In an online survey conducted last month, about 37% of respondents admitted they had made personal investment decisions based on the tweets of Elon musk at least once. Sixteen percent of them said they’d invested many times based on the tech mogul’s tweets.
The survey by Piplsay was conducted nationwide in the U.S. between Feb. 6 and Feb. 8 and received 30,400 responses from adults. The company stated that it aimed to assess what most Americans think of the Tesla CEO. Musk has been a vocal presence on Twitter, posting his opinions on everything from Dogecoin to GameStop.
According to the survey, nearly half of respondents said they found Musk’s market-moving tweets “quite amusing.” About a quarter said they were uncertain, while 29% said they were not amusing.
Elon Musk is undoubtedly a man of many facets. He’s a tech geek, a clean energy freak, a space exploration enthusiast, a meme lover, a vocal cryptocurrency proponent. He simply can’t keep his fingers off the keyboard, often posting something wacky or cryptic. As a market tipster, he sends stocks and token prices soaring or crashing with just a single tweet.
The tech genius has a long history of “influencing” the market. As recently as last month, Elon Musk sent the price of the cryptocurrency Dogecoin soaring as much as 59% in moments with a single tweet. He just posted a picture based on the movie Lion King which showed him holding up Doge, the meme Shiba Inu dog upon which Dogecoin is based. And then it happened. The digital token rallied 37% in 24 hours to a record high of $0.084945.
One of Musk’s most high-profile interventions in the markets came at the end of January when he waded into the day-trading frenzy that sent GameStop shares soaring and battered hedge funds. On January 26 after markets closed, Musk simply tweeted “Gamestonk!!” with a link to the Reddit forum Wall Street Bets. The next day, GameStop’s shares rocketed as much as 157% and closed 135% higher, with Wall Street Bets members widely discussing Musk’s tweet. The Wall Street Journal reported that one hedge fund that had bet on GameStop decided to get out after Musk’s tweet. His tweets have also drawn the ire of fellow billionaire Bill Gross, who made an ill-timed bet against GameStop in January that caused him to lose as much as $15 million at one point. “Musk is a little devil and he enjoys playing these games,” Gross said, referring to Musk’s tweet about GameStop on January 26.
The recent frenzy of Bitcoin can also be partly attributed to Elon Musk, who sent the price of the digital token soaring more than 15% at the end of January by simply adding the word “#bitcoin” to his Twitter profile. Tesla also bought $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin as part of a new investment policy and seeks to start accepting the digital currency as a form of payment for its products soon. There’s no denying Elon’s part in the bitcoin craziness as witnessed recently.
