Elon Musk Sells Another $963M Tesla Stock Amid Insider Selling Frenzy On The S&P500

Tesla Inc TESLA CEO Elon Musk sold shares worth $963.2 million on Thursday, as per filings made with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. 

What Happened: Musk sold 934,091 shares of Tesla and also exercised options to purchase 2.17 million shares of the automaker at $6.24.

As per the filings, the shares were “sold solely to satisfy the reporting person's tax withholding obligations.”

See Also: How To Buy Tesla (TSLA) Shares

Why It Matters: At the beginning of the month, Musk sold Tesla shares worth $1.01 billion and exercised options to buy 2.1 million shares. 

Musk polled his Twitter audience in early November if he should sell 10% of his holdings in Tesla.

Across the S&P500, insiders have sold $63.5 billion in shares through November. This is a rise of 50% compared with 2020, reported The Wall Street Journal.

The technology sector dominated these sales with $41 billion in sales across the market, as per the Journal.

Musk’s 31-day total sales amount to 11.0 million shares, 64.7% of target. The sales amount to $11.8 billion at an average price of $1,073, according to a Twitter post by Gary Black, the managing partner at The Future Fund LLC, an SEC-registered investment advisor.

2/ I’m hopeful @elonmusk will stop allowing $TSLA shorts to front run his sales of 934,091 10b5-1 $TSLA shares each week. No other CEO selling this amount of stock would enable HFs to jump in front of sales. Elon should do a secondary to sell his remaining 6M shares (<1% float).

— Gary Black (@garyblack00) December 10, 2021

Black said he hoped Musk will stop allowing Tesla shorts to “front run” his sales each week. “No other CEO selling this amount of stock would enable HFs to jump in front of sales,” Black said in a separate tweet. 

Notably, the Tesla CEO does not receive a salary and is compensated instead through a stock options plan. 

Price Action: On Thursday, Tesla shares declined 6.1% to $1,003.80 in the regular session and dropped another 0.62% in the after-hours trading.

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Photo: Courtesy of Nvidia Corp. via Flickr