Elon Musk: Thoughtful or Impulsive?

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla (TSLA), revealed his thoughts about a wide range of topics in a long interview yesterday. For more than 2.5 hours, he chatted with Lex Fridman about subjects as varied as Dogecoin, Putin and neural networks. Fridman is an AI (artificial intelligence) researcher at MIT who focuses on autonomous vehicles, human-robot interaction, and machine learning. Musk and Fridmans’ common interests intersected well, and Musk spoke freely and comfortably.

During the interview, Musk described the complex computing involved in designing self-driving cars, saying that creating the cars was harder than he had anticipated. Musk also described his predictions of inter-species life on Mars. Over all, Musk seemed contemplative, pausing to think before he responded to Fridman’s questions.

This philosophical image of Musk is at odds with his reputation as a wild card, who impulsively makes proclamations out of left field, such as about Dogecoin. Many investors are concerned about his seemingly impetuous decisions, and especially his stock sales. Musk and a few other Tesla officers have sold $5.9 billion worth of Tesla shares in the past three months, with the mass majority sold by Musk. Even yesterday, the same day that he delivered his thoughtful interview, Musk sold more than one billion dollars worth of stock, in two separate transactions.

Its difficult to know the impetus of these sales. It could be that Musk needs the money for a personal purpose or to invest in another business. However, as indicated by TipRanks’ Confidence Signal, this seems like a negative indicator for the stock.

It’s up to investors to decided whether these Sells are significant, or whether they reflect Musk’s impulsivity. Financial analysts don’t offer a clear direction for investors to follow, as only around half of the analysts who gave ratings on Tesla in the past 3 months called it a Buy.