Elon Musk Tweets Are Affecting Stocks Like Zomedica—Should You Take the Bait?

For the better part of the 21st century, Elon Musk has been a source of information into up-and-coming advances in tech, space exploration, and digital currency. Musk has found himself wielding tremendous power over financial markets with his Twitter handle as his primary tool for influence. Most notably, Gamestop and Dogecoin have seen the most attention. However, smaller companies like Zomedica have also gotten a boost from Elon Musk and others.

In a financial landscape that makes it easier for everyday investors to get into stock trading and options investing, this influence can have drastic effects. Seemingly under the radar, stocks are sent soaring. Retail investors with little more than a month of experience are hauling in huge gains—all due to the momentum created by a single tweet.

As the found and CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, Elon Musk has established himself as a guru for all things visionary. As some sort of wizard who can predict where the future is heading, he has tweeted his way into affecting stocks. And people are listening to what he has to say.

There’s no shortage of headlines left in Elon Musk’s Twitter wake of him sending stocks soaring—or plunging. Some have landed him in hot water with regulators. Others have even had a detriment to his own company, Tesla.

Let’s take a look at some of Elon Musk’s more recent highlights.

In August 2018, Elon Musk tweeted that has was considering taking Tesla private at $420 per share and that he had the funding to do so.

The SEC claimed that Musk issued “false and misleading” statements and failed to notify regulators of material company events properly.

As a result, both Musk and Tesla were each fined $20 million, and Musk was ordered to recuse himself as chairman of the board.

In January, Elon Musk tweeted support of the encrypted messaging service Signal. This created an investing frenzy in the non-profit.

The only problem was that a vast majority of investors put money into Singal Advance, a technology company that manufactures signal relay equipment.

This led to Signal Advance seeing a tremendous spike in their stock price from $7.19 to $38.70.

The Gamestop saga was a mess no one could look away from. Elon Musk had a hand in the chaos when he sent a January 26 tweet simply saying, “Gamestonk!!”

Two days after Musk’s ‘gamestonk’ tweet, he tweeted that the new Tesla Model S Plaid would allow passengers to play Polish video game maker CD Projekt’s game Cyberpunk 2077.

As a result, investors took to purchasing CD Projekt options, causing the stock to rise 12 percent in one day.

In a bizarre twist in the whole influential stock-picking game, the pet healthcare company Zomedica has seen its stock boosted by the messages of another cultural influence.

In February, ‘Tiger King’ star Carole Baskin sent out a video in which she said Zomedica’s new product Truforma is expected to be a “big seller.” She added how she is “‘invested’ in finding out more” about the product.

It was later revealed that Baskin was paid $299 via Cameo to create the short video.

Nonetheless, that didn’t stop investors from helping the stock rise nearly 200 percent in less than a week.

Heeding the advice, albeit from one of the brightest minds in innovation, on stock trading may not be the soundest approach. Sure, one could score big if the odds are just right.

However, speculative investing hardly ever proves to be a winning strategy long term.