Trump Media & Technology Group stock (DJT) sank by double digits on Thursday, falling nearly 23% to reverse the gains it enjoyed on Wednesday as Donald Trump clinched victory over Kamala Harris in the presidential election.
Shares in the company — the home of Trump’s social media platform, Truth Social — have been on a wild ride over the past week, with the up-and-down moves mostly tied to Trump’s chances of reclaiming the White House.
The stock is down 21% over the past five days, although shares have rallied by 50% in the past month.
Strategists had categorized the stock as a binary bet on the election. Matthew Tuttle, CEO of investment fund Tuttle Capital Management, told Yahoo Finance’s Catalysts that the trajectory of shares has hinged on “a buy the rumor, sell the fact” trading strategy.
“I would imagine that the day after him winning, you’d see this come down,” he predicted at the time.
Interactive Brokers’ chief strategist Steve Sosnick said DJT has taken on a meme-stock “life of its own.”
“It was volatile on the way up, and when a stock is that volatile in one direction, it has a tendency to be that volatile in the other direction,” he said on a call with Yahoo Finance last week.
In September, shares in Trump Media traded at their lowest level since the company’s debut following the expiration of its highly publicized lockup period. The stock eventually bounced back from its lows as both domestic and overseas betting markets began to shift in favor of a Trump victory.
Trump founded Truth Social after he was kicked off major social media apps like Facebook (META) and Twitter, now X, following the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riots. Trump has since been reinstated on those platforms. He officially returned to posting on X in mid-August after about a year’s hiatus.
As Truth Social attempts to take on social media incumbents, the fundamentals of the company have long been in question.
On Tuesday, DJT dropped third quarter results after the market close that revealed a net loss of $19.25 million for the quarter ending Sept. 30. This was narrower than the $26.03 million the company reported in the year-ago period.
DJT also reported revenue of $1.01 million, a slight year-over-year drop compared to the $1.07 million it reported in the third quarter of 2023. Over the past nine months ending Sept. 30, revenue has fallen 23% from the prior-year period.
Last month, the company revealed that its COO had stepped down in September.
Trump maintains a roughly 60% interest in DJT. At current levels of around $31 a share, Trump Media boasted a market cap of about $6.7 billion, giving the former president a stake worth around $4 billion.
Source: finance.yahoo.com