Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors, unveiled on October 9, 2014 a new four-wheel drive version of the Model S car in Hawthorne, California.
Lucy Nicholson | Reuters
Tesla CEO Elon Musk appeared to be behind the epic boom of GameStop on Tuesday, tweeting a link to the Reddit board that largely underscored the stock.
Shares of GameStop, which jumped 92.7% on Tuesday, rose more than 60% after trading hours after Musk’s tweet, related to the “wallstreetbets” Reddit chat room with more than 2 million subscribers. The Tesla CEO tweeted “Gamestonk !!”
The stock rose earlier in the day after Chamath Palihapitiya of Social Capital said in a tweet that he had bought GameStop call options, and the bet that the stock would be higher.
Musk’s calls to certain companies have previously had an impact on share prices. Earlier Tuesday, he tweeted about a hand-knitted wool hat he bought for his dog on Etsy. This increased the company’s shares to 8% in trading on the market, although it eventually closed 2.1%.
The chief executive had problems with the SEC because he tweeted about Tesla’s share. In August 2018, he said he wanted to take Tesla privately at $ 420 per share and that he had secured the financing for it. Musk and Tesla each had to pay a $ 20 million fine to the SEC to settle the case, and Musk has meanwhile agreed to submit his public statements on Tesla’s finances and other topics to his legal adviser. He reportedly tweeted last year that Tesla’s share was ‘too high’, and a week later the shares were even higher.
– Lora Kolodny contributed to this report.
Subscribe to CNBC on YouTube.