At the Europass 2020 Conference, the famous football player Cristiano Ronaldo removed two bottles of Coca-Cola from the table before opening the conference. He went on to pick the water bottle and encourage people to drink that instead of Coke. To many it may seem like a benign gesture, but not so much to its stock price. We went on and analyzed how this move affected Cola’s price chart trend, comparing it to the rest of the year.

In April, Coca Cola decided to increase the prices of some of their products to offset the anticipated higher commodity costs, just like their competitors. 

As you can see in our infographic, in the first quarter of the year, Coca Cola was doing better than what many expected. The quarterly report showed 55 cents earnings per share and $9.02 billion revenue, with a fiscal net income of $2.25 billion.

However, we all know how news or events can trigger a change in price movement of any stocks; be it a small company or a giant such as Coca Cola. 

This was in fact the case, because right after Ronaldo moved Coca Cola bottles out of his view,  the company lost an incredible $4 billion in share price fall. From an initial $56.10 share price, it dropped to $55.22 to end at $54.67 on Wednesday when markets closed. In market value this is a decrease from $242 billion to $238 billion. 

Ronaldo, with almost 300 million followers on Instagram and more than 92 million on Twitter, is an extremely influential athlete, and following the likes of Elon Musk, his actions or words can make a great impact. 

But how can traders profit from this?

This situation is a clear example of how important news or actions can impact the company’s temporary value, as well as the risk that companies are taking when it comes to cooperation with celebrities, like Ronaldo.

It’s crucial to be up to date with the news and major events. These shifts happen fairly often nowadays where social media is delivering the latest information from all over the globe in real time. 

This is a great opportunity especially for those who trade the news. News trading is a strategy where traders are waiting for major news to happen and then quickly open/close their positions according to the corresponding press releases.