Elon Musk took his Twitter feud with Tesla’s short sellers and the Securities and Exchange Commission to a whole new level on Thursday evening, mocking the traders who had bet against the EV maker, as well as the U.S. market regulator, as Tesla’s stock hit a new record-high of $1,208, rallying 7.95 percent.
In a series of tweets, Musk asked, ‘Who wears short shorts?’, and said that “Tesla will make fabulous short shorts in radiant red satin with gold trim,” and “Will send some to the Shortseller Enrichment Commission to comfort them through these difficult times.”
Musk also tweeted a profane play on the regulator’s initials, “SEC, three letter acronym, middle word is Elon’s.”
Musk has a history of taunting the SEC on Twitter, and some of his tweets essentially disclosing information about Tesla cost him several millions of U.S. dollars in fines.
In 2018, the SEC charged Musk with securities fraud for the infamous tweets about taking Tesla private at $420 per share and for claiming “funding secured” for a potential deal. A few days later, Musk agreed to settle the securities fraud charge by the SEC in a settlement that included removing Musk as chairman at Tesla, and Musk and Tesla paying fines of $20 million each.
Earlier this week, Pirc, a shareholder advisory firm from the UK said that shareholders should vote to oust Tesla chief executive Musk from his position and the board of the company for his controversial tweets and a bonus package that could see him get richer by $55.8 billion.
Meanwhile, Tesla’s stock rallied on Thursday as the company reported its second-quarter vehicle and production delivery numbers, which showed 82,000 vehicles produced and 90,650 vehicles delivered, easily beating analyst expectations for deliveries.
“While our main factory in Fremont was shut down for much of the quarter, we have successfully ramped production back to prior levels,” Tesla said.
