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Lightweights can pack a heavy punch

| March 2, 2018 12:00 AM

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Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File In this May 1, 2017, photo, Kylie Jenner attends The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute benefit gala celebrating the opening of the Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons: Art of the In-Between exhibition in New York.

Only teenage girls watched “Keeping Up with the Kardashians.”

Right?

Assuming you missed it, that mindless show (plus endless trash-mag covers) trumpeted the generally aimless lives of the under-30 offspring produced by Kris Jenner – who was married, at various times, to millionaire attorney Robert Kardashian and former Olympian Bruce Jenner.

Yep, he’s the one who changed gender.

No self-respecting adult would be caught watching the exploits of the various Kardashian and Jenner kids, would they?

It’s not like they have any talent, other than being, well …

Famous for being famous.

Ah, but it turns out that some very serious folk have had to keep the Jenner-Kardashian clan in their sights.

“Honestly, if you want to stay current with the value of social media, you have to pay attention,” admitted Coeur d’Alene financial analyst Darin Hayes of D.A. Davidson & Co.

“Just like any other stock, there is money in these social media companies. We need to know what’s happening in that world.”

PROOF?

Just last week, Kylie Jenner (20 years old, known mostly for the TV gig and serious lip enhancement), tweeted out a message to her 24.5 million followers.

“Sooo does anyone else not open Snapchat anymore?” Jenner wrote. “Or is it just me … ugh this is so sad.”

Kylie’s requiem for Snapchat — which had just undergone a redesign that users didn’t seem to like — was headline material.

In fact, the day after her tweet, parent company Snap Inc. lost $1.2 billion, or nearly 7 percent of its total value.

This is serious stuff.

On the heels of Jenner’s tweet, Maybelline New York spun a tweet of its own, asking customers if the beauty-product brand (again: teenage girls) should remain on the Snapchat platform.

It seemed that a social media company that had gone public just a year ago actually might be headed down the sink, based in part on a single tweet from a kid whose sole claim to public notice is her last name.

HAYES ISN’T ready to call the whole affair a catastrophe — at the time of this writing, Snap Inc. had regained its pre-Kylie stock value — but he did offer a word of caution to investors.

“We generally evaluate investments on the basis of management, earnings, and a long-term track record,” he said. “In the case of Snap, everything is more speculative.

“A lot of these social media platforms emerge, and they’re subject to the whims of their customers.”

Fair enough, but with so much technology available and various applications coming and going, isn’t the whole process awfully, ah, quick for a serious investor?

“It is faster,” Hayes said. “The rules have changed somewhat. It’s challenging, but it’s exciting.”

Still, just the idea of putting money into Snap must be a little scary when someone like Kylie Jenner can snatch a huge chunk of your money with a single tweet.

It’s worth noting, by the way, that Hayes knew the entire Kylie-Snapchat story — plus the current stock price — when he was asked about it cold turkey.

No background check needed.

So how does an investment analyst, someone used to a completely different set of metrics that doesn’t involve any Kardashians, keep up with this craziness?

“I always make sure to ask my wife and daughter,” Hayes said.

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Steve Cameron is a columnist for The Press.

Email: scameron@cdapress.com.

Facebook: BrandNewDayCDAPress.

Twitter: @BrandNewDayCDA