According to the New York Times, Signal downloaded 1.3 million a day, which is a considerable increase compared to 50,000 a day before Musk's tweet. During the crisis, Musk tweeted:Īfter the tweet, everyone rushed into Signal, and downloads soared. WhatsApp, the well-known messaging platform owned by Facebook (NASDAQ: FB ), changed its privacy policy in most countries other than the EU, and some users panicked over their data privacy started looking for alternatives.

However, these incidents are valuable for reminding ourselves of the cataclysmic results of investing/trading without enough knowledge about companies. There was probably no one that bought Signal Advance thinking it is the Signal application's owner. I am aware that Seeking Alpha reader's financial literacy is way higher than the market average. Then it quickly plunged as markets realized the mistake, yet stock closed Friday 17% up, trading 3,000% above pre tweet levels due to speculative trading and low free float. Afterward, Signal Advance soared 11,000%, hitting $38.70 per share. Signal Advance was a penny stock until markets confused the company with the messaging application Elon Musk suggested on Twitter (NYSE: TWTR ). Just a couple of months ago, there was a similar incident with Zoom. These are all due to the lack of financial literacy of novice traders that flooded the markets. These incidents started happening more often as new and young investors got into financial markets thanks to easy trading applications like Robinhood. It was another name similarity confusion that created speculative trading.

When I saw Signal Advance (OTCPK: OTCPK:SIGL) on SA's undercovered stocks list, I quickly remembered what happened last week after Elon Musk's tweet.

Signal messenger app stock