Elon Musk Embraces His Inner Activist (Investor)

It has been two days since Elon Musk announced a 9.2% position in Twitter and became the largest single shareholder second-largest shareholder after Vanguard announced they are in the one-ups-manship business with a 10.3% stake (Updated 4/8).

Since then we continue deeper down the rabbit hole…yesterday Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal announced Musk will be joining the board which is a surprise after Musk said he wasn’t interested in that. This appears to be a preemptive defense of Musk trying to make a takeover attempt as the seat comes with the stipulation that he cannot own more than 14.9% of the company as an individual or part of a group.

After digesting the news and speculation around Musk and Twitter for the last couple of days, there is clearly a lot going on in front of and behind the scenes. The cynical part of me generally thought Musk was simply graduating from Dogecoin to real companies and pumping a stock for short term gains given the obvious following he has. I also never expected hiim to have any interest in joining the board of a company. Sitting on a board doesn’t have the action-oriented vibe that Musk seems to love. He also doesn’t play well with others. I can’t imagine the Twitter leadership are happy about being backed into a corner.

This turn of events seems to point to the fact that Musk is very serious about improving Twitter and throwing his weight behind structural changes within. When Musk puts his mind to it, he is a force. A force for good? Evil? Mischief? Who knows.

At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if this gets a lot weirder.

Here are my predictions:

1. Musk puts all his chips in for an Edit Button and exits immediately once he gets it

2. Musk strikes a deal with Twitter to make Teslas the only approved device for sending Tweets

3. Musk makes his Twitter account a mandatory follow by all users

Nothing we can do but grab the popcorn and take a seat for the show.