- One beneficiary of the 2021
crypto boom is furniture chainEthan Allen , which shares an identical ticker symbol withether . - The furniture retailer has seen its stock climb 51% year-to-date while ether has more than quadrupled.
- Most of the online message forums for Ethan Allen are riddled with messages about ether.
- $4.
Shares of $4 have surged more than 50% year-to-date and are up nearly 200% over the past year, potentially due in part to trader confusion over the ticker symbol it shares with cryptocurrency
Ether, which works on the
The StockTwits investment forum $4 is riddled with messages about the cryptocurrency rather than the furniture seller. Daily message volume on StockTwits' Ethan Allen page has surged 300% since the start of May, which coincides with a parabolic surge in ether's price.
"We've definitely seen a massive increase on a percentage basis in mistaken activity on the Ethan Allen stream," StockTwits CEO Rishi Khanna told $4
That's not to say Ethan Allen is up solely due to potential ticker confusion with ether. The furniture retailer has seen a boom in business amid the pandemic as demand for homes surged to records. Year-over-year revenue growth of 18% in the first quarter of 2021, combined with a special dividend announcement of $0.75, helped propel shares higher in late April.
This isn't the first time investors have mistaken a ticker symbol or company name with another company that was in the news, leading to a massive price increase as retail investors created buying pressure. In January, shares of $4 after $4 CEO Elon Musk recommended a similarly named privacy app that was not publicly traded.
And in February, tweets about audio-app Clubhouse from Musk spurred $4 a microcap stock unrelated to the popular audio-chat application.
If anything, the trader confusion over ticker symbols and company names should serve as a warning to new investors that are eager to put money to work: slow down and perform the proper due diligence before investing in individual stocks.
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