🅿️🦜 Twitter: The Newest Meme Stock
Happy Hump Day everyone,
We have another jam-packed newsletter for you! No such thing as a slow news week with Hump Days. The U.S. continues to seize the yachts of Russian oligarchs, UNC blew a 16 point lead in the National Championship against Kansas, the new Starbucks CEO suspended share buybacks, oil was sub-$100 and scientists managed to fully decode a human genome.
Another week, another Hump to make it over. Good thing you have us at Hump Days. 😉
- Humphrey & Rickie
In the Markets
Featured Story
In a classic tale of enemies to lovers, longtime critic of Twitter and the platforms most notorious user: Elon Musk purchased 9.2% of Twitter for $2.64B recently, becoming Twitter’s largest single shareholder. Shortly after Elon Musk filed with the SEC, it was announced that Musk would join Twitter’s board of directors.
Elon then took to his newly owned platform to ask his cult-like following to answer polls on whether they think Twitter stands for free speech or if they want an edit button. The polls each garnered 2M and 4M votes respectively. Quite the soundboard of public opinion if you ask me; getting a gauge of public sentiment with that large of a sample size in such a short amount of time is not an easy task.
Musk’s motives for purchasing Twitter have not been made public yet but one can speculate as to why he would make such a move. Maybe he wants to strong-arm Twitter for less moderation, maybe he wants to move Twitter towards another direction. He could also just be so rich that he doesn’t even care about the money anymore, he just wants the power.
As someone who has embraced Twitter while rejecting platforms like Facebook and Instagram, Elon Musk’s investment in Twitter and his verbal commitment to make ‘significant improvements’ in the coming months might just show how important Twitter is to him and ‘democracy’.
Twitter is how Musk gets his messages out to the public, it’s how he rallies his cult-like following, it’s how he markets his businesses. In the end, this could be Elon Musk’s way of protecting his platform as one of Twitter’s biggest and most influential personalities.
Cannot wait to see what Elon has in store with Twitter. He always seems to have something up his sleeve!
Weekly News Roundup
Elon Musk to Join Twitters Board of Directors, Teases ‘Significant Improvements’ (CNBC)
Elon Musk will join Twitter’s board of directors after taking a 9.2% stake. Musk’s purchase comes after a bout of criticism aimed at the social media company around the topic of free speech. Shares in Twitter are up 30% following Musk’s arrival.
HY: I honestly thought he would be voted in after a year or two, not immediately granted a board seat. We’ll see what changes he makes with Twitter. Given his track record of hyping up stocks, could be a good time to buy Twitter for a medium term time horizon — although Twitter does not monetize heavily.
U.S. to Release 1M Barrels of Oil Per Day to Help Cut Gas Prices (CNBC)
The Biden administration announced on Thursday that the U.S. will release 1M barrels of oil per day from its strategic reserves to help cut gas prices and fight inflation across the country. This release will provide a historic amount of supply to serve as bridge until the end of the year when domestic production ramps up.
RH: Not gonna lie... 1M barrels of oil a day doesn’t sound like a lot for an entire country.
HY: I do see the prices of gas slowly coming down in my area, so I’m hoping oil cheapening and more barrels means that our gas prices will be alleviated sooner rather than later.
Waymo (Google) to Send Driverless Cars Through San Francisco (WSJ)
Waymo LLC, Google’s sister company, is sending fully autonomous vehicles onto the streets of San Francisco, marking its first attempt to send cars without any human control into a major metropolitan area. This comes weeks after General Motors’ Cruise started offering driverless rides to the public in San Francisco.
RH: I didn’t even know that there was such a thing as free driverless rides. This is the future y’all!
HY: Should I go try this and make a video? Let me know!