Tesla shares fall after Musk’s Twitter poll on selling stocks

• Tesla CEO Elon Musk asked his Twitter followers if he should sell 10% of his stock

• Musk said he would abide by the results of the poll, whichever way it went

Tesla shares fell more than 4% in early morning trading on Monday after CEO Elon Musk put a poll on Twitter asking his followers if he should sell 10% of his stock in the company.

At 8:19 a.m. ET Monday, shares of the electric car company plunged 4.2% to $1,170, compared to $1,222.09 on Friday.

Musk asked his 62.5 million followers on Saturday in a Twitter poll, "Much is made lately of unrealized gains being a means of tax avoidance, so I propose selling 10% of my Tesla stock. Do you support this?"

More than 3 million people responded to the poll, and 57.9% people voted for “Yes.” Musk said he would abide by the results of the poll, whichever way it went.

Musk's earlier announcement

Musk had earlier said that he is likely to sell a large number of his stocks in the fourth quarter. In September, Musk said at the Code Conference in California that he was planning to sell his stocks soon as his stock options expire at Tesla.

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"I have a bunch of options that are expiring early next year, so ... a huge block of options will sell in Q4 — because I have to or they'll expire," he said.

Other board members at Tesla including Robyn Denholm, Kimbal Musk and Antonio Gracias have also sold huge portion of their stocks at Tesla since the company’s stock surged on the Nasdaq stock exchange.

Tesla share surge

Tesla shares soared as the company posted record third quarter results and car rental company Hertz announced that it was ordering 100,000 Tesla vehicles.

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A week later, though, Musk announced that Tesla has not signed a contract with Hertz yet.

Musk is currently the richest person in the world, leaving Amazon founder Jeff Bezos behind. Musk’s net worth is $338 billion.

Picture Credits: Getty Images