7 tweets which wiped $40 billion off the stock market.

Twitter celebrities vs the stock market.

According to the old adage; “The pen is mightier than the sword”.

While certainly not the first to demonstrate this, Donald Trump is certainly the most recent example, with his 140 character barbs having a noticeable effect on the stock market.

So, in ascending order, we’ve compiled a list of the most financially “detrimental” tweets posted by celebrities / politicians over the last few years i.e. the tweets which wiped $ millions / billions.

Spoiler: the man with the most powerful enter key in the world / stock market.

7. Donald Trump vs Nordstrom

Result: -$86m

Feeling like the department store chain had attacked his daughter by deciding to no longer carry Ivanka Trump’s brand, Trump tweeted angrily at the “unfair” treatment his daughter had faced. Once the enter key had been pressed, $86m was quickly wiped off Nordstrom market cap.

Trump vs Nordstrom

The flash crash — notice the volume

It didn’t last long however, the stock actually ended up 4% by the end of trading.

6. Elon Musk vs Samsung

Result: -$580m

Rumours of Samsung partnering with Tesla on their Model 3 cells were nullified when Elon Musk posted the following tweet, wiping $580 million off Samsung’s market cap in the process:

Elon Musk vs Samsung

In the moments after the tweet was posted, $800 million was added to Panasonic’s market cap.

5. Jeremy Jordan vs Chipotle

Result: -$750m

Not quite a tweet but in November 2017 Jeremy Jordan (actor and singer) posted an instagram story alleging that a meal he ate at the fast-food chain, Chipotle, sent him to the hospital.

“I, as you can see, am in the hospital and I have fluids in my arm because the food did not agree with me and I almost died.”

After the Instagram story was posted, the company’s stock fell by almost 5.9%, ouch.

4. Donald Trump vs Toyota Motor Corp

Result: -$1.2B

When Toyota announced they were going to build a new plant in Mexico to build cars for the U.S. market, Trump was not shy in making his feelings known, threatening the Japanese company with a “big border tax”:

This public threat to Toyota by the new president was enough to wipe $1.2b off its market cap , within 5 minutes — efficient at least.

3. Kylie Jenner vs Snapchat

Result: -$1.3B

If you have 25.5M followers, you should probably be careful what you tweet -something Kylie Jenner quickly found out. On the 21st of February 2018, Kylie posted a negative review of Snapchat’s after release of its new interface, quickly wiping $1.3B off it’s market cap — oops.

Apparently, posting a lukewarm review of an app in 2018 can quickly shift $1.3 billion — billion.

Snapchat’s share price shortly after Kylie’s tweet

2. Donald Trump vs Lockheed Martin

Result: -$5.8B

Donald Trump has been a financial wrecking ball in recent year — I guess being a sensationalist, and US president, helps. During the past few years, he has wiped billions of dollars off of public stocks. Coming in at #2 of the most financial damaging tweets of all time:

Oops, sorry not sorry.

This tweet wiped 5% (or $4.6B) off of Lockheed Martin’s market cap within 13 minutes. As if $4.6b wasn’t enough, 10 days later Trump took another swipe at Lockheed Martin, wiping $1.2b off of Lockheed’s market cap.

Posts like this would become a regular fixture on his Twitter page…

…so much so that users began developing automated trading bots which reacted to his tweets

1. Donald Trump vs Amazon

Result: -$30.4B

All the tweets above, however, do not compare with the financial tirade inflicted by Donald Trump on Amazon — a most hated enemy of the current US president.

In April 2017, Citigroup compiled research which calculated that “the US Postal service would lose~$1.46 for every Amazon package posted through the Postal Service”. Almost 1 year later, Donald Trump broadcast this analysis to his 50M+ followers, causing Amazon’s share price to fall by~3.9%, or $30.4B.