By Danilo Masoni
(Reuters) – When Elon Musk says something, something moves somewhere on a market. Just not always what you might expect.
Shares in Clubhouse Media Group jumped 117% at one point on Monday after the billionaire Tesla CEO tweeted on Sunday he would go live on the similarly named social media audio app.
The privately owned Clubhouse app in fact has nothing to do with Clubhouse Media, a little-known Chinese firm formerly called Tongji Healthcare Group which changed its name two weeks ago.
“Somebody didn’t realise that Clubhouse and Clubhouse Media Group are two different companies,” said Angelo Meda, head of equities at Banor SIM in Milan.
As some realised the misunderstanding, shares in Clubhouse Media pulled back from a record peak, and the slide looked set to continue on Tuesday with shares down 23% in early deals.
Clubhouse Media, which defines itself as influencer-based marketing and media firm, issued a statement on Tuesday in which it touched on its expansion projects but made no mention of Musk and his tweet.
His ability to lift an asset’s profile, however inadvertently, has helped earn him the nickname “Papa Musk” in the Reddit forum “WallStreetBets”, which came to prominence during the GameStop buying spree led by small investors against the hedge fund establishment.
U.S. healthcare firm Signal Advance soared to $70 from 70 cents in under a week when it was mistaken for an unlisted texting app, also called Signal, that Musk had tweeted about last month, saying “use Signal”. Now Signal Advance shares are worth $4.50 each.
On Friday a “#bitcoin” tag his Twitter profile page led to a 14% jump in the cryptocurrency.
On Tuesday, Musk said he was taking another break from Twitter.
(Reporting by Danilo Masoni in Milan; Editing by Alison Williams)
