Elon Musk cashes in $6.9 billion of Tesla stock, just in case

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Within weeks of the Twitter board's approval of Elon Musk's unsolicited bid to take the company private, the South African-born billionaire came down with a severe case of buyer's remorse. Twitter was not happy, and after Musk decided not to go through with the purchase, the social media company quickly sued him. In advance of the trial, set for October despite Musk's attempts to push it back to 2023, Elon Musk is apparently preparing for the worst-case scenario of being forced to consummate the deal.

With Tesla stock on a rebound, Musk has just sold $6.9 billion worth of shares in his electric car company, a move disclosed in regulatory filings on Tuesday. Musk got an average of $869 for the shares, which is significantly more than the $628 that TSLA shares were trading at in late May. TSLA had hit its 2022 peak of $1,145 on April 4, the day after Musk revealed his purchase of 9.2 percent of Twitter's outstanding shares.

In late April, after announcing his plans to buy Twitter, Musk unloaded $8.5 billion in Tesla stock, saying at the time that there were "no further TSLA sales planned after today."