Donald Trump is a meme stock now.
The Trump Media & Technology Group began trading on the Nasdaq this week, with the market symbol DJT, using the former president’s initials. The stock soared in initial trading, earning Trump trillions of dollars on paper, since he is the majority shareholder. But the sky-high valuation of Trump Media “doesn’t really make any sort of sense in the business context,” reporter Scott Nover says.
Trump Media’s product is Truth Social, a social network that Trump helped create after he was booted from Twitter and Facebook for inciting an insurrection at the Capitol.
Truth Social is a total flop.
“You’re not missing out,” Nover quipped on Inside the Hive when I said I’m not a user of the service.
Nower is, but only for work. He recently wrote for Vanity Fair that Truth Social is “a bad imitation” of Twitter, “chock full of stale red-pilled memes, MAGA conspiracy theories, and of course, Trump.”
According to one estimate, the social network has only 5 million monthly visits. So Truth Social isn’t very social at all.
In addition to Trump’s own rants, the site features “conservative memes and conspiracy theories about various things,” Nover said on the podcast, noting the presence of anti-vaccination rhetoric and promos for sketchy nutritional supplements.
The company has struggled to appeal to advertisers, so most of the ads are for products like “Trump coins and Trump trading cards,” Nover added.
Some financial analysts have https://twitter.com/SquawkStreet/status/1772629189461426176?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1772629189461426176%7Ctwgr%5E5f0999dd57396d1f3a96b7b624f20478055675d5%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.benzinga.com%2Fanalyst-ratings%2Fanalyst-color%2F24%2F03%2F37958713%2Fjim-cramer-weighs-in-on-trumps-newly-listed-djt-like-him-or-hate-him-know-that-this that Trump devotees are buying up shares of the company the same way they buy campaign hats at rallies, with the added benefit of potentially helping Trump escape grave financial and legal peril.
“I don’t recommend anyone do that,” Nover remarked. “No financial adviser will tell you to buy a share of a stock as a keepsake. If you want to make a political donation, make a political donation. Trump is using those political donations to pay his legal bills anyway.”
I admitted to buying 100 shares of the company, then selling them within minutes for $100 profit, as an experiment of sorts. (I later donated the profit to the Committee to Protect Journalists.) “I think that’s emblematic of the way a lot of people are treating this stock,” Nover said. “A lot of people are treating it like it’s an opportunity to ride the wave as it’s going up. And they’re going to hope that they get off the wave before it goes down.”
