Musk sells Tesla shares worth $1.05 bln, buys 2.15 mln shares

Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) Chief Executive Elon Musk has sold another 934,091 shares of the electric vehicle maker worth $1.05 billion and exercised option to buy 2.15 million shares, U.S. securities filings.

remember, Shares in Tesla were set to plunge into the red for the year, hit by a broad selloff of high-flying technology stocks and the fall of bitcoin, in which the electric carmaker were invested $1.5 billion.

At 1121 GMT, Tesla was down over 6% in U.S. premarket deals after a 8.5% drop during the previous session. The firm led by Elon Musk has had a stellar ride since 2020, which it began at about $85 per share, before reaching the $900 mark on Jan 25.

Currently trading at about $673 in pre-market transactions, the stock has lost 25% from its peak, which is above the 20% level which technically defines a bear market.

Bitcoin has also swung into a bear market, falling from a peak of $58,354 on Feb. 21 to a low of $45,000 earlier.

A Germany-based trader said he was “taking chips off the table” on Tesla as its $1.5 billion investment in the cryptocurrency could “backfire now”.