COLUMN-Elon Musk investor Gerber says he is 'kind of done with X': Ross Kerber

The opinions expressed here are those of the author, a columnist for Reuters. This column is part of the weekly Reuters Sustainable Finance newsletter, which you can sign up for here

By Ross Kerber

Nov 20 (Reuters) - Donald Trump's U.S. presidential election victory seems set to have a wide impact on the businesses of Elon Musk, including his social media platform X.com.

Some Wall Street banks hope the billionaire's close ties with the president-elect will boost X's prospects and help them offload $13 billion of debt that backed Musk's 2022 purchase of what was then Twitter.

Other investors are disillusioned, including Ross Gerber of Gerber Kawasaki Wealth & Investment Management of Santa Monica, California, a backer of Musk's ventures who agreed to be interviewed for this column and told me "I'm kind of done with X".

Gerber's take looks relevant at a time when several news organizations have quit the platform . X seems to be losing users concerned with harmful content, malicious bots, and Musk's support of Trump, said Filippo Menczer, an Indiana University computer science professor. "Many do not want to support a platform that has become so strongly aligned with one political party," Menczer said via e-mail.

An analysis by web designer Digital Silk of data from SimilarWeb found daily visits to the rival social media platform Bluesky rose to 5.7 million on Nov. 16, more than double their level Nov. 1. Daily visits to X were 149.5 million on Nov. 16, up slightly from 147.9 million on Nov. 1.

In theory this should worry investors in X like Fidelity, which has cut its valuation by 79%.

Fidelity declined to comment. But Gerber took my call to describe his souring on X and why he posts far less on the platform.

The following transcript of our conversation is edited for length and clarity. And yes despite our name similarities, we are two different people.

Q: Are you still an owner of X?

A: Yes. I'm kind of done with X. Over the last three or four months I've pretty much realized that most of the people I care about have left and most the information I was getting from Twitter $(X)$ in the past with regard to stocks and breaking information, that was extremely valuable to me, it's gone.

Q: On X you have 367,000 followers, that's a lot of followers.

A: Yeah it's probably one of the most in our industry.

Q: How does that give you an edge?

A: It was really like this community of investors and analysts, #fintwit is what it used to be called. If I tweeted something like 'Netflix is gonna have a massive night,' then I'd have five other like analyst people commenting on it. 'Ross, but what about this?' " You'd have this debate. Now I get nothing.

Q: Do you think it's that they have all left? Or do you think the algorithms have somehow stopped surfacing your questions?

A: They've left. The algorithm certainly is part of it because the algorithm is now rigged to give you the most offensive things you could possibly want. All I get is anti-semitism now and I get Trump.

Q: Are you going to stop Tweeting? (I should have said "posting")

A: I do a few Tweets a week. I think I broke my record last week I was on and this was during the election. I was only on Twitter for 15 minutes total, you know. And I used to be on Twitter an hour a day.

Q: How did your investment in X come about?

A: I feel horrible that I was one of Elon's greatest enablers over the last decade. When he bought Twitter, we owned some Twitter. And also just being Elon supporters, we figured we would reach out and see if we could invest in X because at the time I wanted to have some influence on this process.

Q: Can you say how much you invested?A: No, but it was less than a million dollars. On my books it's zero, it's worthless. (When I asked Gerber about his valuation in a followup email, said he does not know about X's exact financials).

Q: Do you think that Elon Musk made a difference in the election?

A: Yes. Elon won the election for Trump. I don't think Trump would have won the election without Elon.

Q: There are plenty of other investors in X. What would you want them to do at this point? You think of it (X) as this misinformation machine, what should owners do?

A: The people who invest with Elon understand they have no say, right or ability to change anything that's going to happen.

Q; If you are concerned about X's impact on public discourse right now...

A: I'm not. I'm not concerned at all. Nobody's on it. See this is what I'm saying, it's lost its power.

Q: Wait a minute, you just told me X's support won the election for Trump.

A: That's right because when this started years ago, it had this huge audience, and he's whittled this down.

(Reporting by Ross Kerber; Editing by David Gregorio)

((ross.kerber@thomsonreuters.com; (617) 412 0093;))