Buying Twitter might be the biggest mistake Elon Musk has ever made
The TelegraphNov 07, 2022
The Facts
Regulatory disclosures made public on Tuesday revealed that Elon Musk sold 19.5M Tesla Inc. shares worth almost $4B from Nov. 4-8 after purchasing Twitter Inc. for $44B in October.
This latest sale was the third large block of stock sold by Musk since launching his takeover bid for the social media platform earlier this year, amounting to more than $19B.
The Spin
Narrative A
While Musk has the ability to turn Twitter into a profitable company, it may come at the expense of his other ventures, as this purchase is shaping out to be an unnecessary distraction. For example, Tesla's best engineers were relocated to Twitter to assess the state of the social media code while the company faces criticism over its "full self-driving" mode. Musk has seemingly over-exhausted his resources.
Narrative B
Twitter has always been an imperfect business, and Musk doesn't intend to develop it into a better business, only to ensure the social media platform's existence. Owning Twitter is all about influence: It allows Musk to control its data, expand his reach beyond his fanbase, and affect the flow of information within the platform.
Nerd narrative
There's a 50% chance that Elon Musk will still be the richest person in the world by the end of 2025, according to the Metaculus prediction community.
