By David Randall

NEW YORK (Reuters) – If trading in the shares of Amazon, Microsoft (NASDAQ:), Facebook (NASDAQ:) and other billionaire-owned companies is any indication, Tesla (NASDAQ:) co-founder Elon Musk unloading part of his stake in the company may not be bad for the electric carmaker’s shares over the long term.

Musk will still be the single largest shareholder of Tesla with 15.5% of its outstanding shares, having sold Tesla shares worth $5 billion in the past few days. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos holds approximately 14%. Mark Zuckerberg, on the other hand, controls 14%.

Bezos, Zuckerberg and Microsoft’s Bill Gates have all sold billions of dollars worth of stock this year, with little discernible impact on their companies’ share price, analysts and investors said.

Tesla’s stock isn’t easily comparable with these businesses, or Musk to their billionaire founders. Tesla shares are up over 1,400% during the past 2 years. Shares trade at 346 times earnings and have drawn extreme reactions from both institutional and retail investors.

Musk is well-known for being active on Twitter (NYSE.) — where he polled people on selling 10% of his stake. This is at the least as divisive company that he founded. His recent activity raised questions about a potential violation https://www.reuters.com/business/tesla-shares-fall-after-musks-twitter-poll-backs-stake-sale-2021-11-08 of a 2018 settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission requiring him to have material tweets vetted by a lawyer.

Many Wall Street analysts believe that Musk’s possible stock sale will have a significant impact on the market. Tesla shares fell nearly 15% after their peak on Nov. 4, falling in response to the Twitter poll but rebounding more recently. They fell 0.5% during choppy trading Thursday.

Tesla didn’t respond to our request for comment.

“SMART MOVE”

Musk’s decision to sell 10% of his share in the company was sensible considering the rise in shares which have risen more than 50% over the past year, according to Ross Gerber of Gerber Kawasaki, president and longtime shareholder of Tesla.

“Every major tech entrepreneur and bitcoin owner is cashing out huge amounts of capital right now for huge profit so for Musk to take some money off the table is a smart move and he just announced it in a very Muskian way,” Gerber said.

Meanwhile, “Bezos sells $2 billion and nobody blinks,” he added, referring to Bezos’s sale of approximately $2 billion worth of Amazon stock in early November.

Bezos is estimated to have sold Amazon stock worth $8.8 trillion this year. He also sold Amazon stock worth roughly $10 billion last year. These proceeds were used partly for funding Blue Origin Space Tourism Company, which is a space tourism venture.

According to Loop Capital analyst Anthony Chukumba (an analyst), those sales likely have had a negligible impact on Amazon.com’s stock price (NASDAQ:). Amazon’s shares are up 7.8% this year, underperforming the S&P 500’s 23.8% gain as investors have moved into cyclical stocks and rotated out of last year’s strong performers.

“No one really … thinks Bezos has less confidence in the company’s prospects. Amazon is so big and so liquid it doesn’t really move the needle,” he said.

Zuckerberg sold shares through a periodic sale agreement almost every day of this year. Joe Bonner, an analyst from Argus, says that those sales have not had a “discernable effect” on the shares price. This year, shares of the company have risen 20.7%

Analysts believe that Musk’s move to sell some of his share could be compared to Bill Gates who sold over 20 million shares per quarter during a 12-year period to get rid of Microsoft stock.

Microsoft’s share prices rose in spite of the consistent selling. Investors saw this as Gates giving to charity plans and not as an indicator of Gates faith in Microsoft. Dan Ives is an analyst with Wedbush Securities. He has an outperform rating of Tesla shares.

Musk’s sales aside, Tesla investors have plenty to choose from.

Schultze Asset Management head George Schultze stated that Tesla may see a slowdown in its rally due to the high share prices and Tesla’s valuation. This is at a time where automakers, such as General Motors, (NYSE:), are expanding into electric vehicles.

“If you put it all together it’s a sign of potential market top in Tesla stock,” he said.