This shows the power of Twitter. Or just the power of a billionaire on Twitter. At around 2:20 p.m. ET, legendary investor Carl Icahn tweeted that he has a huge stake in Apple and then the stock jumped!
Apple’s shares, which had been trading at $475.77 went vertical, gaining nearly $9 in less than 3 minutes. By 3:35 p.m. they had touched $494.66.
This is the first tweet:
We currently have a large position in APPLE. We believe the company to be extremely undervalued. Spoke to Tim Cook today. More to come.
— Carl Icahn (@Carl_C_Icahn) August 13, 2013
That was followed four minutes later with this tweet:
Had a nice conversation with Tim Cook today. Discussed my opinion that a larger buyback should be done now. We plan to speak again shortly.
— Carl Icahn (@Carl_C_Icahn) August 13, 2013
How many shares Icahn purchased, and what he plans to do with them — besides watch their price rise just because he tweeted about them — all remains for now a mystery.
Carl Icahn holds a 16% stake in Apple’s Siri partner Nuance Communications. He also acquired a 10% stake in Netflix and has previously taken stakes and pushed for changes at Motorola and Yahoo. [Read Wikipedia for more]
What’s your comment? Is Icahn simply looking to increase his shareholder value or initiate a coup against Tim Cook and the Apple leadership? May be! His Twitter bio line describes:
“Some people get rich studying artificial intelligence. Me, I make money studying natural stupidity”.