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Elon Musk says he is 'selling almost all physical possessions' and Tesla share price is too high in latest bizarre Twitter spree

Company's valuation plunged in wake of posts

Andrew Griffin
Friday 01 May 2020 16:36 BST
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Elon Musk calls coronavirus lockdowns 'fascist'

Elon Musk's will sell "almost all" his physical possessions and said that his own company is overvalued in a string of bizarre Twitter posts.

The outburst comes in the wake of widely criticised comments about the lockdown, which he called "fascistic" and suggested should be lifted to give America its "freedom".

Mr Musk echoed those calls in his latest posts, writing "now give people back their FREEDOM" before going on to post a series of tweets quoting the US national anthem.

"I am selling almost all physical possessions," the first of the posts read. "Will own no house."

Mr Musk then went onto write "Tesla stock price is too high imo". The comments appeared to lead the share price to drop immediately, falling 10 per cent in the wake of the posts.

"Now give people back their FREEDOM," the third post read. Mr Musk then posted the final lines of the US national anthem.

In recent days, many of Mr Musk's posts have criticised the government lockdown and attempted to suggest that the public are misled over the scale of the coronavirus crisis.

In a flurry of tweets earlier this week, he posted "FREE AMERICA NOW" and "Give people their freedom back".

He also used a Tesla earnings call to attack the lockdown as "fascistic" as part of a impassioned diatribe.

Mr Musk has been known to use his Twitter account to post controversial and unusual messages in the past.

He has said in the past that the strange nature of those messages has led to Twitter locking his account, fearing that they had been posted by a hacker.

The impact of the Tesla chief executive's tweets on his company's share price has led to suggestions that his tweets should be reviewed before they are posted, though Mr Musk later claimed that was not happening because of "freedom of speech".

The popularity of Mr Musk's Twitter account – which has 33 million followers – has led to it becoming a key focus for hackers and scammers. But they have largely attempted to do that by impersonating him, including taking control of other verified accounts and making them look as if they were Mr Musk's official account.

The new outburst came as Nasa announced that one of Mr Musk's other companies, SpaceX, was one of three firms in the running to make the lunar lander for humanity's return to the moon's surface. SpaceX already has a number of key contracts with the US government, including one that will see it send Nasa astronauts to the International Space Station in a matter of weeks.

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