Trump Media & Technology Group stock (DJT) surged as much as 25% in early trading on Wednesday as Donald Trump clinched victory over Kamala Harris in the presidential election. Shares pared gains to just under 10% by mid-afternoon.
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.
Trump maintains a roughly 60% interest in DJT. At current levels of around $37 a share, Trump Media boasts a market cap of about $7.4 billion, giving the former president a stake worth around $4.4 billion and making him roughly $500 million richer compared to where shares closed on Tuesday.
Shares in the company — the home of Trump’s social media platform, Truth Social — had risen around 25% in after-hours moves late Tuesday as Harris’s route to victory narrowed, then jumped again after the win was declared in the early morning on Wednesday.
The stock had a wild session in the run up to the election. 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 Tuesday to trade near $34.
Strategists have 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.
