Elon Musk Has Completely Eliminated The Possibility Of A Margin Call On His Tesla Stake, Yet The “Tesla Takedown” Protesters Continue To Try To Hammer The Stock

Tesla Takedown - a grassroots movement that aims to bankrupt Elon Musk by hammering Tesla's share price, intending to induce a margin call on the mega-billionaire's X-related debt - organized massive protests across the globe at Tesla dealerships on Sunday. Yet, Elon Musk has very shrewdly eliminated any possibility of a margin call, which speaks volumes as to the futility of the movement's end goals.

Even before Friday's chess move by Elon Musk, some remained unconvinced as to the utility of Tesla Takedown's actions, pointing to ordinary investors' bleeding 401Ks as emblematic of an unacceptable form of collateral damage. Also, given Musk's sizable stake in SpaceX, personal bankruptcy for the mega-billionaire remained an extreme tail-end possibility even before the measures announced on Friday.

Yet, inexplicably, the Tesla Takedown movement continues to gain momentum across the globe, as highlighted by the impressive array of Tesla dealerships that were subjected to protests this Sunday.

Before this Friday, the movement had a discernible target: to reduce Tesla's share price to the ~$114 price level, at which point Musk's $12.5 billion margin debt - incurred during X's acquisition process - became callable.

However, as we noted on Friday, Elon Musk's xAI has formally acquired X in an all-stock deal that values the AI-focused enterprise at $80 billion and the social media platform at $33 billion inclusive of ~$12 billion in liabilities (Musk's margin loans).

Basically, Elon Musk has offloaded his X-related margin debt on xAI, which itself is a private entity and not subject to the vagaries of the market. In so doing, the mega-billionaire has precluded the possibility of selling billions of dollars worth of Tesla shares to satisfy any margin call that might have been triggered as a result of the stock's continuing precipitous fall.

Of course, while the biggest tail-end risk for Tesla investors has evaporated, the situation remains precarious for the EV giant by any definition of the word. Consider the fact that a whopping 94 percent of Germans recently surveyed expressed negative views on Tesla. For the benefit of those who might not be aware, Musk alienated a large segment of the German population when he wholeheartedly supported the far-right AfD party in recent elections. Meanwhile, in the US, Elon Musk's DOGE-related activities continue to drive a political wedge into Tesla's brand image.

In the near-term, Tesla's upcoming quarterly delivery figures could prove to be a sizable blow, hence the company's all-out efforts to try to drive sales by any measure possible.

In this epic maelstrom, Tesla does have one thing going for it: Trump's 25 percent tariffs on imported cars and auto parts. After all, Teslas are currently some of the most innately American cars on the market, and remain unaffected by Trump's tariffs.