Is there anything to stop wealthy Saudi’s, Russian oligarchs, or ultra rich Americans who want influence with or favors from Trump as President from buying up large quantities of DJT stock at inflated prices?
We’ve never had a President with a majority ownership of a publicly traded stock.
It seems ripe for abuse with little available oversight or controls.
On paper, Trump just made $3B.
If he can strike a deal with the BOD, he might be able to borrow against his position to fund his NY legal issues.
This seems like a yuge win for him.
Shares of Digital World were snapped up by Trump’s supporters in a social-media buying frenzy. Their goal was to express support for Trump and mint new fortunes for themselves and the former president. Trump now has that fortune—his roughly 60% stake will be worth about $3 billion when Truth Social begins trading—at least on paper.
It isn’t clear when he could turn his Truth Social investment into cash. Trump’s shares are locked up for six months. To sell or borrow against the stake before then, he would need a waiver from the company’s board, which includes one of his sons and several former members of his administration.
To a layman this feels like one of those "that seems like a grift" financial concepts.
But there are some good management teams getting caught up in the SPAC selloff of the last two years. Some were legitimately overpriced in the exuberance of free money and are trading pretty close to fair value now. Some are undervalued relative to their balance sheets similar to what IAND75 mentioned about his son's company.
Personally, I'm a big fan of Aurora Technology. They are developing an autonomous driver focused on going to market initially with freight transportation. Their leadership and engineering teams are the best you'll find in autonomous driving outside of Waymo. They were ridiculously cheap a year ago. They are only kind of cheap now. If, and a big if, they hit their end of year commercialization target then they'll be trading back at their "IPO" valuation of roughly $10b. Their price won't be at quite their IPO level because of subsequent dilution. Long-term they are a $100b to $1T market cap opportunity --- or $0 --- no in-between. Actually, $0 is an exaggeration. My bet is their floor is pretty close to their current market cap because their team and technology and IP would warrant a $5b offer from UPS, FedEx, Amazon, or one of the semi-truck manufacturers.
public via a SPAC. Very legitimate. But highly speculative. Early stage company.
An investment in it when it went public may be a very good one sometime in the future, just like any other early stage company. If you want your money out now it would be a big loss.
Pricing on it is tough because it is based upon their product working technically and being adopted. If so, it could be a huge win. If not, then it could be a bust. But right now their stock price makes no sense. Their market cap is less than 2/3rds of their net liquid cash/investments. Not even considering their total net assets.
Once a company goes public via SPAC they have all the standard disclosure requirements of any public company. Truth Social’s 10-Qs and 8-Qs should be interesting reading going forward.
Is it more of a way to get funding quickly? I've only been in the "traditional" model where we get rounds of VC funding.
than in a traditional IPO process. But in the end you are still a publicly traded company with all the attendant requirements. And the problems of being publicly traded if you are pre-revenue.
As noted in the posts below, anyone who lends him money on the basis of that is a complete moron.
I assume there is at least a 90 day lockup period for him before he can start exiting his position.
At some point paper gains become real gains.
The guys that I trade with were selling straddles on DJT today. I don't have the balls to do that, so I skipped the trade.
I hope that this thing doesn't moon on them.
Brings back fond memories of Gamestop and AMC.
The only thing here is, there are going to be a bunch of MAGA faithful that get left holding the bag.
The second he can weasel out of those shares he will and his yes men board will allow it.
Which he can't do for six months.
Also, heed the words of Phineas T. Barnum. This is GameStop redux.
Finance laws. Start company. Convince donors to buy company. Sell your shares. Use money to fund your campaign.
small donors.)
I bet that someone will lend against that turd. The only question is who will do it.
9/20/2024 $70 strike asking price: $45.80
1/17/2025 $75 strike asking price: $56.00 (no $70 strike option listed)
1/16/2026 $70 strike asking price: $54.50
I'm not an options expert, but those prices indicate to me a lack of confidence in the current stock price.
Not many shares out there to borrow in order to short. And obviously short interest is heavy, so people are running to the put options to express that negativity. Hence the puts are expensive.
shares so that people can short this thing.
I wonder if he is legally allowed to sell deep ITM calls that expire in six months. That could be one way to raise his bond money...
You think the underwriter is lending out shares to short while acting as underwriter? I'm a bit out of my depth but feel fairly certain that should not be happening.
institutional and retail accts can lend out their shares for shorting.
IPOs always have a limited amount of shares to borrow in the beginning, but this stock has an exceptionally low number vs the average. It being a SPAC makes it even more difficult to borrow in the beginning. Alot of the normal institutional investors don’t get involved in SPACs
of shares, the underwriters have some, and there aren't really any institutions involved in normal scale. So it seems like there shouldn't be many shares to short. Is naked shorting still a problem? Yes I've been out of the game that long.
The game has passed me by long ago and I don’t do anything that touches momentum type thinking.
I’ve learned many a time you can be right longer than you can be short. I wouldn’t want to be on the other side of this trade.
That said hahaha - not a single bruiser brand company has such shit financials. Fuck you Donald you fraud.
I don't see any options trading today on E*Trade.
The IV was extremely high for DWAC, which is why the puts are expensive.
It's possible that they are a carryover of the DWAC options as I'm not seeing DJT options on Schwab either.
The IV is wild. It is around 400% for this week, dropping to 124% for Jan-26.
The LT vol is reasonable, the ST vol is insane. That is what happens when a stock explodes.
My earlier point is that someone can loan to Trump while also hedging their position. It is a bit different than loaning against a private asset, which does not allow for the ability to hedge easily (maybe someone would enter into a private put contract. I've never heard of it, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't exist or isn't possible).
Admittedly, as you pointed out, the volatility is wild. Assuming it settles down, maybe it becomes more feasible. I also suppose anyone lending would lend against his entire DJT position as collateral which makes hedging more reasonable.
Agreed on your point about pubic vs. private though I'm sure someone offers private asset option contracts --- not sure they'd be willing to offer them in a Trump-related transaction though.
Related, but off topic, I think it's ironic that the key to Trump's bond issue for a case where he claimed outlandish property values could end up being a stock that is actually trading at an outlandish value.
first three quarters of 2023 and 9 million users. For comparison Twitter has 528 million users and 4 billion in revenue.
Defective
of the American people.
descrition of the adverstisers on the site read like exactly the types of companies you would expet to go after those users.
From the linked CNBC article:
Donald Trump on Tuesday started promoting a line of pricey Bibles in a partnership with country music star Lee Greenwood, whose song “God Bless the U.S.A.” is omnipresent at the former president’s political rallies.
“All Americans need a Bible in their home, and I have many,” Trump said in a video on Truth Social announcing the business deal.
“It’s my favorite book. It’s a lot of people’s favorite book,” he added…
It’s the “only Bible” endorsed by either Trump or Greenwood, the site proclaims. And, it adds, it’s “the ONLY Bible inspired by America’s most recognized patriotic anthem, God Bless The USA.”
The text is also printed in a large font that highlights the words of Jesus in red, per the site.
I had never heard of him before today. I had never heard of the freak who SEE posted about who called himself a doctor but wasn't but did have an undergraduate degree in physical therapy from Elon and did run a few Ironmans and did preach that nobody should ever have two cheat days in a week.
What is wrong with people.
You seem to have nailed your summary of him last year
Also, here's a post of yours about him from last year...
it should be worth in the $1-$2 range by the time he can access his shares. If he’s lucky.
A current $5.5 billion valuation on $5 million of annual revenues and $10-50 million annual loss. Such a deal.
...is that he typically acts as if his name provides all the value, while goods and services are considered secondary. Think of Trump U, Trump steaks, etc., etc.
Amazon bled money for quite a while, but Bezos had an actual business plan to make money by providing a service most people never realized they'd need...until they did, and in the hundreds of millions. That's why Amazon, similar to many other companies, went from being money losers to being giant home runs. What's the business plan for Truth Social, other than hoping that people who have their choice of any number of social media platforms make it a "killer" app?
Here is an interesting take from last year, updated to February 2024: Truth Social Statistics 2024: How Does It Compare?
Here's a snippet that is, I think, relevant to your point:
"Rather than pursuing a traditional IPO, the Trump Media & Technology Group decided [in 2021] to merge with a blank check company called Digital World Acquisition Corp (DWAC) which was already listed on the NASDAQ.
"After announcing the merger, the DWAC stock jumped to highs of $101, valuing the company at about $3.9 billion.
"But the stock price has slowly been coming back down and as of April 2023, is around $13 per share."
________________________
DWAC is a SPAC, a special purpose acquisition company, founded in December 2020. It started trading on NASDAQ in September 2021, with its IPO. A month later, Trump's company announced they planned to merge with DWAC, and its stock price went up about 356% in one day. DWAC has experienced various vicissitudes since then, with the initial exuberance burning off by the 2nd half of 2022. In 2023 the stock traded between about $12.50 and $20.00.
If the Wikipedia article on DWAC is to be trusted (and most of its claims are footnoted), DWAC has had various connections with Chinese firms, including one that had been looked at by the SEC for "misrepresenting shell corporations." Also, DWAC wound up returning or giving up on about $1 billion to investors whose funds had been intended to go into a "private investment in public equity (PIPE)" transaction; see SPAC to return remaining $533 million raised for Trump social media deal.
This has the scent of a lot of funny money activities and come-ons, but of course that's just my opinion.