It was a wild ride for Donald Trump’s first day back on the stock market.
Trump Media & Technology Group (DJT) is the parent company of Trump’s social media site Truth Social. On Tuesday, the first day of trading under its new ticker, shares of DJT rose 16%. The stock went up as much as 50% earlier on Tuesday.
The shareholders agreed to the deal last week, which allowed the company to join with Digital World Acquisition Corp. (DWAC). DWAC had been on the stock market since 2021, before the deal.
With a price of $57.99 at the end of the trading day on Tuesday, Trump Media had a market value of about $8 billion.
After the riots in the Capitol on January 6, 2021, the former president was kicked off of major social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, which is now known as X. He then started Truth Social. Since then, Trump has been back on the platforms.
Trump will keep about 60% of Truth Social, which is worth about $5 billion right now. As the merger is finished, the former president is also facing a $454 million fraud penalty and a lack of campaign funds as he prepares to run against Biden for president again in 2024.
Trump will have to wait, though, before he can cash in his shares.
The merger agreement says that stakeholders must wait six months before they can sell or move their shares. The only time this wouldn’t apply is if the company’s board decides to make an exception.
DWAC filed with the SEC saying that Trump Media lost $49 million and made $3.4 million in the first nine months of last year.
Rick Newman of Yahoo Finance said that about 11% of all active shares of DWAC stock were short, which means that people bet that the price of the stock will go down instead of up. It is important to remember that the average short interest in public companies is between 3 and 4 percent.