Technology

Tesla stock had its worst week since Mar. 2020 during a ‘very intense 7 days’ for Elon Musk

Tesla stock had its worst week since Mar. 2020 during a 'very intense 7 days' for Elon Musk

Michael Gonzalez | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Tesla shares dropped nearly 16% during what CEO Elon Musk called a “very intense 7 days indeed” to one of his 108 million followers on Twitter.

Tesla shares closed at $265.25 on Friday, Sept. 30. At market’s close one week later, Tesla shares were trading at $223.07, a decline of nearly 16%. It was the worst week for the stock since Mar. 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic began to grip the U.S., shutting down businesses and public life.

Over the weekend, Tesla reported electric vehicle production and delivery numbers that did not meet analysts’ expectations.

On Monday, Musk proceeded to stir up a political firestorm by opining about how he thought Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine should be resolved.

After that, public records revealed that Musk had informed the Delaware Chancery Court that he would complete a $44 billion acquisition of Twitter in October, a deal he had been trying to evade for months.

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Musk on Russia

On Monday, Musk posted a Twitter poll gauging support for what he claimed was a likely outcome of the seven-month conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

He suggested new UN-supervised votes in Ukraine on whether certain divisions of the democratic nation under siege should join Russia. He also suggested Ukraine should cede Crimea to Russia, and that the nation should then remain “neutral” rather than aligning with either NATO or Russia.

The Kremlin praised Musk, but he drew sharp criticism from many others including Ukraine President Zelenskyy, Ukraine ambassador to Germany Andrij Melnyk, South Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham and anti-Putin human rights activist and former chess champion Garry Kasparov.

Kasparov, who sought to block Putin’s rise to power and was jailed and beaten for his activism before fleeing the country, described Musk’s plan as a “repetition of Kremlin propaganda.”

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On the upside…

Despite his volatile week, Musk at least notched a historic professional achievement at his re-usable rocket venture, SpaceX. The company launched four people to the International Space Station from Cape Canaveral, Florida on Wednesday.

The mission is SpaceX’s fifth operational crew launch for NASA to date and the company’s eighth human spaceflight in just over two years. One of the people to fly with SpaceX on this latest mission is Russian cosmonaut Anna Kikina.

Musk also boasted about the start of production of the years-delayed Tesla Semi, a heavy-duty all-electric truck, and promised that the company would deliver some of the trucks to Pepsi by Dec. 1.