Tesla CEO Elon Musk is the richest person on the planet, but he’s apparently still happy to shop on handmade craft site Etsy (ETSY). And in a sign of just how much influence Musk has on social media, shares of Etsy (ETSY) soared nearly 10% in premarket trading Tuesday just because he said he’s a fan.
“I kinda love Etsy,” Musk tweeted, adding in a follow up tweet that he bought a wool Marvin the Martian helmet (the alien from the Bugs Bunny cartoons) for his dog – fitting as Musk, of course, wants to one day go to Mars with his other company, SpaceX.
The stock pulled back later in the day though. It opened 8% higher but was down 2% by afternoon.
Still, given there was no other company news from Etsy Tuesday morning, it seems safe to say that Musk’s tweet was the primary catalyst for the stock’s premarket surge.
![Etsy website on a laptop computer](https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/200722122710-etsy-website-stock.jpg?q=w_1110,c_fill)
That, of course, is ridiculous. It’s also yet another example of the increasingly short-term nature of the stock market, one where algorithms can drive prices and individual investors using services like Robinhood are eager to make a quick buck.
Recently, shares of companies that many professional investors are shorting – because they expect the stocks to go down since the companies are struggling or overvalued – are instead surging thanks to support from traders on a popular Reddit board. GameStop (GME), BlackBerry (BB), Bed Bath & Beyond (BBBY), Macy’s (M) and AMC (AMC) are just a few examples.
But Etsy is nothing like these companies in that it’s thriving, in part due to strong demand for masks during the Covid-19 pandemic. Analysts are forecasting that Etsy’s sales nearly doubled in 2020 and that earnings per share soared more than 175%.
Musk’s tweet put a bigger spotlight on Etsy, though, and it isn’t the first time he’s sparked a big move in an asset that isn’t Tesla. The price of digital currency dogecoin popped late last month when he touted it on Twitter.
Still, it’s a bit ironic that Etsy is benefiting from Musk’s endorsement. Although Tesla was finally added to the S&P 500 in December, many on Wall Street were surprised when Tesla was snubbed for the index in September. The company that was added back then instead of Tesla? Etsy.