Shares of Trump Media have erased all their gains since they began trading under the ticker DJT last month.
The stock closed down more than 8% Monday at $37.17 after falling about 11% earlier in the day. It had traded above $79 a share on March 26, the day of its debut.
But experts say it’s hard to draw any firm conclusions about what the stock price’s movement means. That’s because so many available shares — about 12%, one of the highest ratios of any active stock listing — reflect traders’ bets that the stock will fall, said Ihor Dusaniwsky, managing director at S3 Partners, a data and predictive analytics company.
This is called short-selling.
Right now, much of the trading activity surrounding the stock reflects investors’ attempts to position bets around whether it will continue to fall, Dusaniwsky said in an email.
While some traders are looking to make even more gains from continued price declines, others may be looking to “squeeze” the short positions by betting that something will cause the share price to rise.
“This seems more like the gunfight at the OK Corral, with both sides waiting for the other to act first,” Dusaniwsky said.
As the stock’s price has rocked back-and-forth, former President Donald Trump, who owns a majority of the company’s shares, has seen his net worth move in tandem, falling from a high of about $5.2 billion down to about $2.9 billion.
But those figures are largely immaterial for Trump, since he is contractually barred from selling or even borrowing against his shares for six months.
In a post on Truth Social earlier this month, Trump called the company’s business ‘very solid’ and said criticisms of its ability to reach a wide audience were ‘lies.’
But according to company filings, Trump Media lost $58.2 million last year and did not report any user metrics.
Meanwhile, the company’s auditor issued a “going concern” notice for the business, saying it was not confident it would be able to stay afloat.
That auditor, BF Borgers CPA PC, has itself been the subject of recent reports about its effectiveness. For instance, it is banned in Canada.
In a news release last week, CEO Devin Nunes, a former U.S. congressman, said he was confident about the future of the business.
“We are excited to be operating as a public company and to have secured access to capital markets,’ Nunes said in a statement. ‘Closing out the 2023 financials related to the merger, Truth Social today has no debt and over $200 million in the bank, opening numerous possibilities for expanding and enhancing our platform.’
‘We intend to take full advantage of these opportunities to make Truth Social the quintessential free-speech platform for the American people,” Nunes said.