Trump Media plummets 22%, cutting into DJT rally days before election

Shares of Trump Media dropped more than 22% Wednesday, pouring cold water on a remarkable rally that added billions of dollars to former President Donald Trump‘s on-paper net worth in the runup to the 2024 election.

DJT stock, which closed at $51.51 per share on Tuesday, fell to $40.03 by the end of trading Wednesday.

Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, owns nearly 57% of the company, according to recent regulatory filings.

His stake as of Wednesday afternoon was worth just under $4.6 billion, about $1.3 billion below where it stood Tuesday.

Trump has vowed not to sell his shares.

Trump Media, which owns the Truth Social platform, has posted losses of more than $340 million on revenues of less than $2 million in the first half of the fiscal year. The company nevertheless boasts an $8 billion market capitalization.

Analysts say many of its retail investors are Trump fans who are buying the stock as a way to support the GOP nominee or bet on his odds of beating Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.

Trump Media went public in late March after completing a merger with Digital World Acquisition Corp., a special purpose acquisition company.

The newly combined business surged in its Nasdaq debut, but has swung wildly up and down in subsequent months.

It spiked in mid-July, after Trump narrowly survived an assassination attempt at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.

That was followed by a lengthy selloff that dragged the company’s share price below $12 in late September. The stock slump coincided with Harris replacing President Joe Biden as Trump’s rival, effectively resetting the race and erasing Trump’s apparent lead.

But the company shot back up in October, as some national polls of the race narrowed and as a number of political betting markets started trending in Trump’s favor.

Odds and gambling platforms do not use the same methodologies used by traditional political polling, and therefore are not substitutes for political polls. Critics have raised concerns that the election betting markets are being manipulated.