Trump Media’s Stock Surges as Investors Grow More Bullish on His Chances of Winning U.S. Presidential Election

Shares of the social media company affiliated with Donald Trump have more than doubled in the last three weeks. Investors in Trump Media & Technology Group, which operates the Truth Social social media network, have rallied behind the stock as online betting sites have increased their odds that Trump will win the 2024 U.S. presidential election.

On Monday (Oct. 14), TMTG’s stock price closed up 18.5%, to $29.95 per share. That comes after the stock closed at $12.15 per share on Sept. 23 in the wake of the expiration of a six-month lockup period during which TMTG insiders were not allowed to sell their stock. Trump has said he has “absolutely no intention” of selling his shares.

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TMTG, which has posted net losses to date, has not released any notable financial news in the past three weeks that would have spurred the jump in the stock price. Instead, according to analysts, the rise of TMTG’s share price reflects a higher expectation among investors that Trump will defeat VP Kamala Harris in next month’s election, thereby improving the outlook for Truth Social, which is Trump’s preferred social platform.

Trump took the lead over Harris in betting odds for the U.S. presidential election for the first time since their Sept. 10 debate, USA Today reported Monday. Per the report, among the gambling site USA Today regularly surveys, Trump’s largest lead is at BetOnline where the line is Trump -140 compared with Harris at +120. (U.S. bookmakers cannot legally take such bets, according to the report.)

“People realize that if Trump gets elected, this stock has the potential to do something,” Matthew Tuttle, CEO of Tuttle Capital Management, told CNN, adding: “And if he doesn’t get elected, it probably goes to zero.”

TMTG’s market capitalization currently stands at about $6 billion, more than doubling since its Sept. 23 lows. The company’s market cap saw an intraday peak of more than $9.5 billion on March 26, CNBC reported.

As of Aug. 15, Trump beneficially owned 56.6% of TMTG’s outstanding shares, making his stake currently worth about $3.4 billion.

For the second quarter of 2024, TMTG reported $836,900 in net sales and a net loss of $16.37 million, per its 10-Q SEC filing for the period. For Q1, the company reported $770,500 in revenue and a net loss of $327.6 million; most of the loss for the first three months of the year was due to expenses associated with TMTG’s merger with special purpose acquisition company Digital World Acquisition Corp. to become a publicly traded company.

Shares in TMTG began trading on Nasdaq on March 26, 2024, under the ticker symbol “DJT” following the company’s merger with DWAC.

TMTG calls Truth Social a “safe harbor for free expression amid increasingly harsh censorship by Big Tech corporations.” Trump formed TMTG in 2021 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. Trump’s accounts have been reinstated by X, Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, YouTube and others, but Truth Social remains his preferred social media platform.

Truth Social launched in early 2022. “TMTG was founded to fight back against the big tech companies — Meta (Facebook, Instagram and Threads), X (formerly Twitter), Netflix, Alphabet (Google), Amazon and others — that may curtail debate in America and censor voices that contradict their ‘woke’ ideology,” the company said in its prospectus.

TMTG has not disclosed how many people use Truth Social. “At this juncture in its development, TMTG believes that adhering to traditional key performance indicators, such as signups, average revenue per user, ad impressions and pricing, or active user accounts including monthly and daily active users, could potentially divert its focus from strategic evaluation with respect to the progress and growth of its business,” it said in an updated prospectus filed Sept. 5.