Tesla’s founder, South African-born Elon Musk, wiped $14 billion off the company’s value after tweeting that its share price was too high.
The tweet also knocked $3bn off Musk’s own stake in Tesla as investors promptly bailed out of the company.
“Tesla stock price too high imo,” he said, one of several tweets that included a vow to sell his possessions.
In other tweets, he said his girlfriend was mad at him, while another simply read: “Rage, rage against the dying of the light of consciousness.”
Tesla’s share price has surged this year, putting Tesla’s value at close to $100bn, which would trigger a bonus payment of hundreds of millions of dollars to Musk.
“We view these Musk comments as tongue in cheek and it’s Elon being Elon. It’s certainly a headache for investors for him to venture into this area as his tweeting remains a hot button issue and [Wall] Street clearly is frustrated,” Wedbush Securities analyst Daniel Ives told Reuters.
In 2018, Mr Musk tweeted that he may have secured funding to possibly remove Tesla from the stock market and take it private, which again led to swings in the share price. The Securities and Exchange Commission judged it a market-moving comment, fined him and forced Tesla to put in place checks to ensure it did not happen again.
Last month, however, a federal judge said Tesla and Musk must face a lawsuit by shareholders over the going-private tweet, including a claim that Mr Musk intended to defraud them.