- Betting markets see rising odds that Elon Musk will leave his role in the Trump administration this year.
- The probability that Musk departs the White House in 2025 spiked as high as 48% amid Tesla’s stock rout this week.
- Investors’ concerns hit a tipping point on Monday, with the stock plummeting 15% in the session.
Online bettors think Elon Musk is now more likely to leave his post in the White House this year following the latest plunge in Tesla shares.
On crypto-based betting site Polymarket, the probability that Musk will leave the administration by the end of the year jumped as high as 48% on Monday, the highest probability bettors have assigned to that scenario since it was first available as a bet on Polymarket in February.
The surge came amid one of the worst-ever trading days for Tesla, with shares dropping 15% on Monday. The stock traded around $228 on Tuesday, clawing back some losses to rise about 6%.
The carmaker, whose sales have struggled in Europe and Asia this year, has seen its stock wipe away nearly half of its value since it peaked in December at around $436 a share.
The stock has also wiped out its postelection gains and is down for the seventh week in a row, meaning it has declined every week since Musk first visited Washington in early January.
On Wall Street, the message is clear: Tesla investors want their CEO back — and markets think it’s more likely Musk will be pressured to put his duties to shareholders in front of his politics.
Musk, who led a chaotic takeover and revamp of Twitter into X in 2022, has long worried Tesla investors for being distracted by his other pursuits. Musk’s presence in Washington hasn’t helped the situation, investors and Tesla analysts say.
“We think shareholders have legitimate concerns about Elon Musk being spread too thin, and it’s become clear he’s now spending more time on DOGE than anything else,” Garrett Nelson, a senior equity analyst at CFRA Research, told Business Insider last week.
In an interview on Fox Business on Monday, the Tesla CEO said he was running his businesses “with great difficulty,” but didn’t indicate he would pivot from his role with DOGE.
“I’m just here trying to make government more efficient, eliminate waste and fraud, and so far we’re making good progress, actually,” he said.