Elon Musk seems to be taking a renewed interest in Twitter – not just in tweeting, but in actually gathering more of a financial stake, personally, in the short-form social media outlet.
Notwithstanding Musk’s criticism of Twitter over previous months, it seems that the market mogul and serial entrepreneur is acquiring a new 9.2% stake in TWTR, to a total of 23.5 million shares worth $2.9 billion.
Whatever Musk may say about his opinion on Twitter, he uses it quite a bit. With an estimated 80 million followers, there’s a lot of attention on Musk’s tweets, which recently seem to range toward the philosophic.
“I am inspired by curiosity,” Musk wrote April 3. “That is what drives me. So let us expand the scope & scale of consciousness so that we may aspire to understand the Universe.”
And also…
“Peace. Peace? I hate the word. Those who do care about peace (myself aspirationally included) don’t need to hear it. And those who don’t care about peace? Well …”
So much for concrete market pronouncements! In any case, his involvement in Twitter equity now dwarfs former twitter head Jack Dorsey’s stake estimated at 2.25% of outstanding shares.
In response to the news, Twitter stock rose around 23% from a bottom of just over $30 per share in January and March.
Like many other publicly traded stocks, TWTR has a long way to go to get back up to fall 2020 numbers. Bulls yearn for the halcyon days of last July when a Twitter share was worth something like $70.
Meanwhile, news that Musk sold $16.4 billion of his Tesla holdings has led that stock to range down almost 1% so far today.
Traders often keep an eye on what Musk is saying in the general context of the technology sector, so factor that into your portfolio.