control are pretty well known quantities at this point and tied together. If he's not violating any actual laws and a majority of shareholders are fine taking the bad with the good vs other mixtures of bad and good (safe and conservative but low vision for example) that seems like it'd be up to them?

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1: https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/26/elon-musk-sec-agree-to-gui...

His tweet is literally a "projection, forecast, or estimate" of "numbers regarding Tesla’s business" (the stock price) "that have not been previously published in official company guidance".

It's also absolutely "any information about the company’s financial condition or guidance".

I don't see any way this doesn't fall in the list of bullets. Saying the stock price is too high is nothing but a guidance as to the company's financial condition.

>of "numbers regarding Tesla’s business" (the stock price)

That was my first glance interpretation, but I genuinely was curious if people with more legal knowledge would know if it was a correct one. Is the stock price actually part of "Tesla's business" in this context or a reflection of Tesla's business, with the actual numbers about that being the kinds of things that go into company guidance and reports. Additionally, "it should be lower" doesn't seem like it's at all literally a "projection, forecast, or estimate" but a statement of opinion. If said opinion isn't based on undisclosed fact is it a violation? Or is there precedent (seriously) that anything a CEO says inherently is going to be an issue because they can't possibly avoid knowing private info? Normally CEOs at big public corps are more careful by default so I'm kind of curious where it's come up before. That'd tie into the "guidance" aspect too it seems.

Anyway, to be clear this isn't meant to defend him per se it's just that I find law and how the specificity of language in it plays out interesting, so I was curious about other readings.