DJT plunged 18.35 percent today and is down a bit more after hours. What’s going on? 
Trump Stock Tanks After Announcing Massive Share Sale
CNN explains Trump Stock Tanks After Announcing Massive Share Sale
Trump Media & Technology Group’s stock is tumbling again after the company announced a potentially massive new influx of shares. The struggling company is rapidly losing money, and a new stock offering could help it stay afloat.
But there’s a downside to going back to the market with more shares: The addition of 21.5 million shares for sale announced Monday would add more than 15% more stock to the publicly available shares of the Truth Social owner.
This filing seeks to register all shares related to the merger that took Trump Media public, including those that are tied to warrants. Warrants give the holder the right to buy shares of a company’s stock at a set price.
This filing also seeks to register more than 146 million shares held by some stockholders for resale — including all 114.8 million of Trump’s 78.8 million current and 36 million potential shares that could be granted if the stock price holds above a certain level.
The warrants give the shareholder the right but not the obligation to buy shares at a specified price.
“The belief is that they’re going to exchange the warrant for a share of stock and then immediately sell that stock,” said John Rekenthaler, vice president of research at Morningstar.
Trump filed to sell all of his shares, which he may do to raise money. He cannot sell those shares now because he is under a 5-month lockup period.
At the stock’s closing peak, Trump’s 57 percent stake was worth about $6.25 billion. Trump’s stake is now worth about $2 billion. But that’s a big mirage because he could never unload a hundred million shares at that price.
The Mission
Variety.Com describes the corporate mission.
TMTG says its mission is “to end Big Tech’s assault on free speech by opening up the Internet and giving people their voices back. TMTG operates Truth Social, a social media platform established as a safe harbor for free expression amid increasingly harsh censorship by Big Tech corporations.” Shares of the company began trading March 26 on the Nasdaq exchange under the ticker symbol “DJT.”
Trump formed TMTG in 2021. That was after the former president had been kicked off Twitter (now called X), Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and other internet platforms, which said he had violated prohibitions against inciting violence in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, which aimed to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Trump’s accounts have been reinstated by X, Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, YouTube and others, but he continues to use Truth Social as his preferred social media platform. Truth Social launched in early 2022; TMTG has not disclosed how many people use the service.
That sounds lovely but CBS News reports that “last year, Trump Media lost $58 million on revenue of $4.1 million, about half the annual sales booked by a single Chick-fil-A location.”
How Trump Media is supposed to make a profit is a mystery. The corporation will not disclose the number of users. That’s a warning sign in and of itself.
The Technical Picture
DJT has no open gaps above. So there is no technical reason other than “oversold” for any kind of bounce.
Typically there is some kind of bounce when up gaps fill, but there was no bounce today nor was there a bounce in March when a gap filled.
There is a gap up at roughly 17.50 that’s waiting to fill and another tiny gap at 12.50.
Number of Users
Variety said TMTG does not disclose user but Search Logistics has some Truth Social estimates.
- Truth Social: 2 Million
- Twitter: 450 Million
- Facebook (Meta): 2.91 Billion
The Trump name may find buyers in the stock market but making money will be tough. Twitter is struggling to make money with 450 million users.
For all the yak against Trump. Yesterday after court he stopped by invitation at a Bodega in Harlem. That local People were Very enthusiastic is understatement.
Dems are regretting keeping him in NY now. Figuring they could keep him off campaign trail using a Bogus proceeding in Manhattan. His presence all the time may well turn the State Red.
He who laughs last laughs best. Exploding heads all over Manhattan were seen to happen.
I got some Dutch Tulips for sale!!
I would not be surprised if some GOP billionaire or foreign wealth fund just happens to start buying DJT when the lock-up expires.
Truth Social is going the way of all of Trump’s other cons and pyramid schemes. The real question is why some people keep falling for it and giving this guy their money.
It’s what cults do.
I look at this stock in the same way that people in the 70s looked at Pet Rocks or how people looked at Dogecoin.
It was something to own to show your friends and chuckle about but it never was meant to have any intrinsic value.
As with any business it is about does the product have a base for consumption.
At face value and given the amount of hatred spewed out at a figure like Trump surprising he has held on to the people who follow him.
However things do change as more people are becoming aware of the pain they are experiencing as contrasted to what they are being told. Hey, it’s all in your head.
Well it is certainly not all in your head. It is quite real.
So then comes the question people are starting to ask, since current conditions suck and Government cannot tie its’ own shoelaces let alone have a solution, where to search for a way out of this mess.
Trumps message is resonating with many, simply time to get back to the basics of what allowed people to prosper in times past.
Answers such as how to become part of a parallel economy based upon merit, moving away from government handouts for voting a specific way.
Learning to stand once again upon ones own feet and become self reliant.
If a media entity focuses upon offering solutions that will change peoples lives for the better it will prosper. That is what people need at this time.
These times require more then rhetoric and people will have open ears for those who can show them an alternative way forward.
People are starting to understand they only have one bite at the Apple that is their life.
You do not get a second shot. Why waste the time allotted to your person dealing with people who should be in asylums for mentally ill who now claim Lordship over your existence.
Trump’s latest pump and dump venture. He will fleece his loyal fans, i.e. suckers for as much as he can.
Trumpy-Pumpy was coined about 30+ yrs ago….
Indeed, it has all the hallmarks of a scam….just like carbon credits and fiat currency!
If there is to be a huge victory for Trump, shouldn’t his social media platform be booming? Seems like the economy is red hot except for Trump’s platform. Sad. 2 million users? That’s laughable if it translates to voters. Double sad.
The issue with all media is the endless bifurcation. People used to be captive to three TV platforms: CBS, NBC, ABC. Then came cable with hundreds of channels then came social media with millions of channels. With AI coming, I suspect we’ll get billions of AI generated content and channels over the next few years. It’s hard to advertise on every single platform/channel.
Some people (2 million-ish?) are voting for Trump, but many many times that are just voting against marxism.
No one cares about the 1001th pointless social media platform, except the brokers selling the stock
In the last two elections, Trump received less votes than the competitor. Seems more people like Marxism than don’t using your theory.
2020 Election
Biden 81,268,867
Trump 74,216,747
2016 Election
Hillary 65,853,514
Trump 62,984,828
And for 2024, expect at least 4 million trump voting boomers went to the graveyard, it’ll be interesting to see what the numbers will be.
@MPO … I don’t know if any of your figures are correct, but if there is any truth to them, you want us to buy into the idea that two horrible and uninspiring candidates in 2020 somehow garnered an extra 30 million voters? Two uninspiring candidates got a 20.7% increase in voters, during a pandemic?
The media made no secret they were against Trump the entire time. Biden, even according to media supporters hid in his basement the whole time. Biden had no campaign slogan, and no formal positions on much of anything.
These two sleeper candidates got 30 million people to venture out in the middle of a pandemic to vote? That’s the story you are going with? You expect anyone to believe you?
Those are the numbers and they are from the link below. And yes, they were that much higher as a vote against Trump, which is why he lost.
link to 270towin.com
Don’t be shocked with the 2024 numbers although I’m sure you already have a conspiracy theory cooked up.
Do the warrants or can anything else give Trump the ability to exit earlier?
It seems like the stock will go to zero when he can sell, maybe before.
He could get a waiver, but ask yourselves, which sane underwriters would approve him to sell his shares early?
That’s the million dollar question. Nobody in their right mind thought that a company losing $50 million on $4 million annual revenue is worth $8 billion. And Truth Social’s base of users is shrinking, at that. DJT is a play purely to politically and financially support Trump.
I read somewhere that DJT’s board could approve selling before the six month lock-up period expires, allowing Trump to sell shares. And the board is packed with Trump friendlies, including his son. Alternatively, the board could approve Trump’s pledging his shares as collateral for a loan.
In either case, these actions could theoretically result in a shareholder lawsuit, but most (all?) of the shareholders are probably Trump supporters, which makes a lawsuit unlikely.
At the rate the stock is declining, whatever Trump does to unlock the value of the shares for his financial benefit, had better be done quickly.
Chicago this weekend: 9 killed, 43 wounded.
Across America about 6000 boomers die EACH DAY, mostly from cardiovascular disease.
link to digg.com
When are we going to get serious about shutting down fast food places? They cause more deaths than all guns combined EVER.
Boomers committing fast food suicide? Did you identify a bug or a feature? My parents are boomers, so take this with a grain of salt.
Greasy burgers & fried potatoes = heart attack waiting to happen.
McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Burger King, Shake Shack, In & Out, Jack in the Box, Sonic, etc. It’s like a drug dealer on every single street corner in America and the addicts can’t stop.
Then you have all the fried chicken places.
While food certainly plays a role in poor health, the bigger driver, in my view, is America’s overly sedentary lifestyle.
The human body was designed to move. Metabolic rate, heart health, etc can all be tied to how much or how little physical activity one engages in.
I took up Deninger’s keto diet and running regimen about 10 years ago.
“The U.S. is poised to see one of the biggest single-year drops in homicides and declines in other violent crimes during 2023″
“If those numbers hold as the FBI collects more data about 2023 from more cities, it would be one of the largest single-year drops in U.S. homicides since at least 1960″
link to forbes.com
Alot of people have gotten that in 1990 murders in NYC topped 2,200. They were under 400 in 2023.
The Maven (which used to host Mishtalk) failed a year ago, which does not prove Mish is a loser. Its a bit weird Mish is running with this post. Mass media is changing, and it effects all members of the industry.
Comcast (new NBC owners) are laying off corporate staff. Expensive shows are being canceled in favor of low production cost shows. NBC’s “big shows” (big ratings but also large expensive cast or large production budget) are mysteriously getting fewer episodes per season. NBC ratings (total number of eyeballs) are tanking. Advertisers are taking notice. Comcast is also noticing the rising trend of cord cutting (dropping cable).
The same at CBS. Even their “big shows” like NCIS are having shortened production runs (fewer episodes / more reruns) per season. Don’t know what week it is airing, but at least one episode this season is a “highlights, review and 100th episode celebration” show (I don’t know if its 100th episode or 200, just that the anniversary show is a bunch of highlight clips / zero production costs to make). Paramount (aka CBS) is shrinking.
Disney/ABC managed to destroy both the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises. Shareholder activists tried to oust the CEO (again), but the problem is much bigger. ABC’s ESPN channel relied on userous per user cable tv fees (even if users never watched ESPN).
Fox somehow fired the host of their number one program? Without Tucker Carlson, no one is watching. It doesn’t matter what you personally think of Carlson, from a business perspective a network should not ever fire their top rated program. Ever.
The typical half hour TV show has only 18 minutes of “show” (including title and credits), but 12 minutes of ads. Product placements and corny political propaganda fill the 18 minutes. The story lines read like something a high schooler would be embarrassed by. I doubt an AI can write a good story, but an AI can certainly write the kind of crap stories on major network TV shows.
Radio (FM stations/networks) and satelite (XM irius) are in the same boat as TV. Facebook is desperately trying to expand into instagram and virtual worlds (the land of make believe for adults). Youtube is seeing payments to content creators fall.
Media has too many ads, terrible story telling and far too many executives collecting six, seven, eight figure paychecks. The entertainment business is not entertaining, so its shrinking. All of it.
Z100 morning zoo (a top ten FM radio show) has been broadcast in a dozen radio markets for years, because the NYC metro area “isn’t big enough” and doesn’t generate sufficient revenue by itself to support all the production costs (on air salaries, off air executives / producers, etc). NYC metro is the largest market in the country, but its not enough compared to the “generously paid” talent.
XM Sirius radio paid Howard Stern in stock options years ago, but the stock got ahead of itself, while Stern became even more of a covid hypochondriac than before. XM radio has some other 2nd, 3rd ranked shows, and they are trying to develop those… but the network was essentially the Howard Stern network, and his show has jumped the shark. They paid Stern so much that other shows were not developed, and those other shows cannot float the costs of the corporation.
Facebook has a lot of teenie boppers (low disposable income) and third world users (low disposable income, and of zero value to US advertisers).
Streaming video (netflix etc) is a saturated market that is showing the same problems as network TV and cable. High priduction costs, mostly poor story telling (one good show, dozens of terrible shows), and too many reruns (they can only charge so much for Friends and Jerry Seinfeld re-runs).
The number one browser app (chrome, firefox, etc) is ad blocker. Consumers are fed up with having more ads than programming.
Its weird that Mish didn’t pick up on the widespread media industry problems, and went straight for politics.
I went with Stern over to satellite radio (Sirius at the time) in 2005 when he jumped the terrestrial radio ship.
His show was great for a few years on the new platform, but then he started becoming more political (around 2010). That’s when the show started to suck. Dumped my sub shortly there after. Stern is now a shell of his former self. He’s become everything he used to make fun of. A snobby decadent elitist. COVID really sent him over the edge.
In my view, art is directly tied to culture. Our culture has become obsessed with politics. It’s our new national religion. It’s interwoven into everything. It should come as no surprise that our art is now terrible.
I did the same. Though Stern wasn’t my #1 thing (I enjoyed the music and sports stations) I still enjoyed his show.
What’s funny is that for years (decades?) he spent multiple days a week at Scores and probably got exposed to more diseases in a day there that were every bit as bad as Covid. Somehow he transformed from Howard Stern into Howard Hughes.
All true. When Sirius was merging with XM, both on the verge of bankruptcy, they offered a lifetime sub to generate users. I bought it because I thought it could stick around with the right leadership.
I still have the lifetime sub but rarely use it. I don’t like sports, Stern or any other of their weak shows which by the way all have ads, not commercial free radio at all. Stern’s contract should be ending soon but that one moved wrecked them as you stated. Weak programs across the board.
Good points. Nobody wants to talk about the companies reporting on Trump’s failing company are also failing companies, many of which would have already failed like Google, FB and Amazon without tax dollars and handshakes with the CIA and other 3 letter agencies.
End of the day tech companies have a 99% failure rate or something close to that level. Very rarely does a “start up” get out of the red. The goal is to do ok enough to get bought out by one of the 1% tech companies in the black.
Even Trump’s son stated before Truth Social it is not what the “Trumps” do. They do however need a platform for campaign and maybe beyond. Twitter and Meta are not going to work getting their message out since at anytime they could be cancelled.
Massive dilution and obscure financials do not make a stable stock price.
The Don has never been an honorable person. You dance with a flim flam man this is what you get. And 3/4 of the people on these boards want him elected…
Gimme Jimmy!
3/4 of this board are voting against Biden, not necessarily because they like Trump. I personally wish there was a different R candidate, but Trump will be better than Biden, if only marginally.
Are contributions to political campaigns tax deductible? And, if not, could they be routed to a candidate by way of stock losses to make them so?
Wondering for a friend.
Campaign contributions are not tax deductible.
Campaign contributions are usually not tax deductible, however…
A billionaire like mark Zuckerberg can create a tax exempt entity to “get out the votes” or “educate people on their right to vote”. Donations to that charity are tax deductible.
If the charity turns out to only educate voters for one party, and only provides rides to polling stations for one party, and offers prizes to people who vote (for the charity’s party)… well that is just a happy accident for the billionaire.
There are lots of these scams (cough) — sorry, charities, all over. George Soros’ Open Society is a tax deductible charity that feeds money to dozens if not hundreds of other election buying scams (cough) I mean voter education programs.
That pillow guy (or mattress?) was doing similar things for Trump. Its likely there were other Republican leaning charities. But the scam really took off under Soros guidance. Soros didn’t just buy himself local and state DAs, he showed others like Zuckerberg how to do it.
Zuckerberg just happens to be the most flagrant vote buyer in the land. There is a long list of activities that look like election fraud, walks like election fraud, and quacks like election fraud, but according to the folks in Congress (who benefit from the bribes) it is a get out the vote scheme.
Thanks, Anon1970 and Willie Nelson II.
Social media is crap.
Crappy Social Media is crap. This thing is a big orange turd.
Everything is crap.
If Trump loses the election, probably to zero.
Probably not, the “it was rigged” narrative is persuasive – the underdog fighting an oppressive “progessive” cryptofascist “woke” state is punching up at the leftist overlords by the oppressed “white” conservative constituency.
stay triggered Ricky, you sound like a wind-up doll, what does all that nonsense you typed actually mean? Why do you call tolerance and inclusion an insulting name, are you against tolerance and inclusion? Your leftists overlords demand an answer or you shall be smackethed downeth.
The third world economy that Biden is trying to build — well, his staffers are trying to build while Biden collects bribes and has senior moments — is not going to support a large media industry either.
All the big media companies — TV networks, satellite and FM radio networks, internet streaming companies, newspapers — the problem is widespread.
How many TV networks are in Nigeria? Or Ecuador? Or Bangladesh? Third world economies have a lot less disposable income, and cannot support a large entertainment industry.
Trump has 2 million active Truth Social users, growth potential stops there where he has ostracized the majority non-Maga population.
In perspective, Twitter has about 450 million users and Facebook has 2.91 billion.
Truth Social has absolutely nothing on them.
.
The numbers mean very little without data on how much revenue each user generates. In the developing world where most of Facebook’s users are, most people have several accounts, and there’s no identity verification. They are not profitable.
Ad blocker has BILLIONS of users, more than FB and Twitter and Truth Social and Youtube combined.
This one will be in Wolf Richter’s “Imploded Stocks” list of shame by the end of the year.
if Biden’s third world economic fantasy continues, Wolf Richter will have many imploded stocks to list from his left coast gated community… but if he ventures outside the gates into Biden’s economic zones, Richter will get mugged.
I’ve heard twice now that they have $200m in cash, I assume from the SPAC merger. I can’t verify that figure from any reputable source. The bigger problem is that if they rely on advertising then they will have to do it without any major brand advertisements, just miracle cures and other ripoffs. I suppose it’s possible.
Digital snake oil is still snake oil.
Oil is still oil.
They should probably buy some precious metals with it, maybe some oil, and maybe some of the stocks in Pelosi’s magical portfolio too.
At the rate TMTG loses cash, they don’t have the $200mm they said, it will be zero in a few quarters. They can’t even make more money than one Chick-fil-A location, with all of Trump’s “gravitas”
There is some value in the “Dream Singles” from “Eastern Europe” depicted on Truth Social. I assume they make male MAGA hearts melt. Apart from that, Truth Social is just a standard (but SEC-approved) Ponzi scheme.
Only if bankrupt companies start trading on fundamentals. Fake appraisals are widespread, especially among private companies.
The majority of companies in the stockmarket are overvalued zombis living off debt.