With Tesla CEO Elon Musk telling his followers to use encrypted messaging app Signal, shares of an obscure and unrelated company called Signal Advance surged a massive 1,100 per cent as some people bought that unrelated stock.
The stock surged 527 per cent on Thursday and another 91 per cent on Friday, jumping from 60 cents to $7.19, reports CNBC. The store price of Signal Advance multiplied 12-fold in two days. Signal Advance is so small that it doesn’t report financials with the US SEC, till this happened.
“The company now has a market cap of $660 million, up from $55 million two days ago. Prior to Thursday, the stock had traded under $1 since 2015,” it said.
Encrypted messaging app Signal saw a significant surge in new users signing up for its platform after Musk, the world’s richest person, tweeted to his 41.5 million followers to use Signal and apparently shun WhatsApp.
Signal tweeted after people started investing in a different company with similar name: “Is this what stock analysts mean when they say that the market is giving mixed Signals? It’s understandable that people want to invest in Signal’s record growth, but this isn’t us. We’re an independent 501c3 and our only investment is in your privacy.”
This is not the first time such a thing has happened.
In April 2019, when Zoom Video Communications held its market debut under the ticker symbol ZM, a Chinese company named Zoom Technologies jumped more than 80 per cent in two hours of trading.
“Six years earlier, as investors were waiting for Twitter’s IPO, shares of Tweeter Home Entertainment Group rose more than 1,000 per cent,” the report mentioned.
–IANS