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.

  • Veedem@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

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

    • girlfreddy@lemmy.caOP
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      That’s it in a nutshell. The rich want him because he’s malleable and will obey their every command.

            • MonkeMischief@lemmy.today
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              He did however, set the precedent that workers in some jobs simply wouldn’t be allowed to strike because they’re “too important”, when he forcibly broke an air traffic controller strike.

              Unions and by extension workers, started to erode pretty quickly after that, in such a short time that they became relatively unheard of until recently.

              He also un-funded state run mental hospitals. What to do with all those folks who mentally struggled to function in society? “Dunno! If they can’t make money. Put em’ on the street I guess!” was the Reagan solution. The following step is to “Endlessly ostracize and complain about the unhoused.”

              He pushed the idea of the “wellfare queen”, a charicatured, often minority, character, who had a bunch of kids and used government money to do drugs all day instead of work. This nonsense was used quite effectively to discourage and shame the use of social safety nets, as his administration dismantled them altogether.

              There’s innumerable social ills and societal failings that can be traced back to some policy Reagan and his ilk pushed. Very similar to Thatcher across the pond. He’s largely to thank for corporations having more rights than people, and “Maybe you should just individually work harder” being the answer to everyone who is constantly whipped about by “market forces.”

              Thanks to people like him and Thatcher, people STILL believe that corporations making unlimited riches will somehow lead to higher wages and more days off, instead of going to a hoard in some offshore account, driving wages down, and normalizing mass-layoffs.

              That guy labored endlessly to destroy the so-called “American dream.” But hey, he didn’t invade Iraq!

    • fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.de
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      8 months ago

      No, it’s not.

      To do that they could’ve just paid him $x to “advertise” on truth social.

      Buying shares this way nets him nothing. He can’t do anything with these shares, by the time he can they will be worthless.

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    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.

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      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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        8 months ago

        or the other shareholders can sue.

        Being on the wrong side of a court proceeding (or several) doesn’t seem to be much of a disincentive to Trump doing whatever he wants.

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          Not to mention if the foreign investors are using this to curry favour with the potential next POTUS, the ‘investment’ isn’t in the $DJT stock, it’s in what trump will do for them if elected. They won’t sue unless he loses.

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        Ah yes, thank GOD for the failsafe financial regulations in this country! There are LAWS!

        Like, wow.

    • Ann Archy@lemmy.world
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      “I’ll settle my debts when I get to the White House.”

      Solid gamble for investors, honestly. Like, extremely good. If I was a subhuman parasitic dickworm or something, I’d put at least half my chips on red.

      And seriously, look what we’re doing. While we are talking about how he is going to repay his debts for [insert crooked fucking shit and prostitutes pissing on Trumps face here], we are not talking about how the FUCK a guy with his record is even allowed to run for president.

      Just moving the goalposts, one investor at a time. Everyone knows this hog will get slaughtered sooner or later, and they are sucking its tiny teats for as much daddy milk they can before it dries up.

      Then it’s MTG’s turn to be led to the top of the Aztec pyramid and control the world for a few years before she goes soccer mom tits up.

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    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.

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    8 months ago

    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.

    • BreakDecks@lemmy.ml
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      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…

      • Cosmic Cleric@lemmy.world
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        Quite disturbing to see the microblogging equivalent of The Daily Stormer with a multibillion dollar market cap on the stock market…

        To be fair, the code is not the content.

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          He was their technical director and the site is absolutely covered with Nazis. Find me a Soapbox instance that isn’t.

          One of the key features of Soapbox (outside of Truth Social) is that you can still see and boost content from other instances that have blocked yours. Gleason even created workarounds to defeat authorized fetch.

          This is so that they can engage in Kiwifarms-style harassment.

          I would absolutely say that the malice is written into the code itself.

  • stanleytweedle@lemmy.world
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    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.

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      with plenty of disposable income.

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

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

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        True, yeah I guess the money they should be paying in child support or just feeding their kids isn’t technically ‘disposable’, but if Truth Social can get to it before the kids do… I guess they owned the libs…

      • pete_the_cat@lemmy.world
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        Oh absolutely. They buy into his bullshit products because they think it will make them money, but in the end they’re worse off than when they started.

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      The best and most expensive megaphone. It’s so great. You can write all these beautiful letters on it and you know folks, I can see those letters. Millions and millions of letters, in fact we have the best letters in the entire alphabet, it’s true. Nobody on the internet has such a beautiful letters as I have. I practically invented them. And you can own some of those letters by buying the best stock on the market. It comes with a special orange colored email when you buy them. Just that email will be worth a gazillion because of contains my letters.

      Make the internet GREAT AGAIN, folks !!!

      I mean I was looking at it this afternoon market cap of 2.7 billion for a bunch of dumb angry people, who are listening to their obesed, dementing orange wannabe Jesus. It shows as someone else mentioned in this thread, (some) tech companies are just inflated air castles. If Trumps platform 2.7b worth the the real Jesus Must be a multi trillionaire

  • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
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    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.

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    8 months ago

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

    • RobertoOberto
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      I don’t think “con job” is the whole story here. There’s always money to be made when morons gather together and soulless hedge fund managers don’t care about the side effects. What better place could there be to sell advertising space for testosterone supplements and nuclear fallout shelters?

      Not to mention all the free advertising for it from both social and mainstream media.

      • hamid@lemmy.world
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        Con job is the name for what you described. It is short hand for confidence game and literally means “A confidence game, also known as a con, scam, grift, or flim flam, is an attempt to win the trust and confidence of a victim, known as the “mark,” in order to defraud them.”

        Those soulless hedge fund managers and conning the investors and Trumpers to make money.

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        There’s always money to be made when morons gather together

        Hence Trump selling ugly sneakers and “presidentially endorsed” bibles…

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          Him selling bibles just astounds me. How did he not just explode into a billion orange particles when he picked it up?

          There really is no justice in the world.

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            My brain starts to ache just trying to figure out how the heck anybody can associate that man with any morally-goaled faith.

            Even the most basic background on things he doesn’t even dispute shows he’s the antithesis of everything Jesus even talked about.

            I’m surprised anyone who considers themselves and this guy a “Christian” doesn’t just spontaneously combust from the sheer cognitive dissonance required to hold themselves together.

          • Ann Archy@lemmy.world
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            Oh god I thought that was a joke.

            Edit: hoooooly shit.
            https://apnews.com/article/trump-god-bless-usa-bible-greenwood-2713fda3efdfa297d0f024efb1ca3003

            This surpasses Simpsons levels of dark humor.

            “The word of God- approved by and with written foreword in simple English by Mussolini Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow Nicolae Ceaușescu Damold G Trumph, only $59.99
            You know how I know God isn’t real? Because that.

            Jesus be like… “dude”.

  • dogslayeggs@lemmy.world
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    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.

    • Corkyskog
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      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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    8 months ago

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

    • Ann Archy@lemmy.world
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      I am shocked hearing people say that out loud even. Isn’t that extremely, painfully, provably obvious to everyone? No. It is not. It is a matter of “both sides” debate, apparently.

      “Hi, I sell snake oil. It cures cancer!”
      “Oooh, I LOVE not having cancer! I’ll buy 1. No, wait, 1000!”

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      guarantee this is Russian financing

      Fair more likely it’s Saudi or Israeli money, given how Russians have been cut off from the SWIFT banking system through sanctions.

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      Russian financing how? They can’t access banks, I doubt they’re wasting precious foreign currency on this.

      • Rob T Firefly@lemmy.world
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        Just because they’re not allowed to access banks doesn’t mean they can’t.

        Lots of people, organizations, and even governments do all sorts of crimes even though they’re really not supposed to. Conceptually speaking, money laundering is a fairly simple crime to do and, like so many crimes, it becomes easier to get away with the more powerful you are.

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            And if you’re gullible it’s easy to reframe them as part of the “nothing is happening in the world and geopolitics are not a thing” conspiracy theory.

              • Ann Archy@lemmy.world
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                Yeah, us communists are all the same, just repetitive propagandistic slogans and dumb soundbites led by an uncharismatic moron telling us what to do.

                Go build a wall, or bridge or whatever.

                Edit: Wait, wait, you weren’t being sarcastic? If so my bad.

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          Every dollar you launder still has a risk of being caught, like I said, they have more pressing things to spend foreign currency on.

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        8 months ago

        They can still trade in rubles with other countries that are willing to trade with them. It’s not inconceivable that they can ‘launder’ a trade via, say India:

        1. Russia buys a few billion-ruble toothbrushes from India

        2. India invests the equivalent in USD with $DJT (minus a cut)

        3. India uses those rubles to trade at market value for goods with other countries that also trade in rubles

        Replace India and Saudi Arabia with any 2 countries on this list: https://www.tbsnews.net/economy/bangladesh-among-over-30-countries-approved-trade-rouble-russian-embassy-705798

        • aidan@lemmy.world
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          Cluing in many people into conspiracies like that would require makes them much harder to keep secret

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        I doubt they’re wasting precious foreign currency on this.

        Their EXISTENCE hinges on winning the US election right now.

        It’s literally ALL they are “wasting precious currency” on.

        • aidan@lemmy.world
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          Their EXISTENCE hinges on winning the US election right now.

          What does this mean?

    • Ann Archy@lemmy.world
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      You know… In my life I’ve had to talk a few people out of scams.

      I know they were scammed, it’s blatantly a scam, the evidence is overwhelming, my experience is solid, everyone I know of’s experience says the same.

      Yet they will argue with you back and forth and never really be satisfied because they want to believe it so much, and I imagine it stings a good bit being told you’re being ripped the fuck off and you’re too stupid or inexperienced to understand that.

      I’m never confrontational about it, I just make it very perfectly clear that proceeding would be extremely ill advised, and that even their own worries brought them to me asking for my opinion because they trust my judgment.

      It scares me how long it takes to convince them, and how often in the end they come to me a month later and I ask them how it went, and they went and bought it anyway, for whatever far fetched rationalization they managed to construct for themselves.

      Psychology is real, psychology is simple, all it takes to control humans is to have no care for anything but yourself.

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        “Yes, I know it’s scammy, but I’m getting in on the ground floor so I’m not the one who will be holding the bag” is a sentiment I’ve seen (and occasionally held) entirely too often.

        • Ann Archy@lemmy.world
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          NGL I’ve been there myself more than once. That is how I know. Winners never quit, quitters never win, but if you never quit and never win, you’re a moron.

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    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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      Trump can’t cash out shares for 6 months. So now they have to keep the price inflated for 6 months.

      Could be some folks find value in social media for a group preselected for gullibility.

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        Trump can’t cash out shares for 6 months. So now they have to keep the price inflated for 6 months.

        Unless they’re just unloading their shares onto Rubes. In which case, they only need other people to buy-and-hold at the inflated rate.

        • Ann Archy@lemmy.world
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          This is not aimed at you or anyone particular just my thoughts, but it’s amazing how uneducated people are when it comes to finance. I know I am, and every day I learn a little more of how gullible I’ve been. I did live on the streets selling drugs though, and once you see how that game is played, you see how every fucking game is played. You do this and he does that and they do this and that for you and we all come out on top, right? Throw a couple of million dollar lawyers, accountants, legal experts, think tanks, connections to the monetary and industrial elite of the world, and stack the SEC with 92% former and future employees of yours, and suddenly the game makes sense without any need to get the academics.

          It’s not about the math, it’s about who you know.

          If anyone is skeptical then remember exactly what Clump was convicted of and what his punishment was.

          Now he’s crowdfunding that punishment away, and people think that somehow it’s impossible that it’s a scam because of financial regulations? Bruhs…

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        Except he can sell sooner, if certain steps are taken. Or so it has been widely reported.

    • Ann Archy@lemmy.world
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      But which governments, though? Which one, there are so many… I can’t think of a single one that would be motivated to influence US politics and do something so blatantly anti-democratic.