Tesla stock sinks another 11% as Elon hypes Russian Prime Minister tweet "predicting" U.S. civil war

Tesla is sinking fast, losing 11% on the first trading day after Christmas for a full 25% loss in the last five days. The main story pundits are telling is that Elon Musk's Twitter adventure has "distracted" him, though The Guardian summarizes the more mundane problems of failing demand, production problems, poor resale value, and so forth.

Tuesday's loss, which saw Tesla shares drop 11.4%, also followed a Reuters report that the company was planning to run a reduced production schedule in January at its Shanghai plant. That news sparked worries of a drop in demand in the world's biggest car market, amid a rising number of Covid-19 infections in China. "There's no question there are demand fears," Great Hill Capital Chairman Thomas Hayes said, citing a delivery forecast cut from Chinese rival Nio in the key market. Hayes also added that Tesla's stock was facing a "perfect storm" of high interest rates, tax-loss selling and share sales by some funds that hold a significant amount of Tesla stock.

The wild thing about it is this: while it's obviously true that Elon's fooling around with Twitter is detrimental, it's also apparent that he was a mostly a figurehead at SpaceX and Tesla who didn't do anything particularly executive beyond recreational nanomanagement, shouting and firing. If anything, his pants-down performance at Twitter forces attention to the paradox at hand: Elon running Twitter wrecks his reputation and investor confidence in his other companies, but Elon "focusing" on his other companies will just make things worse for them.