Tesla’s share price fell on Tuesday for the fourth day in a row after its huge fall on Monday that ended with $ 15 billion in CEO Elon Musk’s net worth.
Shares of the electric car maker fell as much as 13 percent to $ 619.50 in early operations, below the price where it entered the S&P 500 index in December.
This followed an 8.5% drop in Tesla shares that caused CEO Elon Musk’s fortune to fall by $ 15.2 billion on Monday, making him once again the second richest person in the world. world behind Amazon boss Jeff Bezos, according to Bloomberg’s billionaire index.
Musk can only blame himself. Tesla shares fell after its tweet on Saturday stated that the prices of Bitcoin and Ether, the two largest cryptocurrencies in the world, appear “high”, raising questions about the value of the $ 1.5 billion investment of the car company.
“Since it plunged into the deep end of the pool with the $ 1.5 billion Bitcoin purchase last month, for better or worse, the company’s shares are now closely tied to this digital currency.” , Wedbush Securities analyst Daniel Ives said in a research note Tuesday.
A day earlier, Ives had estimated that Tesla made a $ 1 billion paper profit from buying bitcoins before Musk’s post helped reduce the price of the digital currency, which plummeted below $ 50,000. in the morning.
Tesla shares have plunged more than 20 percent since the Silicon Valley titan revealed its box office bet on the cryptocurrency, which Musk has called “a less silly form of liquidity than cash.”
But the tech billionaire remained challenging on Tuesday. When market strategist Peter Schiff pointed out on Twitter that Tesla shares had entered a bearish market since the bitcoin announcement, Musk simply answered with an eggplant emoji, which Schiff considered “basically called me a cock.”
Tesla also received a hit Monday after new company Electrek reported that the company had stopped receiving orders for the cheaper version of its Model Y SUV.
Musk appeared confirm the news on Twitter, saying he did not believe that “the range, in many driving conditions, meets all of Tesla’s standard of excellence.” He said the model was still available “off the menu.”