Over the past few weeks, former President Donald Trump has become a lot richer, and so have shareholders in the social media company that bears his name.
Shares of Trump Media & Technology have nearly tripled in value since bottoming out in late September, a week after a rule expired that prevented some early investors, including Trump, from selling tens of millions of shares.
Donald Trump’s rise in the polls has boosted the stock price of his fledgling media company.Credit: Bloomberg
The stock of the parent company of Truth Social jumped about 10 per cent on Tuesday in New York, on top of Monday’s 18 per cent gain.
Over the past few weeks, the surge has added about $US2 billion ($3 billion) to the value of Trump’s nearly 60 per cent stake in the company. The former president’s 115-million-share stake is now worth about $US3.8 billion.
Ever since Trump Media became a public company in March, its stock has been on a rollercoaster ride, rising and falling often in sync with the perceived odds of Trump’s chances of victory in the presidential election.
Most public opinion polls show the race between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris to be neck and neck. But the betting and prediction markets — which are influenced by traders and crypto speculators — have recently shown Trump taking a decisive lead.
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One of the more popular prediction sites, Polymarket, has Trump ahead of Harris by a margin of 57 per cent to 43 per cent. Polymarket is a favourite platform for crypto traders, and has raised tens of millions of dollars from Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund. Thiel, a Silicon Valley billionaire, has backed a number of conservative candidates in recent years, including Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, Trump’s running mate.
“This stock has never traded on fundamentals, but is a barometer for both Trump and Trump’s followers,” said Kristi Marvin, a former investment banker and founder of SPACInsider, which collects data about special purpose acquisition companies (a type of shell company, like the one that merged with Trump Media in March to give it a public listing). “And in the same way people can now bet on Trump and the election on sites like Polymarket, people can also bet on Trump via the stock market.”