Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) stock’s 2025 price decline hasn’t halted the insider trading activity, with various high-ranking executives and directors offloading more than $110 million worth of shares since January 2.
The latest such trade might also be among the most alarming, as the seller has been a rather infrequent trade — Elon Musk’s brother, Kimbal Musk.
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Kimbal, who is among Tesla Motors’ largest stockholders with the latest, February 10 filing picked up by Finbold’s insider trading tracker revealing he retains 1.46 million shares, executed his single biggest sale since 2021 in early February.
Specifically, he offloaded 75,000 TSLA shares at an average price of $367.87, meaning he raised a total of $27.6 million.
Should investors worry over Kimbal Musk’s massive sale?
Despite the trades appearing suspicious at face value — Kimbal Musk executed three during 2021 and then another three in total by press time on February 24 — there may be little reason to lose sleep over the activity.
Indeed, Elon’s brother has historically been selling without much regard for TSLA shares’ performance. For example, his 2024 sale came weeks before Tesla stock’s latest rally plateau, as it was executed at $250.23. A 47.87% value below the recent highs near $480 and 26.19% below the press time price of $339.
Furthermore, while the 2023 sale, executed at $195.73, came as TSLA was experiencing a significant price drop toward $160, it also came well below the $280 range Tesla would reclaim only three months later.
Finally, despite being vast at over $27 million, the latest trade hasn’t been Kimbal’s biggest — he raised more than $100 million on November 11, 2021 — nor the largest insider move of 2025. On February 3, Robyn Denholm sold $43 million worth of Tesla stock, and on January 6, Kathleen Wilson-Thompson made $41 million by offloading 100,000 shares.
Still, a lack of correlation between Kimbal Musk’s insider activity and Tesla shares’ performance does not necessarily mean stockholders are not facing an even greater downside in 2025.
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Why Tesla investors might consider selling in 2025
Though Elon Musk’s electric vehicle (EV) maker experienced a remarkable rally following Donald Trump’s re-election, headwinds have been accumulating in recent months, while the previous conditions of the so-called ‘EV winter’ have not entirely dissipated.
To begin with. Trump’s decision to end the electric vehicle mandate has removed a powerful financial incentive to purchase Tesla vehicles, while the President’s tariff plan is likely to further increase car costs as supply chains get disrupted.
The price increase could also prove multiplicative, as some parts reportedly cross the border up to eight times before finding themselves on the assembly lines of the American automotive industry.
Recent registration data also indicates Tesla sales have been lagging since the start of 2025, with at least part of the blame falling on Elon Musk’s political activity.
Indeed, the company has been embroiled in a conflict with Swedish union workers through 2024 and, more recently, the billionaire’s endorsement of Germany’s AFD and calls to ‘move past’ Nazi guilt led one Polish minister to call for a boycott.
The backlash has also been global, with more than 150,000 Canadians signing a petition to revoke Musk’s citizenship and Tesla stores and vehicles have become a major vandalization target in places like California.
The 2025 Tesla bull case
Despite the headwinds, Tesla investors might still have a silver lining to hold on to for the second half of 2025.
The EV giant appears set to finally enter the massive Indian market before the end of the year, as the recent meeting between Musk and Prime Minister Modi appears to have been fruitful.
Simultaneously, the world’s wealthiest individual has been making optimistic — arguably even futuristic — promises about Tesla’s artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics developments, even hinting that ‘Optimus’ might become commercially available in 2025.
It remains noteworthy, however, that Elon Musk has a history of broken promises and that most experts took his prediction that humanoid robots could constitute a $10 trillion market and lead to Tesla reaching a valuation of $15 trillion in the relatively near future as rather unserious.
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