Tesla CEO Elon Musk becomes Twitter’s largest shareholder with 9.2% stake

Tesla CEO Elon Musk becomes Twitter’s largest shareholder with 9.2% stake

indeed the three things that you need to know this morning have more to do with individual companies than they do with the macro level where we're not seeing much direction the futures here this morning first up uh in a big way is elon musk taking a 9.2 stake in twitter that's as of march 14th it's according to a filing that was out this morning and those twitter shares are up 22 on this news um and so this is really boosting obviously twitter shares this morning after what has been a pretty lousy performance for the year to date also i noticed this morning with that 9.2 percent stake in twitter elon musk actually becomes the largest shareholder.

That's according to filings called by bloomberg if you look here because of etfs and index funds vanguard group morgan stanley blackrock or some of the top holders jack dorsey holder number seven with the two and a quarter percent stake arc also stands out on this list with about a two percent stake but obviously if uh all of these numbers are correct then elon is tops by a pretty comfortable margin here it is a passive state use passive stake we should mention as well dan halley who's our tech editor is tracking all of this as well dan put this in context for us here because this felt like in some ways it came out of left field yeah it does seem like it came out of left field and it kind of does and it kind of doesn't uh the thing here is that elon musk obviously prolific twitter user uh basically just uses it as a place to uh initiatives as well as you know grandstand uh and try to be as edgy as possible on the internet uh he had previously uh floated the idea of starting his own social network he also brought up discussions about uh what he says are free speech issues on twitter whether or not it allows free speech and so now he's taking this 9.2 stake and you know you have to imagine that at some point he you know may try to flex his muscle or uh take potentially a larger stake or potentially just you know go ahead for a full-on buy out of twitter uh you know you don't really know at this point what his plans are especially after making this move uh but you know it it's important to point out that the issues that elon musk have with twitter revolving around free speech are exactly what free speech is you know he's talked about how they censor things and twitter is allowed to do that because that's their option they don't have to allow every piece of speech on there that is in effect them using their free speech rights so uh yeah i don't understand what kind of differences he would make unless it would just be you know everything uh thrown out there uh on twitter and nothing ever taken down which i mean good luck running a social network like that you know advertisers are going to flee as fast as they can so it you know i mean it really is an interesting move on his part but i i don't know if it's going to be something where you know he eventually tries to really make moves or you know try to put pressure on the company itself yeah no that's a very important point.

Here it it is hard to imagine elon musk making a full-on buy-out bet uh on twitter but to your point uh he's now the lar one of the largest uh individual shareholders here what type of changes do you think he might push for yeah i mean he may want to get a new ceoin uh obviously we do have a new ceo at twitter jack dorsey uh stepping back from the position uh he's basically gonna just move away from twitter entirely in a few years that's that's his plan uh so you know he could want to install his own ceo he may look and say you know i want these kinds of speech changes or these kinds of uh capabilities he was criticizing the company uh for including nfts at one point uh but you know maybe that's something that uh he would just you know seek to tamp down on while uh they improve the service maybe he won't even do anything about speech at all and he'll just make twitter a better experience you know obviously there's more room for monetization at twitter uh it's been criticized uh forever uh for not being as well monetized as something like facebook uh so you know we'll have to see but as you know you say it's it's a strange move that seems almost out of nowhere but again it's not necessarily just because of his interest in twitter and obviously it's where he's gotten himself in the most trouble uh we have that tweet where he said taking the company uh private for 420 a share we have him uh being sued for calling a person who was trying to save kids trapping a cave a pedo guy so uh his constant attacks on politicians so yeah i mean it really is just it feels out of left field but it's not necessarily given his interest in it dan haley thank you we're going to talk much more about this in just a moment.

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