No single individual has the ability to sway the market with a simple tweet, meme or like. Heck, if Elon Musk, the world’s richest person sneezed, five million of his social media followers might go buy Kleenex stock if they could.
On Friday, Bitcoin’s value jumped more than 20% to $38,566 after Musk changes his personal Twitter bio to #bitcoin. That led many to assume that Musk had bought more cryptocurrency.
Musks’ sway of the market knows no boundaries. On Thursday, Musk said on Twitter that a new model of Tesla’s Model S Plaid car would allow passengers to play the Cyberpunk 2077 computer game. That tweet prompted shares in the maker of the game, CD Projekt, to soar more than 12%.
On Tuesday, Musk played a part in fueling the frenzy with the GameStop shares when he tweeted one word; “Gamestonk!!” His tweet helped the value of GameStop rise to $10 billion plus.
Musk also sent out a tweet where he said “I kinda love Easy,” and that company’s stock price soared 9% immediately.
Musk’s influence and power is not being overlooked by regulators, the SEC, and others who think this is ultimately not a great thing for the market. Musk truly has the ability to make a fortune with one tweet. Dan Lane, an analyst for Freetrade told CNBC “There’s an odd irony to Elon Musk’s ability to move the market, while attacking what he sees as unnatural market forces in short-selling. It might be that this is finally the time to have a discussion on the legitimacy of the practice.”
There never has been an influence as powerful of Musk, since he is the richest person in the world, he’s active on social media, and he has tens of millions of followers. “Regulators don’t just need to catch up, they need to proactively enforce rules and clarify what is acceptable,” Freetrade’s Lane told CNBC. “And that goes for the shorts too. The reality is that the new brand of charismatic leader has a public platform now and isn’t confined to the boardroom. It’s up to regulators how they deal with that but, eventually, the onus will be on them to update the rule book.”
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