What happened
After shares of Tesla (TSLA +0.91%) were riding high on Thursday, as investors gathered to hear what Elon Musk would say at the company's Cyber Rodeo presentation last night, shareholders are back to selling the stock on Friday morning.
There was also a report yesterday that Musk apparently ignored a legal requirement related to his recent increased ownership stake in Twitter. As of 10:20 a.m. ET today, Tesla stock is down 2.9%.
Image source: Getty Images.
So what
What did Musk say that might have spooked investors last night? Nothing new, apparently.
Musk said, "The Tesla Autopilot team and [artificial intelligence] team has done an incredible job building real-world AI, and we're able to go to wide beta for all full self-driving customers in North America this year." But he's made similar promises before, and last I checked, you still can't sleep in your Tesla while it does the driving for you.
Musk also promised a "dedicated robotaxi" next year, and gave a name to its proposed humanoid robot (Optimus). And he assured investors that Tesla's promised Semi electric truck and other new vehicles were all coming in 2023.
But most of the above (if not all of it) still lies at least a year into the future. In the meantime, Musk cautioned that 2022 will be dedicated to scaling up production of existing products, and in particular the Model Y crossover, which will be the first vehicle produced at its Texas Gigafactory.
Now what
Because investors already knew most of the above, the news had presumably already been baked into Tesla's stock price. Absent confirmation of anything really new, therefore, the gains investors had lent Tesla before the Cyber Rodeo were quickly taken back after the event ended.
Meanwhile, a new concern has arisen that could potentially distract Tesla's CEO from the plans listed above. As The Washington Post reported yesterday afternoon, Musk appears to have ignored a legal requirement that he file a disclosure with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) after exceeding 5% ownership of Twitter.
Musk announced that he'd acquired 9% of Twitter on Monday, but he apparently had passed the 5% level back on March 14. In the meantime, he was in violation of SEC regulations.
And you can probably expect the SEC to object to that, through lawyers, in fairly short order.
