Elon Musk sells more than half the stock he promised on Twitter

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has sold more than half stocks than what he promised to sell in his Twitter post a few days back. Musk vowed to sell off ten per cent of his shares in the electric car major. After selling shares in two steps, on Tuesday he again sold 934,091 shares worth $1.05 billion.

With this, Elon Musk has offloaded 9.2 million Tesla shares worth $9.9 billion. A large chunk of this money will go to taxes. The richest person in the world on November 6, tweeted that he would sell ten per cent of his stock holdings in Tesla. He created a poll, where nearly 58 per cent of 3.5 million voters voted in favour of disposing of the stocks.

To reach the ten per cent threshold, Elon Musk will have to sell around 17 million shares in Tesla or around 1.7 per cent of the electric car manufacturer's outstanding stock.

After Musk created the poll on Twitter, Tesla shares slumped drastically. However, after the initial drop, Tesla's shares have rebounded 9.4 per cent.

The move of announcing a sale of the Tesla shares come after Musk established a pre-arranged trading plan to carry out an orderly state of shares related to the exercise of stock options. Hence, it was already pre-planned. The November 6 poll on Twitter was simply a move to grab the attention of the world.

The latest move of selling Tesla shares was already hinted at by Musk a few days ago when he taunted US senator Barnie Sanders on Twitter and wrote, “Want me to sell more stock, Barnie? Just the word…"

While Musk was taunting the politician for his advocacy of taxing the super-rich in the US with higher tax rates, the share selling decision was already made.