this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2024
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Trump Media & Technology Group, the owner of struggling social media platform Truth Social, is began its long-delayed journey as a public company at Tuesday’s opening bell under the ticker symbol “DJT.”

The stock surged about 56% at the open, to $78, and trading was briefly halted for volatility. Trump Media shares have since stabilized at around $70, marking a 40% increase from Monday’s close.

Wall Street is assigning Trump Media an eye-popping valuation of around $13 billion — a price tag that experts warn is untethered to reality.

The skyrocketing share price comes despite the fact that Trump Media is burning through cash; piling up losses; and its main product, Truth Social, is losing users.

“This is a very unusual situation. The stock is pretty much divorced from fundamentals,” said Jay Ritter, a finance professor at the University of Florida’s Warrington College of Business, who has been studying initial public offerings (IPOs) for over 40 years.

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[–] [email protected] 261 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (4 children)

This is a roundabout way for billionaires to donate to Trump without him having to necessarily disclose everything.

[–] [email protected] 109 points 7 months ago (5 children)

That's it in a nutshell. The rich want him because he's malleable and will obey their every command.

[–] [email protected] 54 points 7 months ago (1 children)

that is the basis of his presidency and any Republican candidate ever

[–] [email protected] 37 points 7 months ago (5 children)

Yup. Up until orange man, Reagan had been the worst.

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[–] [email protected] 116 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (7 children)

Trump hit with huge fine he can't pay -> Rumors of Trump trying to raise money from foreign governments -> Lawyers push back, say 'you can't just accept half a billion from foreigners to pay the fine, there are rules!' -> Truth Social IPO raises a bunch of money that (foreign) investors are willing to 'loose' when the stock inevitably collapses -> Trump puts up the stock as collateral to pay the bond to pay the fine.

What? He can't sell his stock for 6 months? No, he isn't selling it, he is putting it up for collateral, totally legal, totally won't be investigated by the SEC until he gets elected and fires the head of the SEC and the lawsuit goes away.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 7 months ago (5 children)

He can't use the stock as collateral for 6 months either or the other shareholders can sue. This dude is not a financial genius. People smarter than him have tried to game the system. Some win but there are a ton of laws and ways to sue for it.

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[–] [email protected] 113 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (5 children)

Revenue of $ 3.4 million should put it around a $ 34 million value, provided it had normal profit. But it operates at a deficit, and AFAIK a not impressive growth rate. So a more normal estimate would probably put the company about $ 20-25 million.

The talk about billions is ridiculous to a degree where it's either insane, or some sort of scheme exist to pump it to hundreds of times the actual value.

[–] [email protected] 85 points 7 months ago (1 children)

It's absolutely a way for Saudi Arabia & Russia to pay Trump's fines.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 7 months ago

That could be it, I bet something is going on, that is probably in the gray area, that could be outright illegal if done directly.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Are you suggesting there's a lack of truth in Truth Social? Unconscionable! It's even in the name!

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[–] [email protected] 78 points 7 months ago (2 children)

I cannot comprehend how a company can lose 45 million dollars in 9 months by running what is essentially a glorified Mastodon instance.

Nothing about Truth Social makes any sense.

[–] [email protected] 63 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Originally it was just a modified Mastodon instance with federation removed. They hired Alex Gleason who maintains a fork of Pleroma called "Soapbox" to make significant changes to the front and back ends of the site.

Gleason also runs a handful of federated Soapbox instances, all of which are dedicated to far-right "free speech" content, mostly Nazism (Poast) and Trans-hate (Spinster). He also helps admin many other instances dedicated to hate speech.

Gleason has indicated that Truth Social and Poast run on basically the same codebase.

Quite disturbing to see the microblogging equivalent of The Daily Stormer with a multibillion dollar market cap on the stock market...

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[–] [email protected] 70 points 7 months ago (2 children)

The logic is it's a megaphone plugged directly into the earholes of a shitload of very dumb, very angry people with plenty of disposable income. They might not give their money directly to Truth Social but Truth Social can give them lots of great ideas for who to give their money to.

[–] [email protected] 57 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (3 children)

with plenty of disposable income.

I would even wager a lot of those people don't have the disposable income but dispose it anyway.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 7 months ago (4 children)

I dunno, I see a lot of 50K+ pickup trucks with Trump stuff all over them.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Servicing the debt on a $50k pickup on an 84 month note at 12.35% is different than owning a $50k pickup outright.

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[–] [email protected] 64 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Didn't Trump just get found guilty of overinflating the value of his properties? Why is this any different?

[–] [email protected] 56 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Because it's a method of laundering money from foreign powers

[–] [email protected] 18 points 7 months ago

Lol, just foreign?

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[–] [email protected] 58 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Let’s invest in the company most tied to the health of a single man. And let that man be high in years and eat McDonald’s like it was going out of style. That won’t ever backfire.

The minute he dies, all users start going elsewhere.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 7 months ago (1 children)

More importantly, it is tied to the mental health of a single man, and that has already gone out of the window long ago.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 7 months ago

That's a feature, not a bug.

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[–] [email protected] 53 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Two words. Money. Laundering.

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[–] [email protected] 51 points 7 months ago (10 children)

"defies logic" no it doesn't it is a wall street con job per usual for those fucking ghouls lol.

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[–] [email protected] 50 points 7 months ago (23 children)

Follow the money. I guarantee this is Russian financing being done at a remove.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Don’t forget about the Saudis.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 7 months ago (9 children)

The CCP is also very interested in all this

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[–] [email protected] 50 points 7 months ago (1 children)

It almost sounds like an in-power group of people who have a vested interest in other in-power people being able to leverage "value" of an asset to get out of trouble to then help the first group are artificially inflating the "value" of something they set.

Twitter is valued at around $19B by Musk himself, and it has around 300 million users. Truth has 500,000 users. They have 1/600th the users and are valued at 2/3rd. They only generated $5M in revenue while losing $50M in costs. Twitter had roughly 200 times higher revenue, yet only 50% higher value. It's insane how obviously wrong the valuation is. And the thing is, sometimes tech companies have seemingly high valuations when losing money but are still worth it because of the potential for growth... but where is the growth coming from for Truth? Ain't nobody jumping from Twitter for Truth that hasn't already. It's not like there's a huge boom of conservatives coming our way. If anything, Truth's current trend of losing users will only continue with Threads coming online and other social media outlets.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Twitter is valued at around $19B by Musk himself, and it has around 300 million users. Truth has 500,000 users.

Someone needs to tweet this out at Musk. Point out that he is significantly more dumb than Trump and just let there egos flare...

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[–] [email protected] 47 points 7 months ago (4 children)

Money laundering. Just like buying those bibles.

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[–] [email protected] 45 points 7 months ago (5 children)

This is literally just a loophole to allow foreign governments to give Trump boatloads of cash. Instead of giving him explicit gifts, you prop up the price of his worthless company's shares

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[–] [email protected] 39 points 7 months ago (1 children)

The stock market is untether from reality to being with.

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 7 months ago (11 children)

So trump social is going higher then reddit? Idk if i want to cry or laugh.

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Could Trump's Truth Social stock value be powered by massive fraud? Experts say things like "slammed," "mystified," and "dazzled!" This and more for the next 24 hour news cycle until he does another damn fool thing that we can exploit.

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 7 months ago (2 children)

WELCOME TO FINANCE! There are no rules, and if we break them, we remake them!

This is a case where I literally both hate the player and the game.

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Unless it's just the latest way eastern european oligarchs can launder money to him.

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Attempting tiny 💎 🙌 it seems. 🚀

At this point Trump is going for like an EGOT combination of federal agencies putting cases together against him. "Don't have the SEC yet, gotta add that one."

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 7 months ago (1 children)

It's still higher at market close than Reddit was on their open last week. I'm not trying to make a point or anything, I just find it amusing.

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

“This is the usual situation. The stock is pretty much divorced from fundamentals,” said Jay Ritter

FTFY

[–] [email protected] 24 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Yeah, that goes with the Tesla stock among others.

Edit: Many of these are becoming just a popularity contest at this point.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 7 months ago (2 children)

a popularity contest that a huge percentage of us are forced to have our retirement accounts through. awesome.

the stock market is a scam in which we are forced to participate

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Pretty much all of these tech valuations are made up bullshit.

But is this one of the most made up bullshittiest? Only time will tell.

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 7 months ago (9 children)

a price tag that experts warn is untethered to reality.

Is there any company whose stock price is tethered to reality? In any case, sounds like a surefire win to short that shit

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Trump is the best thing to ever happen for the 1%. People are more divided then ever, and the media doesn't have to report on anything but him.

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (5 children)

Being untethered to reality is literally in the core of stock trading. It's nonsense, modern day magick for the least cool people.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 7 months ago (1 children)

It is now also the most expensive stock to short.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 7 months ago

You can now sell out your country on the NASDAQ. Now that's an efficient market.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Of course he made the stock symbol his initials...

[–] [email protected] 20 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Just like we had to wait longer for Covid stimulus checks so that his name could appear on them. Guy's ego is a big problem.

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