To The Moon

Musk Says He Was Joking About Buying Manchester United. But Tesla Investors Still Have to Care

Elon Musk tweeted Tuesday evening that he was buying the iconic British football club $Manchester United(MANU.US)$. He later said he was joking. But like it or not, the tweet is another thing for Tesla investors to worry about.

For starters, " Tesla is Elon Musk" as Roth Capital analyst Craig Irwin put it to Barron's back in April when discussing any potential impact on $Tesla(TSLA.US)$ stock arising from Musk's potential purchase of $Twitter(TWTR.US)$. Anything that affects Musk affects Tesla and Tesla stock.

It's tough, after all, to imagine another person running Tesla. The issue came up at Tesla's annual shareholders meeting in August when Future Fund Active ETF cofounder Gary Black asked Musk about management succession in light of his Twitter bid. "I intend to stay with Tesla as long as I can be useful," answered Musk.

Still, if Musk ends up being forced to buy Twitter by the courts -- Twitter is suing to close the deal on its original terms -- he would run or own Tesla, SpaceX, The Boring Company, Neuralink and Twitter.

He won't be buying Manchester United. Just after midnight Eastern time, Musk wrote on Twitter: "No, this is a long-running joke on Twitter. I'm not buying any sports teams."

But it's still a lot. These things can steal some of Musk's time or create distractions that can become investor-level events.

There also is the obvious issue that Manchester United is a publicly traded company. If that stock moves it will matter to regulators. Musk, after all, has more than 100 million Twitter followers. His Manchester United tweet had generated more than 25,000 comments about three hours after it was posted. The market's collective eyes will be trained on Manchester United stock Wednesday, as well as Musk's Twitter account looking for further clarification.

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