Trump Media & Technology Group stock (DJT) surged around 20% in early trading on Wednesday as Donald Trump clinched victory over Kamala Harris in the presidential election. Ahead of the opening bell, shares had jumped as much as 36% in premarket trading.
With a win in Wisconsin, Trump secured the 270 electoral college votes needed to win, according to the Associated Press. The Republican is now set to have the distinction of being the 45th and the 47th US president.
Shares in the company — the home of Trump’s social media platform, Truth Social — rose around 25% in after-hours moves late Tuesday as Harris’s route to victory narrowed, and then jumped again after the win was declared in the early morning on Wednesday.
The stock had a wild session during market hours on Tuesday as trading was halted several times due to volatility, with shares quickly erasing 15% gains and reversing Monday’s double-digit percentage rise to kick off the week. Despite a recovery from steeper losses, shares still closed down a little over 1% on Tuesday.
Strategists had categorized the stock as a binary bet on the election. Matthew Tuttle, CEO of investment fund Tuttle Capital Management, recently told Yahoo Finance’s Catalysts that the trajectory of shares has hinged on “a buy the rumor, sell the fact” trading strategy.
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“I would imagine that the day after him winning, you’d see this come down,” he surmised. “If he loses, I think it goes to zero.”
Interactive Brokers’ chief strategist Steve Sosnick said DJT has taken on a meme-stock “life of its own.”
“It was volatile on the way up, and when a stock is that volatile in one direction, it has a tendency to be that volatile in the other direction,” he said on a call with Yahoo Finance last week.
In September, shares in Trump Media traded at their lowest level since the company’s debut following the expiration of its highly publicized lockup period.
Shares had bounced back from their lows, though, as both domestic and overseas betting markets shifted in favor of a Trump victory.
Trump founded Truth Social after he was kicked off major social media apps like Facebook (META) and Twitter, now X, following the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riots. Trump has since been reinstated on those platforms. He officially returned to posting on X in mid-August after about a year’s hiatus.
As Truth Social attempts to take on social media incumbents, the fundamentals of the company have long been in question.
