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Trump Media & Technology Group stock jumped after former President Donald Trump was the target of another apparent assassination attempt.
Shares of Trump Media, the company behind Trump’s right-wing social media platform Truth Social, climbed more than 2% in pre-market trading Monday, with shares set to open at more than $18 apiece.
Authorities said the former president seemed to have been targeted in an assassination attempt while golfing at his club in West Palm Beach, Florida on Sunday. Trump was not injured, and the F.B.I is investigating the incident. A suspect was reportedly in custody. This came just over two months after the Republican presidential candidate was shot in the ear during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania. Following that incident, Trump Media stock spiked more than 30% to $46.20 per share.
Trump Media stock is especially sensitive to any news involving the former president, who is a majority shareholder. The company has said itself in regulatory filings that its “success depends in part on the popularity of its brand and the reputation and popularity” of Trump, and that “adverse reactions to publicity relating to [Trump], or the loss of his services, could adversely affect TMTG’s revenues and results of operations.”
On Friday, Trump said he “absolutely” won’t sell his stake in the company when a six-month lockup period for his shares expires later this month. That sent shares climbing almost 12%. On Sept. 20, Trump will technically be able to offload his 114.75 million shares of Trump Media, or about 60% of the company’s outstanding stock. He would stand to make upwards of $2 billion from such a stock sale — although the value of those returns would depend on the share price.
“The reason I built it is because I don’t want to have my voice shut down,” Trump said during a news conference Friday. “A lot of people think that I will sell my shares, you know, they’re worth billions of dollars, but I don’t want to sell my shares. I don’t need money.”
The company has a market capitalization of $3.6 billion — less than half what it was after first debuting on the Nasdaq under the ticker DJT on March 26.
John Rekenthaler, vice president of research at Morningstar (MORN), has previously called DJT an “affinity stock” — one that trades on people’s feelings and perceptions of the former president, rather than its business performance. Rekenthaler has warned that Trump Media stock could “go to zero or something close to it” if Trump were to lose the presidential election in November.
