Elon Musk recently made his debut as a host for Saturday Night Live (SNL) and his performance had an impact on the cryptocurrency market. Dogecoin was trading at almost 70 cents prior to Musk’s appearance on SNL. During the show, Musk poked fun at dogecoin calling it a “hustle”, causing the cryptocurrency to plunge to approximately 44 cents on Monday. Last week, Musk tweeted out asking if Tesla should accept dogecoin, causing the currency to increase to over 50 cents. https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/11/investing/dogecoin-price-elon-musk-snl/index.html Clearly, someone is listening to Elon Musk? Who is that?
Spectrem Group recently conducted research with investors with $100,000 to $25 million of net worth and asked who they listened to for investment advice (other than their financial advisor). While 71 percent of investors indicated that they didn’t listen to anyone specifically for investment advice, 14 percent of investor indicated they followed Warren Buffett. The second most identified investment commentator was Jim Cramer. Only 3 percent of the investors indicated they listened to Elon Musk regarding investments. But answers varied significantly based upon age. Sixteen percent of Millennial investors indicated that they listened to Elon Musk and 30 percent of Millennials indicated they followed Warren Buffett’s advice. In comparison to older generations, Millennials were much more likely to follow the advice of commentators than older generations.
It’s important to note that Millennials are also the type of investors most likely to invest in cryptocurrencies. When investors in general were asked about their interest level in investing in cryptocurrencies, 68 percent of overall investors were not at all interested and 15 percent were not very interested. Only 5 percent of total investors indicated they were interested in investing in cryptocurrencies. But these findings varied dramatically by age level. Thirty-eight percent of Millennials indicated they were interested in investing in cryptocurrencies and 3 percent were very interested in cryptocurrency investment.
Thus while Elon Musk’s appearance on SNL may be considered a laughing matter, his impact on dogecoin and maybe even other investments, has a punch ……especially for younger investors.