this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2024
920 points (94.7% liked)

Technology

59377 readers
3124 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 23 points 4 months ago (2 children)

That's not exactly how billionaires work, they don't keep their money as cash, they keep it as equity. So if the value of his companies fall fast enough, he could lose all of his wealth.

Just food for thought.

[–] NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 6 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Also when you own as much of a company like he does, and try to cash out, you cause the stock to plummet rapidly as you increase the available amount of shares. Basic supply and demand.

It was quite dramatic as he was selling shares to buy Twitter.

Whatever number gets thrown around as his wealth is just a paper number. It's a fraction of that if he sold it all.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 7 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Yup, and he'd have to get approvals for any stock sales since he's in an executive position, and he also has an obligation to not tank the stock price either. So a lot of his wealth is inaccessible.

He's still super rich, but if Tesla tanks, he'd be a lot less rich.

[–] NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

I still feel like the way he sold all that stock for Twitter on the open market wasn't in the best interest of the shareholders.

Why didn't he try to negotiate a sale with Blackrock or someone and give them a 25% discount or something and do a large block sale.

Pretty sure something like that is an option if done right. It still would have hurt the stock price, but the Twitter sale was pretty brutal with it going on for weeks.

There's only so much you can do to move $40B of stock, and he didn't think Twitter would actually accept, so he had to scramble a bit. He was caught between various SEC rules, which was his own doing, but it does explain the behavior.

[–] SuspiciousCatThing@pawb.social 4 points 4 months ago