Musk Leaves Twitter’s Orbit

Elon Musk has the power to send the stock market into a frenzy with just one tweet.

On Tuesday, however, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO said he is “Off Twitter for a while.” 

In just the past week, his posts on the platform have caused quite a stir.

• Jan. 26: Musk tweeted “Gamestonk!!” and helped push GameStop’s stock price as high as $243 in after-hours trading, a 62% surge.
• Jan. 26: Etsy shares rose premarket after Musk tweeted, “I kinda love Etsy.”
• Jan. 27: Musk’s praise for “Cyberpunk 2077,” and announcement that Tesla’s latest model will run the game, bumped up Cyberpunk publisher CD Projekt’s stock by 19% — its biggest jump since June 2015.
• Jan. 29: Musk added “#bitcoin” to his Twitter bio, briefly boosting its price by as much as 20%.

Musk’s social media activity hasn’t always gone over well. In 2018, the SEC sued him for tweeting that he secured funding to take Tesla private.

He went on a Twitter hiatus after the debacle, but returned with restrictions on tweeting about Tesla’s financial information.

“I have to be careful what I say,” Musk said of his social presence during an appearance on audio-chat app Clubhouse over the weekend. “It can affect the market.”