Liam Denning, Columnist

Just Another Monday at Tesla

Pick your reason for the sell-off; it’s justified.

August 20, 2018 at 3:55 PM UTC

Liam Denning is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering energy. A former banker, he edited the Wall Street Journal’s Heard on the Street column and wrote the Financial Times’s Lex column.

The downside of the Musk mystique.
Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

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When Elon Musk decided to spawn the “funding secured” meme, the prospective buyer was expected to pay merely a 20 percent premium for the privilege of owning … a minority, illiquid stake in an unprofitable company. As of Monday morning, the price of admission was 40 percent.

The $420-a-share figure scrawled on Tesla Inc.’s windshield hasn’t changed, but the stock now hovers around $300. Since its intraday peak on Aug. 7, when Musk announced he had a take-private deal in the bag, the company’s market value has collapsed by almost $15 billion.