Tesla investors plead with Elon Musk to leave Twitter and refocus on the electric car company in 'a vote of no confidence in Elon'

• Some high profile investors agreed Tesla's stock is down because Musk is distracted with Twitter.
• Musk is trying to get new investment for the platform, and just sold $3.6 billion in Tesla stock.

Tesla investors are getting desperate for Elon Musk to shed his Twitter responsibilities and refocus on the electric car company.

With shares of Tesla down 65% for the year, some Musk fans are getting tired of their hero's expensive and chaotic social-media foray.

Ross Gerber, head of Gerber Kawasaki Wealth and Investment Management, a Tesla shareholder, said during a Twitter Spaces talk on Tuesday that the only reason for the car company's market woes is Musk's involvement with Twitter.

"We all know why Tesla stock is down and it has nothing to do with the company," Gerber said. "The company is doing great. The company has the best environment it could possibly want. It's about to get a bunch of incentives from the government. The factories are ramping up. New products are launching. The only problem is the optics of having the CEO on Twitter every day discussing the problems of Hunter Biden."

Over the past two weeks, Musk has been working closely with newsletter writers Bari Weiss and Matt Taibbi to release what Musk named "The Twitter Files," consisting mainly of company email correspondence between Twitter executives and employees about content moderation decisions. He has also begun banning journalists and critics from the platform, while continuing to drastically cut costs and conduct layoffs.

Another issue is Musk continuing to sell Tesla stock, possibly to keep up with costs related to his new ownership of Twitter, which he officially acquired for $44 billion at the end of October. Musk in April publicly promised he was done selling off his stake in Tesla. Last week, he sold another $3.6 billion.

"Elon selling definitely has killed the stock because of the way he sells," Gary Black, managing partner of The Future Fund investment firm, which has a stake in Tesla, said during the Spaces event on Tuesday. "I called it reckless before. Maybe that's too strong a word."

"It's baffling," Gerber added. Both Gerber and Black suggested that Musk is selling Tesla stock to invest in Twitter, a company that Black noted "makes no money and probably never will."

Just before the Spaces began on Tuesday afternoon, Gerber wrote on Twitter that Tesla's stock reflected the company "having no CEO." Musk first responded with snark, then argued that tech stocks including Tesla are dropping because interest rates on personal savings accounts are increasing, leaving people to choose a guaranteed return at a bank over riskier stock investing.

Black rejected that argument, saying the better comparison to Tesla is the 10-year US Treasury bond yield, which is has dropped sharply since late October. That should make a long-term stock investment like Tesla more intriguing to investors. Instead, the stock keeps sinking, falling another 8% on Tuesday.

Overall, the effect on Tesla's stock and the result of a poll Musk posted on Saturday that ended up telling him he should step down as Twitter's CEO, was a clear statement, according to Gerber.

"What we're getting is a vote of no confidence in Elon," Gerber said.

Gerber is also an investor in Twitter, having participated in the equity financing round earlier this year that preceded Musk's takeover. He said he did receive an email early last week, one that went to all those who previously invested in Musk's Twitter takeover – saying the company was "doing another round" of fundraising, and for investors to get in touch if interested. Although Twitter shared no information on its current financial situation, he added.

"That's weird," Black noted. "The financials are way different now." And, Gerber said, despite responding to the fundraising email, he has received no follow up communication from Musk's team or anyone from Twitter about the new financing round.

Are you a Twitter employee or someone else with insight to share? Contact Kali Hays at khays@insider.com, on secure messaging app Signal at 949-280-0267, or through Twitter DM at @hayskali. Reach out using a non-work device.