1/ On August 7, 2018, the CEO of a $50B+ public company took to twitter and - by any and all reasonable interpretations - committed one of the most glaring and high profile cases of securities fraud in history. $TSLA
2/ To believe that his motivations were anything other than to burn the 'haters and short sellers' is to believe in farting unicorns. His intent couldn't be more clear. His violation more flagrant. $TSLA
3/ We live in a country and at a time where many doubt the rule of law applies equally. The common person believes that money, political access, and power allow you to circumvent regulations that would land most everyone else in jail. Their belief is sadly justified. $TSLA
4/ Back in the day, Martha Stewart went to prison over an insider trading case in which she sold a mere $230k in stock (avoiding about $46k in losses) after allegedly receiving material non-confidential information from her broker. $TSLA
5/ Compare that to the BILLIONS in loses on both sides here. Yes, both longs and shorts suffered greatly because of that tweet. If you owned calls with strikes above $420 because you believed in the $TSLA vision, you got crushed too. If you bought after the halt, same deal.
6/ More shameful than the original offense has been the coordinated dance to help him minimize his exposure. The $TSLA board, $GS, $MS and Silver Lake have revealed themselves to be what everyone knows they are - entities willing to debase their reputations for a few bucks.
7/ This coordinated dance only serves to feed his sense of entitlement. If he can get away with openly manipulating the stock of his company in the middle of the trading day, what won't he try next? $TSLA
8/ Worse still, if he evades severe consequence for his actions, the entire US capital markets will be reduced to a joke. One where laws apply unevenly, power and access matter more than rules and regulations, and where fraud will undoubtedly run amok. $TSLA
9/ It has been more than three weeks since the stunning events of August 7. Yet nothing from @SEC_Enforcement @SEC_News. If no action is taken in this case, they might as well dissolve. $TSLA
<end of thread>
<end of thread>
*non-public
