Did Steve Ballmer Buy Twitter Stock? A Mysterious Twitter Account Says So

Editor's note: Around 11:30 a.m. ET, reports emerged confirming Ballmer's 4 percent stake in Twitter.

• Shares of Twitter Inc TWTR jumped higher by 1.25 percent early Friday morning.
• At the same time, the S&P 500 linked ETF, SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust SPY was flat.
• With no corporate news releases, investors and traders focused on an alleged tweet by Steve Ballmer which said he had acquired a 4 percent stake in the company.

Shares of Twitter were trading higher during Friday's pre-market session. Investors and traders may have reacted to an alleged tweet coming from ex-Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's account. Ballmer's verified account (@clippersteveb) posted the following Friday morning:

Follow me at my new twitter account Steven_Ballmer https://t.co/K7mShKISCX

— Steve Ballmer (@clippersteveb) October 16, 2015

There may be reason to believe that the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers had his account hacked. Prior to his Friday morning tweet, the last time he took to Twitter appears to be July 9. Moreover, the tweet referenced Ballmer's alleged new account under the handle @Steven_Ballmer, which is not verified. Jay Yarow, Editor at Business Insider, tweeted that Balmer's account was likely hacked two weeks ago and he didn't even notice.

Ballmer account likely fake. He was probably hacked 2 weeks ago and didn't notice. pic.twitter.com/i1FvxaCTCN

— Jay Yarow (@jyarow) October 16, 2015

Yarow also pointed out that there is no need for a Twitter user to tell people to follow them at a new account as they can easily change their handle. There is also the fact that since people have noticed the new account, it began tweeting that it is a real account as "the real Ballmer won't waste his time telling people his account is real."