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Musk’s “ingratitude” tweet might be the most costly social media post of all time

By the end of the day, the Tesla CEO lost $153 billion from his company’s market cap and $33.9 billion of his personal wealth.

J. Edward Moreno

Unless you were on a social media cleanse yesterday, you probably saw that the world’s wealthiest man and the president of the United States are no longer friends. They made that clear by exchanging barbs that started off with a policy disagreement and ended up very personal.

It appeared the gloves came off when Musk said Trump would not be in office if it weren’t for him.

Such ingratitude, Musk posted on X, his social media site. Of course, the president responded through his own social media site, Truth Social.

By the end of the day, Tesla had lost $153 billion of its market cap and Musk had lost $33.9 billion of his personal wealth, as the company’s ability to continue benefiting from its CEO’s coziness with the government became unknown.

When you stack it up against other well-known posts that destroyed lots of shareholder value, the “ingratitude” post appears to go down as the most costly social media post ever, by far:

In 2022, a fake Twitter account posing as Eli Lilly posted that insulin is free now.” The company lost $15.6 billion in market value.

In 2018, Kylie Jenner posted a modest critique of Snap that led the company to lose $1.3 billion in market value. (At the time, the company had just changed its app layout and it appeared to be unpopular with more people than just the reality TV star.)

On 2017, Trump tweeted that Amazon was hurting tax-paying retailers and costing jobs, causing it to lose as much as $6 billion in market value during intraday trading. It closed $2.1 billion slimmer.

Not included on this list are tweets that destroyed and then quickly recovered market value, of which there are many. I mean, how could we forget this?

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SpaceX gets a wave of bullish ratings from Wall Street analysts

SpaceX received more than a dozen positive analyst calls on Tuesday — including from major Wall Street banks — as they initiate coverage on Elon Musk’s space and AI company.

SpaceX went public on June 12 at a $2.2 trillion valuation, the largest debut in history. While the company hasn’t yet posted a profit, it seems to have convinced Wall Street that it will get there and grow its valuation on the way.

Of the at least 17 analysts that gave a rating on Tuesday, all but one gave it a “buy” or “outperform” rating. MoffettNathanson was "neutral."

The ratings come as SpaceX joined the Nasdaq 100 index, a benchmark tech-heavy basket of companies that underpins millions of portfolios. The inclusion adds built-in demand for the stock from index funds and ETFs.

Still, SpaceX fell more than 5% on Tuesday amid a broader sell-off, and is currently effectively flat from its opening price of $150 a share.

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Nike sinks to lowest level since 2014 after warning of “challenged” sales environment in Q4 report

Did Nike do it?

Investors had a mixed reaction after the global sports apparel company reported its fourth quarter earnings on Tuesday after the bell. Shares initially rose 5% as Nike beat out Wall Street expectations amid a hefty tariff refund bonus. However, the stock then sank to its lowest level since August 2014 in postmarket trading.

Here are the Q4 numbers:

  • Revenue of $11.0 billion (estimate: $10.8 billion).

  • Adjusted earnings per share of $0.20 (estimate: $0.12).

Ahead of this report, Nike warned that results would be flattered by a one-time tariff refund (now estimated at roughly $0.52 per share for the bottom line). That gave the company an extra cushion in snapping its streak of seven quarters of year-over-year profit declines.

Over the past year, the company had been punished by tariffs on imported goods, stagnant consumer spending, and increasing competition from other footwear brands like New Balance, Adidas, and Hoka.

Outgoing CFO Matthew Friend deemed it an “increasingly challenging operating environment, where sell-through remains challenged.”

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