Elon Musk on 'dangerous path' with regulators by tweeting about public companies - TastyTrade CEO
Dimitrios Kambouris


TastyTrade founder and CEO Tom Sosnoff said Wednesday that Tesla (TSLA) boss Elon Musk was "walking down a very dangerous path" with regulators by tweeting about public companies. The comments followed a joke Musk posted on Twitter about purchasing Manchester United (NYSE:MANU).
Late Tuesday, the billionaire, who is currently embroiled in a legal battle over his abandoned purchase of Twitter (TWTR), tweeted: "Also, Iâm buying Manchester United ur welcome."
Later, Musk clarified that he was joking about the potential purchase, saying "this is a long-running joke on Twitter. Iâm not buying any sports teams." He added: "Although, if it were any team, it would be Man U. They were my fav team as a kid."
MANU rose in response to the Musk comments. The stock showed a gain of nearly 5% in Wednesday's premarket action.
Sosnoff argued that Musk could provoke regulators by making such offhand tweets about publicly traded companies, potentially sparking accusations of stock manipulation. He also noted that the billionaire has a history of such comments, which might make him feel untouchable.
"So far, he's had a bit of Teflon to him and nothing has stuck with respect to the regulators. But if the rest of us did something like that, it would be pretty ugly," he said.
The TastyTrade CEO added his own theory on Musk's tweet: "All I can think of is he really didn't know [Manchester United] was publicly traded."

For more on MANU's longer-term prospects, read a deep dive by Seeking Alpha contributor TEL Investment Research, who says the sports franchise "could be back in the game."