Trump Media's 69 percent stock drop erases billions before lockup lapses

The stock price of Donald Trump’s once-high-flying media company is sinking just as the lockup period from its blank-check deal is about to end, potentially flooding a saturated market with even more shares.

Trump Media & Technology Group Corp., which was worth nearly $10 billion in mid-May, has fallen 69% since its market capitalization peaked on May 9 and is now worth less than $3.4 billion. The selloff has accelerated in the past month, with the shares falling in 22 of the 27 sessions through Wednesday’s close and losing more than 45% in the process. That pressure is only expected to increase when the deal lockup expires as soon as Sept. 19 and insiders can start unloading their equity.

The spiral is happening as retail traders grapple with the Republican presidential candidate’s return to X after using his own platform for years. In addition, Trump’s opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, is showing momentum in recent polls. Real Clear Politics has Trump polling at 46.2 nationally down from a high of 48.1 on July 29, while Harris is up to 48.1 from 46.2 when President Joe Biden dropped out of the campaign. 

For Trump, the stumble wipes out more than $3.7 billion from the former president’s paper profit off the deal, falling from a high of almost $5.8 billion to roughly $2 billion. And it delivers over $200 million in paper profits to short sellers who’ve bet against the company since its July 15 peak, data from analytics firm S3 Partners show.  

The stock, which trades under Trump’s initials and went public in March through a blank-check merger, is now below where the special-purpose acquisition company traded at before Trump’s success in the Iowa caucuses in January kickstarted a 193% surge in just six sessions.

“Anybody who looks at this knows that the current price of the stock has no relationship to the underlying value of the company,” said Brian Quinn, a law professor at Boston College. “Until recently it’s been nothing more than a financial indicator of MAGA loyalty.”

Even with the selloff, Wall Street sill sees Trump Media’s valuation as lofty considering it lost more than $16 million in the second quarter while delivering less than $1 million in revenue. It has struggled to establish a modest user base, according to third-party trackers, while Trump’s return to his preferred mouthpiece, X, has busted the bull thesis some investors had pitched.

Of course, the volatility isn’t new for the stock, which has climbed as high as $79.38 in its debut and is trading around $17 now, an all-time low for the public company. That degree of price gyration makes some speculative corners of the market look like ports in the storm by comparison. Take Bitcoin, which has a 30-day realized volatility of around 44. For Trump’s company that figure’s about 70. Indeed, since mid-January Trump Media has seen wider price swings than the highly volatile cryptocurrency.

The stock is on pace to fall for a seventh-straight week with Trump and other insiders able to start selling shares this month. That potential pressure could extend the latest decline, though industry watchers agree that it won’t be easy for Trump to extract billions in cash.

“It’s going to be very difficult for him to dump his shares” given restrictions on how quickly Trump can sell down his stake and the appropriate regulatory filings that are required, said Quinn.

The stock’s decline from a near-term peak in mid-July in the wake of the failed assassination attempt against the former president at a Pennsylvania rally has been similar to the sinking betting odds that Trump will win in November, according to PredictIt. 

It is illegal for US sportsbooks to set odds on American elections. But offshore gambling sites can take those bets, so there’s active wagering globally on the outcome of the vote. Bettors give Trump a 48% chance of winning, up from 43% on Aug. 12 but well below the peak at 69% on July 15 shortly after the assassination attempt, according to PredictIt data as of 10:54 a.m. in New York. But they give Democrat Harris a 53% chance of winning, up from 13% on July 15, PredictIt data show.