Tesla stock is in free fall, having lost nearly 70 percent of its value since the start of 2022.
On January 1, Tesla was valued at around $1.2 trillion, making Elon Musk the world’s richest man by a considerable margin.
About 12 months later, the electric automaker lost more than $800 billion in market value.
READ MORE: ‘Elon abandoned Tesla’: Billionaire shareholder calls on Musk to step down as CEO
Right before Christmas, Tesla ($TSLA) reported a stock price of $110.55 – the lowest price since the start of Covid.
There are a number of reasons for that.
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The ongoing chip crisis certainly played a role.
As did Tesla’s ‘optimistic’ delivery predictions.
Tesla deliveries
Tesla finally delivered the first SEMI trucks to customers earlier this year.
However, the long-awaited Cybertruck and Roadster are nowhere to be seen, and production has been postponed again and again.
Having said that, most analysts and investors believe that Tesla stock is simply reacting to Musk’s antics.
Elon Musk controversially acquired Twitter for $44 billion in October, and Tesla stock price has been declining since.
Partly because Musk has been selling a significant chunk of his shares to fund the purchase.
But it’s also been pinned on his erratic and eccentric managerial style.
Right after taking over Twitter, Musk fired half of the staff and told the other half to shape up or ship out in a controversial email made public.
After that, Musk ran a poll on Twitter to decide whether or not he should step down as the CEO of Twitter.
Twitters users voted in favor, and so he did agree to step down.
It’s entirely possible he knew this would be the outcome and decided to run the poll to ‘validate’ a decision he’d already made.
But even so, shareholders didn’t really like that, and Tesla stock price went down even further.
2022 wasn’t a great year for tech stocks and the stock market in general.
Here’s to hoping the market will cool off in 2023.
