Politizoom’s fearless leader Ursula goes where I fear to tread – Trump’s Truth Social. Normally I just sit back and let her tell our readers about goings on there but this is too good to ignore. For starters, yes Truth Social is still operational (even with Devin Nunes still part of things) but let’s just say it’s seen better days. In fact, the share price has dropped to a new low. Dare we hope it will drop even more before the approaching deadline where Trump can cash out?
Well, let’s make this short and sweet. According to this article from The Independent at the close of trading today the stock was worth only $16.98 a share. Remember all the fanfare back at the beginning when the price was close to eighty bucks a share? That didn’t last long, but still it took longer than I thought it would for things to tank to the point we’re now at. But here we are:
Trump Media, the parent company of Trump’s Truth Social Network, was trading at $16.98 at closing on Wednesday, down more than 78 percent from the stock’s March high of $79.38 per share.
The slump means that Donald Trump, the company’s largest shareholder, has seen his personal, roughly 60 percent stake decline in value from $6bn to $2bn during that time.
It gets better, or I guess worse if your Trump because come Sept. 19 Trump and other early investors can start selling off shares which will further tank the price. I know jack about stock trading. Well, almost nothing. To be honest I’ve never bought so much as a single share of any stock. Buying the blue chip stuff that makes up the Dow was just too expensive and anything else seemed like going to a casino. At a casino eventually the House always wings. If you’re lucky and start off on a hot streak the smart thing to do is cash out and go home. That’s not what people (including me as I learned the hard way) do however. Anyway playing the stock market seemed like betting so I avoided it.
Some people do ok. They do lots of homework and look at all manner of a businesses fundamentals, overall market conditions and (again) a lot of things I simply don’t understand. That’s what I don’t get. How in the hell is Truth Social NOT one big stock scam? It’s taken in a lot of money from investors but has continually LOST money. Expenses have exceeded revenues from the beginning and if I’m not mistaken the losses at this point are approaching if not past the hundred million dollar mark.
It’s confusing as hell in part because things are set up as two different entities – Truth Social and Trump Media. Are they truly two different companies? It seems to me like Truth Social is a subsidiary of Trump Media so it’s all the same rotting fish, or pile of sh*t or whatever metaphor you want to choose. To me the bottom line is that a ton of money got invested and except for the stock value it’s gone. It’s cost more (again, a lot more) than it’s brought in in revenue. So how is it even allowed to be listed on the stock market? Is the SEC afraid to investigate Trump for stock fraud?
I just don’t get it. You’d think none of it would be worth a wooden nickel but there’s still, at least in theory ‘value’:
Then there’s the value of Trump Media itself, which retains, according to its stock price, a market value of $3.5bn despite pulling in less than $1m in second-quarter sales, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Say WHAT? Even if Trump won’t get the six or eight billion he was expecting even six months ago the fact he could walk away with anything at all, much less a couple billion or more just doesn’t make sense. How is all this not fraud? Well, I’ll take what I can get which is some humiliation for Trump that his ‘bigly’ social media platform has fallen in stock price so far and so fast. If Devin Nunes hasn’t snuck away and is on a boat to some undisclosed location he must have a death wish. Or maybe a fetish for being covered in ketchup. That last blocked quote mentions a million in revenue but not a peep about expenses. I’ll guarantee you they were a helluva lot more than a mere million bucks!
Key your eye out for what happens on the 19th. If I understand things correctly (and I might be wrong) if Trump (and others) sell of a huge chunk of shares, as in take whatever they can get and run then it will be the end of the whole sordid affair. Sept 30 marks the end of the third quarter and the financial report should make for an interesting read. The only question will be if (hopefully more like WHEN) Trump loses the election a new DOJ will have a chat with the SEC to see just what the hell went on. I find it hard to believe no laws were broken. Time will tell.
zero is a good number.
Unless I am way off-base/delusional, t.s. stock is/has been purchased in large quantities by people who will win big if trump gets elected. Those people will likely be on hand on the 19th to make sure it doesn’t tank too badly. I believe this is putin’s, etc. way of contributing to trump’s campaign and also allows u.s. interests to contribute more than they would be allowed to contribute directly to the candidate. Come Sept 19th, if shitzi comes away from any stock sale with the 5 or 6 B he’s been saying he’d get in the sale, trust me, there are things going on with that stock outside of the public (and especially FEC) view. This t.s is shit, it’s stock is a ponzi scheme, and there is no rational reason to invest in the company UNLESS you’re investing in a possible president. This thing has always troubled me because investing in the stock market, much like purchasing real estate, is not limited to u.s. citizens and the people who oversee the transactions (the IRS for instance) are not looking at these transactions from a political/election perspective and the ones who do watch for contributions in kind really have no way of discerning a legitimate stock purchase/sale from one that benefits a candidate’s campaign. trump walks away with 5-6 B in a couple of weeks and that is money that he can use to self-fund his campaign. Short of the players actually stating they purchased the stock as a way to contribute to his election, no one can prove it. Now, you can say “sure but if the stock isn’t worth $xxx, it is being propped up by someone and why would someone do that”? That might start sirens going for the FEC but they wouldn’t know without proof and that will be very hard to come by. If there are mechanisms available to the watchdogs for this situation I am unaware of them.
I”m not the first or the only person to wonder about this and some of us are watching this stock tank, waiting for the sale day to see what he walks away with.
Again, while I have an affinity for law and deciphering a lot of legal stuff and statues the stock market and big Wall Street banking is something I simply never learned much about. I have to believe there are laws about fraud and stock scams that cover what’s gone on here. I also know when it comes to white collar law and high finance cases are complicated as hell which is why so few get prosecuted. It would seem a LOT of resources would have to go into just an investigation and an actual prosecution would take even more. U.S. Attorneys, even in a heavily resourced office like the “Sovereign” Southern District of New York would take a hard look at whether it was worth the resources to prosecute this. Same for the State of New York, especially if Trump’s other financial judgements are upheld on appeal (the Trump Org. will implode as lenders both here and overseas elbow their way to the front of the line to recover what they can) and of course Trump could be facing enough years in jail by this time next year it simply won’t be worth it. Those who put up all that money will be mightily pissed over getting f**ked if Trump doesn’t win but who cares? I sure as hell don’t. If they chose to make a shitty bet with the devil and lost to hell with them. It will be money down the drain that might make them gun shy about donating to RWNJ candidates going forward. And instead start working with old-school (but still asshole) Republicans for a return to Reagan type stuff at least.
First, the idea that you have to be a financial wizard or an active trader to make money on these stock market is mistaken, as is the idea that you need a pile of cash to get in on it. AFAIC, the way for non-millionaires to get involved and “get rich slowly” is to buy mutual fund shares. Investment firms (like Fidelity, Morningstar, Dreyfus, and others) offer a variety of funds that sell for less than $50 per share, and plenty of funds require minimum initial investments under $1000. The fund managers and their analyst teams spend their days doing the research and making trades on behalf of their investors (big and small alike – the small investor earns the same return rate as the megabucks one), and many fund management teams’ fees are less than 1% of their funds’ returns. I’ve been a Fidelity client for something like 40 years.
Second, no serious investor, neither individual nor fund manager, ever considered investing in $DJT. While people may speculate about Russian oligarchs, or billionaire MAGA supporters, buying up what Von Schitzie decides to unload on September 20, I daresay the trade(s) will be made at whatever depressed share value is determined on NASDAQ at the time of the trade. Attempts to inflate the price by buyer or seller should almost certainly trigger regulatory action, possibly even suspension of trading, followed by SEC investigation. At a possible share price of $12, His Lowness could wind up netting about $1 billion, barely enough to pay off his civil court fines, and if the size of his sell order proves to be more than the market can handle, he might not even be able to make E. Jean Carroll whole.
Stay tuned.
The corollary of DT’s selling of shares and collecting his ill-gotten gains is that he needs people to actually BUY them.
Now, unless prospective purchasers have a death wish (or an ulterior movie or simply don’t care) the proposed sale will be like selling fertiliser to a pig farm
I have a well-known tendency (admittedly deserved when I look back) for long-winded writing that tackles too many topics and dives into too much detail so I chose not to include discussion of an important and inter-related topic. Which is the problem Trump faces as the date he can sell/cash out approaches. Both Trump and those who put up the money to create this debacle of a scam (to donate to Trump) won’t get anywhere near what they hoped to get out of this if there’s a big sell-off. (Not that Trump put up his own money mind you) However, the whole thing was a house of cards and ‘Hurricane Harris’ is coming with the wind that’s going to blow the whole thing down. Gentle ocean breezes and shifting sand already caused the edifice to start falling apart as the stock price has steadily gone down. Now, as I said a ‘hurricane’ is coming and the cheap-ass, run down & ill-maintained trailer has the eye coming right at it! Those who put up serious money and feel Trump’s going to lose will want to get what money they can back out of the thing. Trump himself NEEDS money.
The big money folks who made creation of this media mess will be ok. Sure, they will lose money but like a rich gambler at an illicit game for rich gamblers ending the evening having lost a half-million sucks but they get over it because they’ve got plenty more money and there’s always the next game. However, as I said they will be “singed” by this to maybe be more cautious about donating to (ok, BUYING) politicians for a while. Still, a significant sell off will drop the current valuation which could still mean at least a couple of billion (as of this week but next week could be different as rumors could cause another big drop) in Trump’s pocket. He could wind up with only a billion or so which as another commentor noted would be pretty much spent/accounted for already.
That’s a big problem for Trump and he might want to get to the head of the line to cash out first (if he can hide his intentions) and screw over his main investors. They will turn on him and unlike him they’ve got friends in the financial sector who will start applying serious pressure to every business Trump owns. However, Trump has ANOTHER problem sitting out there like an unstable WWII era bomb that didn’t explode but could do so if bumped.
What kept Truth Social afloat and with a decent valuation after the initial drop off from the sugar high of its initial listing was tons of MAGAs buy shares when it was still fifty or sixty bucks a share. Some continued even as it dropped below fifty, and then forty. For THESE people who coughed up three to five hundred or so bucks for stock it’s a total loss. A wipeout. Some coughed up two or three thousand to buy the stock. It’s only value now is as toilet paper or fire starter! THEIR only hope of at least getting much (not all but at least a decent amount) of their money back is for the stock to rebound in price and get up around forty bucks a share and that’s simply not going to happen.
They are already looking at a major loss and if there’s a big selloff later this month the stock could be worth well under ten bucks a share. Maybe only a few dollars. If that. All this just as early voting is underway or about to get underway. And it WILL be all over the news. Granted these are people who mostly will wait until election day to vote but before the end of OCTOBER if Truth Social still exists it might be a penny stock. These MAGAs, even if there are only one or two million of them are going to be mightily pissed. And their friends are going to be pissed on their behalf. For THESE people four or five hundred bucks is a BFD. And it most cases it will have been money spent on TOP of that spent buying Trumpy MAGA junk like t-shirts, hats, ‘covfefe’ mugs etc.
They won’t vote for Harris of course. But a lot of them won’t bother voting at all.
Hence Trump’s problem. He can’t afford (literally) to go pissing these people off. More than anyone Trump knows how much he needs them right now. Yet it’s clear where this whole scam is headed, and that the more likely it seems he might (or will lose) the faster the big early investors will cash out. Which means his own shares will be worth shit! And he truly needs that money! He’s put himself in a lose-lose situation as far as I can tell.
Remember, Harris doesn’t have to have a big lead. Even if on the 19th she’s only leading in many of the key states within the margin of error AND it looks like we’ll not only retake the House but have a fair shot at retaining the Senate the original big investors will get out while the getting’s good. Not all of them maybe but enough to crater the whole thing.
Add in what might happen in court before then and Trump might be so desperate financially he just cashes out, pisses off his MAGAs and hopes he can “win” via the plan in the works to keep states from certifying their votes and throwing the election to the House. However Democrats are on to that particular strategy and are taking steps to prevent it from working.
It’s going to be quite a month. That much we can be sure of.