This is why the long fall of TSLA was such a visibly harrowing time for him. A few back-of-the-envelope calculations with some reasonable assumptions about the loan deals he has (which we lack specific details of, but have long histories of banks making these sorts of deals to draw upon) says that TSLA being at 200 is where trouble can start, with 175 being the point where it’s almost certainly started (and likely been going for while). By 150 he’s in full-on disaster mode for certain, as one margin call after another forces him to dump stock to pay, causing the stock to drop farther and trigger ANOTHER margin call and so on and so forth until TSLA fell into penny stock territory and he had nothing from it.
This is why the long fall of TSLA was such a visibly harrowing time for him. A few back-of-the-envelope calculations with some reasonable assumptions about the loan deals he has (which we lack specific details of, but have long histories of banks making these sorts of deals to draw upon) says that TSLA being at 200 is where trouble can start, with 175 being the point where it’s almost certainly started (and likely been going for while). By 150 he’s in full-on disaster mode for certain, as one margin call after another forces him to dump stock to pay, causing the stock to drop farther and trigger ANOTHER margin call and so on and so forth until TSLA fell into penny stock territory and he had nothing from it.