Few Tesla investors have sold their shares in response to Elon Musk’s controversial tweets about politics and memes, Bloomberg reported.
The world’s richest person, who momentarily lost the title this week, frequently posts at midnight. He always used Twitter to comment on politics, such as labelling The New York Times’ union walkout “Woke v Woke” at 1:44 a.m. this Thursday. Furthermore, there are also certain troubling memes, such as trolling with the “Pepe the Frog” character, which has become a symbol for the alt-right.
This has proven too much for investors like Trevor Goodwin, who owned Tesla shares for five years before dumping it due to Musk’s tweets. According to Bloomberg, the business analyst from Kansas City, Missouri, just sold Tesla shares worth $30,000.
Goodwin and his wife both drive Teslas and are admirers of the company. However, he now claims Musk’s erratic behaviour is too much for him to bear and has sold all his Tesla stock.
“It’s almost like he’s abandoned us in favour of his new mission,” Goodwin told Bloomberg.
Despite Tesla’s share price dropping 56% this year to $174 on Wednesday, the stock has increased more than 700% in the five years since trading at $21 on December 8, 2017.
Earl Banning, an Anchorage, Alaska-based psychotherapist, has been a Tesla supporter and investor since 2015. He told Bloomberg that, like many of Musk’s supporters, he defended Musk online, but the recent incident “has lost a lot of us.”
However, Banning does not intend to sell his shares and wishes Musk would be less political and aggressive. “It was so unnecessary,” he told the outlet.
“You’ve got a great car company — just stop it.”
Others, like Phoenix, Arizona-based lawyer Jonathan Batchelor, are more concerned about who is running Tesla; after all, Musk is spending most of his time on Twitter.