Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) chief executive officer (CEO) Elon Musk loves to mess with markets.
Whether hosting online polls on whether he should sell TSLA stock, Tweeting Chinese poems in reference to cryptocurrencies, or stating that his company’s share price is too high, Musk’s antics have moved prices up and down and landed him in court on charges from regulators that he is deliberately manipulating markets and causing pain to investors.
However, despite the drama and chaos, Musk continues to actively make his views known on social media and a single photo of his puppy has been enough in recent months to send his more than 60 million Twitter (NASDAQ:TWTR) followers into a frenzy.
With Musk continuing to be active on social media channels, we look at three stocks and cryptocurrencies that he loves to mess with.
Stocks and Cryptos Favored by Elon Musk: Tesla (TSLA)
This may seem counterintuitive, but let’s start with the stock of Elon Musk’s own company Tesla.
At various times, Musk has Tweeted that he’s planning to take the electric vehicle maker private (a move that led to an investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission), stated that Tesla stock is overvalued, and recently commissioned an online poll to see if Tesla shareholders and supporters think he should sell his personal holdings in the company that he founded back in 2003.
All of the aforementioned moves sent TSLA stock sharply lower. The share price has fallen 17% in the past week following Musk’s online poll and subsequent sale of more than $7 billion worth of his Tesla stock.
Why exactly Musk engages in such antics with his company and its stock isn’t always clear. But he clearly loves talking and Tweeting about his own company, and not always in a positive way.
In the case of the recent stock sale, Musk, who likes to claim that he’s “cash poor,” needed to raise funds to pay a hefty tax bill that is coming due and reported to be as much as $15 billion.
Apparently, Musk was planning to sell the stock anyway and decided to carry out the online poll for fun. However, analysts and regulators aren’t always appreciative of Musk’s antics. The Tesla CEO has had to appear in court more than once and promise to stop discussing his company’s stock on social media.
Dogecoin (DOGE)
Musk, who is an enthusiastic supporter of cryptocurrencies, nearly singlehandedly sent the price of Dogecoin to all-time highs this past spring.
Dogecoin is a cryptocurrency that has no utility or purpose and was started by a couple of programmers merely as a joke. It is literally the image of a dog on a coin and nothing more.
Yet Elon Musk was more than happy this spring to egg on the retail investors who set themselves the goal of pushing the value of DOGE above $1 per coin.
Musk Tweeting an image of Dogecoin was enough to send investors into a frenzy and send the price shooting upwards. At one point, he even referred to Dogecoin as the “people’s crypto” and proclaimed himself the “Dogefather.”
The Dogecoin whirlwind culminated with Musk’s appearance in early May on Saturday Night Live, where he referred to his support of the erstwhile cryptocurrency as a “hustle.”
In the end, DOGE reached an all-time high of $0.72 on May 7 and has since come down 67% to now trade at $0.24 per coin. Sadly, Dogecoin never made it above the $1 mark that fans had been pushing for, and Musk has since moved on to pumping up other cryptocurrencies (see below).
The Tesla CEO seems to take the same pleasure as retail investors in pushing up prices of assets that professional traders and Wall Street analysts view as essentially worthless and bet against through short-selling and put calls.
Stocks and Cryptos Favored by Elon Musk: Shiba Inu (SHIB)
The cryptocurrency most recently favored by Elon Musk is Shiba Inu. Like Dogecoin, Shiba Inu is a joke cryptocurrency that is named after a breed of Japanese hunting dog.
Shiba Inu has also been called a “meme coin” and a “pump and dump scheme” by some of the biggest cryptocurrency bulls. Like Dogecoin, SHIB has no real purpose or function. However, this didn’t stop investors from pushing the price of Shiba Inu up more than 240% in one week after Musk Tweeted a photo of his own Shiba Inu puppy.
The price of DOGE also spiked following the puppy photo Tweet in September. More recently, Musk Tweeted an 1,800 year old Chinese poem in an apparent reference to a coming battle between Dogecoin and Shiba Inu.
Shiba Inu is currently worth less than a single penny. It’s currently priced at $0.00004949 of one cent. However, the obscure (and some say dangerous) digital coin’s price has risen more than 1,000% at various times this year, often egged on by Musk on social media.
Most recently, the price of SHIB fell after Musk disclosed his cryptocurrency holdings and Shiba Inu was not among them. Musk said publicly that he currently owns Bitcoin (CCC:BTC-USD), Ethereum (CCC:ETH-USD) and Dogecoin. This revelation was disheartening to advocates of Shiba Inu and the digital coin promptly sold off more than 30% on the news.
Disclosure: On the date of publication, Joel Baglole did not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, subject to the InvestorPlace.com Publishing Guidelines.
Joel Baglole has been a business journalist for 20 years. He spent five years as a staff reporter at The Wall Street Journal, and has also written for The Washington Post and Toronto Star newspapers, as well as financial websites such as The Motley Fool and Investopedia.