It is a case of mixed signals.
Confused traders sent a price of shares of a dark medical device company more than 400 percent in a day after Elon Musk urged them to use a messaging app of the same name.
The strange rally began after the billionaire head of Tesla he told his 42 million Twitter followers a “Use Signal” Thursday apparently refers to the mobile app that allows users to exchange encrypted messages.
But investors bought shares of Signal Advance Inc., a small Texas-based team that makes devices to detect various health problems.
The company’s shares, traded at the counter, rose to $ 3.76 on the day of Musk’s tweet from 60 cents the day before. Shares nearly doubled to $ 7.19 on Friday and then shot up 438 percent to $ 38.70 on Monday despite news of the apparent confusion.
Signal Advance did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday morning. But CEO Chris Hymel told Bloomberg News that the company “strongly recommends[s] people do their due diligence and always invest carefully. “
Investors who want to buy shares in the Signal app are unlucky: it’s owned by the Signal Foundation, a three-year nonprofit.
The app has experienced its own boom in recent days since rival WhatsApp released an update to its privacy policy that allows it to share user data with Facebook, its parent company.
Some 810,000 users worldwide installed Signal on Sunday, almost 18 times the number seen on January 6, the day of WhatsApp’s privacy change, according to data from research firm AppTopia.
Signal warned investors that it “has absolutely nothing to do” with Signal Advance shares when the latter company’s share price exploded.
“It’s understandable that people want to invest in Signal’s record growth, but it’s not us,” the app states he said on Twitter. “We are independent 501c3s and our only investment is your privacy.”
With publishing cables