Tesla shares tumble AGAIN: Elon Musk's company is down 4.5% sending it out of the $1 trillion market cap for the second time after his recent stock sales of a combined $6.9 billion

• Tesla's shares tumbled down by roughly 4.5% around midday on Monday, bringing shares down by a cumulative 15% since last week
• The company's market value drop below $1 trillion for the second time in four sessions
• Investors are reacting to CEO Elon Musk's recent stock sales of a combined $6.9 billion and a recent tweet in which he teased selling more
• Musk made the tweet in response to a post from Democratic-socialist Bernie Sanders saying that the country's wealthiest should 'pay their fair share'
• This came after Musk promised top sell 25billion, or 10% of his Tesla stock, in response to a Twitter poll 

Tesla's shares tumbled roughly 4.5% around midday on Monday which saw the electric-car maker's market value drop below $1 trillion for the second time in four sessions as investors respond to CEO Elon Musk's recent stock sales of a combined $6.9 billion.

The drop in price Monday came the day after Musk teased the idea of selling more stock in a Twitter gripe with Democratic-socialist Senator Bernie Sanders, responding to a Sanders tweet calling on the nation's 'extremely wealthy' to pay their 'fair share' of taxes. Shares have been brought down by a cumulative 15% since last week.

Musk replied with the sardonic comment, 'I keep forgetting that you're still alive,' before adding, Want me to sell more stock, Bernie? Just say the word …'

Musk referred to his sale of over $5billion of his Tesla stake last week, which he did after launching a Twitter poll asking his 63.8 million followers whether he should sell 10% in stock – or $25billion – to fund President Joe Biden's proposed billionaire tax.

Musk sold 6.36 million Tesla shares last week after just over half of those polled on Twitter voted in favour of him selling. To meet his pledge to sell 10% of his holdings, he need to offload about 10 million more shares or $20billion.

Musk's electric vehicle company lost roughly $187 billion in market value over the past week and shares were down by about 4.5% at $986 on Monday morning before slowly climbing back up throughout the afternoon. As of 3pm, they were down by about 1.5% and sat at $1,000.

When shares were below $995.75, the company's market value dipped under the $1 trillion-milestone it hit late last month after receiving its largest order ever from car rental firm Hertz.

'Tesla shares have been sinking post the sale based on a Twitter poll last week. And Musk's Sunday tweet deriding a senior politician may add pressure on the stock in the coming weeks,' said Kunal Sawhney, CEO of equity research firm Kalkine Group.

Sawhney added, 'By offloading shares worth billions of dollars, Elon Musk is likely to accrue a tax bill of around $15 billion.'

Sanders did not respond to Musk's rebukes or offers via Twitter. As the world's richest person, he falls under Sanders' description of 'the extremely wealthy' and boats a net worth of $285 billion, according to Bloomberg's Billionaires Index. 

Musk and Tesla have drawn scrutiny from a number of investors over the billionaire's recent handling of the company stock. Investor Michael Burry, famous for his role in 'The Big Short' investment, reactivated his Twitter account last week to publicize his take on Musk's sales.

Burry, whose Twitter profile is still active though all of his tweets have been deleted, wrote on Sunday, 'Let's face it. @elonmusk borrowed against 88.3 million shares, sold all his mansions, moved to Texas, and is asking @BernieSanders whether he should sell more stock. He doesn't need cash. He just wants to sell $TSLA.'

Burry explained that Musk is not strapped for funds because he sold most of his $100 million real-estate portfolio and slashed his tax bill when he moved to Texas from California last year. Musk also affirmed this by making his Twitter poll about selling stock and telling Sanders that he could sell more stock at the Senator's request.

Burry's argument is that Musk is trying to profit from Tesla's rising stock prices, which - despite dropping in the past week - soared nearly twelvefold since the start of last year, according to Business Insider.

British investor Jeremy Grantham has also sounded alarm on Tesla stock, warning that it is in a bubble and doomed to crash.

'I'm very grateful for Tesla as a dedicated green, that they have pioneered EVs,' Grantham, of the firm Grantham, Mayo & van Otterloo, told Bloomberg on Friday. 'But now in phase two, every great automobile company are all gearing up to go electric.

'And that owes a lot to Tesla, but now in phase two they're going to have to have some serious competition. And to live up to the expectations of the price will be impossible.'

Musk pawned off another $687 million worth of Tesla shares November 11 after offloading $5 billion of his stake in the company in two separate transactions earlier this week, following the CEO's promise to sell $25 billion worth of the stock.

The string of sales came less than a week after Musk's much-publicized Twitter poll where he asked followers if he should sell his $250 billion stake in the electric-car maker to pay for the billionaire tax.

In a November 6 post, Tesla's top shareholder criticized the controversial new tax plan proposed by the president's administration, saying that he does not earn a salary from the company and his only source of income is stocks, and that the only way for him to pay taxes would be to sell some of his stake.

Musk, 50, who founded the car company in 2003, then declared to his 63.1 million followers that he would sell 10% of his shares - which would equate to roughly $25 billion - if they approved the move. 

'Much is made lately of unrealized gains being a means of tax avoidance, so I propose selling 10% of my Tesla stock,' Musk, 50, wrote in the November 6 post.

The exec then implored his 63.1 million followers: 'Do you support this?'

They did - with more than 2 million of the 3.5 million social media users surveyed voting that he should, spurring the CEO's massive sell-off. 

Tesla drew the fury of some customers who had their cars delivered in November to find missing USB ports with holes where the ports are supposed to be. A report from Electrek found that a number of purchasers of the new Tesla Model 3s and Model Ys had missing USB-C ports.

The company has warned some about the missing ports and attributed it to the supply chain crisis. One Tesla owner wrote on Reddit, 'Just got a call from Tesla about my Model Y LR. I am set to take delivery tomorrow, and apparently there are no USB ports installed in the car due to shortage.'

The Tesla owner added: 'I guess I'm looking for reassurance that the car is actually ready to go and wondering if anyone else has taken delivery on an 'incomplete' car like this.' 

Other pressures weighing on Tesla now is the global limited access to chips and cells. One Twitter user named James Stephenson asked Musk Saturday in a tweet about PepsiCo CEO Ramon Laguarta's comments about expecting its first delivery of Tesla Semi trucks in the fourth quarter.

Musk replied by telling Stephenson not to 'read too much into' it, adding, 'As mentioned publicly, Tesla is constrained by chip supply short-term & cell supply long-term. Not possible to produce additional vehicles in volume until both constraints are addressed.' 

Still, Tesla has weathered the pandemic and the global supply-chain crisis better than rivals, posting record revenue for the fifth consecutive quarter.