Four days after Tesla CEO Elon Musk prompted Twitter followers to “use Signal,” a reference to a non-profit organization’s Signal encrypted messaging app, investors pushed the price of Signal Advance, a small component manufacturer whose stock trades on the counter, even higher.
During Monday’s trading session, the stock rose 438% and reached a high of $70.85, up from a price of 60 cents on Jan. 6, each day before Musk’s tweet. The stock saw its highest trading volume since going public in 2014 on Monday; quite 2 million shares changed hands, while on Jan. 4, not one share of the stock was traded. Signal Advance, which reported receiving no revenue in 2015 and 2016, is now worth quite $3 billion.
The buying fever that began soon after Musk’s remark illustrates an occasional issue publicly markets of individuals investing within the wrong companies by mistake.
A similar case played call at 2019 as some people bought shares of Zoom Technologies, whose ticker symbol was ZOOM but wasn’t the fashionable video-calling service Zoom Video Communications, which trades under the symbol ZM. Last year the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission stopped trading of Zoom Technologies, partly due to confusion over its reference to Zoom Video.
Signal Advance’s sole full-time employee, Chris Hymel, didn’t immediately answer an invitation for discuss Monday.
Musk’s online utterances have drawn significant attention for many years. Musk’s popularity hit new heights last week when he became the world’s richest individual and the market capitalization of Tesla surpassed that of Facebook.
Musk said on Twitter on Sunday that he would donate money to help Signal.
