Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk unveils a new all-wheel drive version of the Model S car in Hawthorne, California, October 9, 2014.
Lucy Nicholson | Reuters
Tesla CEO Elon Musk appeared to be gathering behind the epic rise of GameStop on Tuesday, sending a link on Twitter to the Reddit board, which largely backed the stock.
GameStop shares, which jumped 92.7% on Tuesday, rose more than 60% in trading hours after Musk’s tweet, which was linked to the Reddit chat room “wallstreetbets” which has over 2 million subscribers. Tesla CEO wrote on Twitter “Gamestonk !!”
Shares rose earlier the next day, after Chamath Palihapitiya of the share capital said in a tweet that he had bought GameStop call options, betting that the shares would increase.
Musk’s calls to certain companies have previously influenced stock prices. Earlier on Tuesday, he wrote on Twitter about a hand-knitted wool hat, which he bought for his dog on Etsy. This caused the company’s shares to grow by up to 8% in premarket trading, although it eventually closed 2.1%.
The CEO was facing problems with the SEC because he posted on Twitter about Tesla shares. In August 2018, he said he wanted to take Tesla private for $ 420 a share and that he had secured funding to do so. Musk and Tesla had to pay the SEC a $ 20 million fine for settling the lawsuit, and since then Musk has agreed to make his public statements about Tesla’s finances and other issues to his attorney. He took to Twitter last year that Tesla’s stock was “too big”, sending even bigger shares a week later.
– Lora Kolodny contributed to this report.
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