Trump Media's stock surge: Here's what to know

Former President Trump's stake in DJT, now worth over $6 billion, which started as a social media company, became what seems to be now a meme stock and perhaps a proxy on Trump's popularity and maybe even the presidency. We'll see. Robert Frank joins us now with more on the move and the former president's new wealth vehicle. Robert, what do you think's going on here? Well, Andrew, Donald Trump heads into this election nearly twice as wealthy as he was in the last two elections. And the reason, as you mentioned, is Trump media. The shares of DJT more than tripling just over the past month. He owns about 57% of the company, about 114 million shares. So that stake now worth $5.9 billion as of the end of trading yesterday. They account for nearly three quarters now of his total net worth, which is about $8 billion. Now, if elected, he would not only be the richest president ever, he would be the first to hold office while controlling a publicly traded company. The president and vice president are largely exempt from government conflict of interest rules. During his first term, he put the Trump Organization into a blind trust. You might remember that. A lawsuit involving his D.C. hotel and potential foreign interest was dismissed by the Supreme Court back in 2021 on the grounds that he had already left office. Now, with DJT, wealthy investors and governments now have a direct path to add to Trump's wealth and they can remain anonymous. Trump saying in September he has no plans to sell the shares. The Trump campaign saying in a statement, quote, Unlike most politicians, President Trump didn't get into politics for profit. He's fighting because he loves the people of this country and he wants to make America great again. One of the ironies here is that as of yesterday, true social parent company Trump Media is worth the same or more as X, formerly known as Twitter. They're both around $10 billion. So that's interesting, given the user base and the profile. The question that I have and we've talked about whether this is a proxy for his popularity in the presidential race or what it actually is. If you were trying to do this as a make the business case. Yeah, there is no business case. OK, well, that was my question. Is there? No. But is there a case to be made that if he becomes the president, the companies are going to want to advertise on said platform in a way that they didn't before, either because they think that it is they either want to curry favor with the president or because they think it's a great way to market their wares to individuals in a way that they didn't before? It's possible. We haven't heard a path forward from the company on why they could even ever approach this valuation. You know, he's posting on X. So, you know, he does have that platform to hope that sort of truth social would be the one capture point for all of his communications that hasn't panned out. It moves around so much that what you just wrote in the piece you just did could be a different piece tomorrow. It could be. No. Three weeks ago, three weeks ago, four weeks ago, we were talking about it at 16 and it went through the lockup period had expired. And everybody thought, well, Trump's going to have to sell to take what he can get out of it because it's down from 50 to 16. And he said, that's what you've noted. He said, no, I'm not going to sell it. Next thing you turn around, it was 16, less than a month ago, and it's 50, no, it's 48. I think it's down today, two and three quarters. But so it was only worth two billion back then. Right. We don't know what it's what it's going to be worth. It's very volatile. It's paper wealth. So it could disappear. But right now it is three quarters. It is far more successful as a wealth creation machine right now today than anything else. Anything else he has ever done. Right. Back then it wasn't. And it's three quarters. But it's coincided with Bitcoin, the financials and the other Trump trades. Yeah. And I don't know. You look under the hood of who's trading this stuff. There's a lot of options. So it's not so much long term investors that are holding it. We don't know about the betting markets. And it's moved with that. It's moved. I mean, if someone with a lot of money and I won't mention any names, but they could be having some influence on all these markets. That's true. They could with with not a lot of money relative to their net worth. I mean, even Polly market, it's a couple of billion dollars has been bet. So, I mean, it's not a lot to some people. Be a lot to you. Yeah. But the Polly market, you know, according to the Wall Street Journal, there was one thirty million dollar bet that thirty million. Not if you're a guy worth, I don't know, two hundred billion dollars. But it was one percent of what you've seen. Some of the billionaires give to campaigns. That's right. Fifty million. Yeah. Upsides of that from some of the we've seen billionaires all together give about two billion dollars in this race. Right. So relative to what they've given, it's not a lot. But yeah, right now, the market cap is over 10 billion dollars for DJT. And it's a company that lost 16 million dollars in the most recent quarter. So it's not a business. And, you know, people say, well, it goes to zero if he loses. What happens if he wins to your point? What is the continued bull cases if it's a proxy in his popularity? OK, he won. Now what? So I think it's trading like a meme stock. Yeah.