Twitter's predicaments become Tesla's problems

tech.hindustantimes.com:

The phrase “Twitter overhang” was inescapable among Elon Musk's biggest fans on the social media platform he started pursuing seven months ago.

Tesla shares fell into a funk after Musk took a stake in Twitter, agreed to buy it and then tried to wiggle out of the deal. Bulls theorized that the stock would recover once the saga was over. Some even celebrated when the deal closed last week by selling merch with the words “Twitter Overhang Lifted” and an arrow pointing to the moon.

So much for that.

Tesla shares didn't react much after Musk clinched the acquisition, then took a whack along with much of the market Wednesday, when Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said the central bank will keep raising interest rates to tame inflation. The stock is now trading below where it was when the Twitter deal closed, and monetary policy may be the least of the carmaker's concerns over the coming months.

It's long been the case that Tesla is on one hand highly dependent on Musk, and on the other hand had to share its chief executive officer with his several other businesses. “Although Mr. Musk spends significant time with Tesla and is highly active in our management, he does not devote his full time and attention to Tesla,” the company says in quarterly filings.

Now that the Technoking is also Chief Twit, he's up to running five enterprises: Tesla, SpaceX, Twitter, Neuralink and The Boring Company. And anyone who thought Musk would draw clear lines between his newest venture and his most valuable one hasn't been paying attention.

Before Musk officially closed his deal, it began to sink in that Twitter's problems had become Tesla's, at least to a degree. Bloomberg was first to report that Musk had asked some of the car