Trump Media & Technology Group stock (DJT) surged as much as 25% in after-hours trading on Tuesday as investors brace for more wild swings with early voting results underway. Shares have since retreated, rising a more modest 10%.
Trump has clinched Kentucky, Indiana, and West Virginia, according to the Associated Press, while Harris has claimed Vermont.
The stock had a wild session during market hours after 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.
Shares were still able to somewhat recover from steeper losses, although the stock still closed down a little over 1%.
Last week, shares suffered their largest percentage decline and closed down around 20% to end the five-day period on Friday, which shaved off around $4 billion from the company’s market cap. The stock has still more than doubled from its September lows.
The latest price action comes as investors await the results of the presidential election between Republican nominee Donald Trump and Democratic candidate Kamala Harris.
Volatility in the stock is expected to continue. One investor has warned that if Trump loses the election, shares of DJT could plunge to $0.
“It’s a binary bet on the election,” Matthew Tuttle, CEO of investment fund Tuttle Capital Management, recently told Yahoo Finance’s Catalysts.
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Tuttle, who currently owns put options on the stock, said the trajectory of shares hinges on “a buy the rumor, sell the fact” trading strategy.
“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.
Prior to the recent volatility, shares in the company — the home of the Republican nominee’s social media platform, Truth Social — had been steadily rising in recent weeks as both domestic and overseas betting markets shifted in favor of a Trump victory.
Prediction sites like Polymarket, PredictIt, and Kalshi all showed Trump’s presidential chances ahead of those of Democratic nominee and current Vice President Kamala Harris. That lead, however, narrowed significantly over the weekend as new polling showed Harris surpassing Trump in Iowa, which has historically voted Republican.
