Trump Media rises amid DJT post-lockup trading frenzy

Trump Media shares closed higher Tuesday as the company behind Truth Social looked to pull up from a downward spiral that coincided with company insiders, including majority owner Donald Trump, getting clearance to start selling their stock.

The company, which trades as DJT on the Nasdaq, ended the trading day up more than 5% at $12.79 per share.

Traders exchanged more than 21 million shares in the session, vastly exceeding the 30-day average daily volume of 8.8 million shares, according to data from FactSet.

Tuesday’s upswing followed six straight trading days in the red, which drove Trump Media stock down more than 32%.

That dive was just the latest negative stretch in a monthslong slump for Trump Media, which went public in late March after completing a merger with a special purpose acquisition company.

Since surging to an intraday peak of $79.38 per share in its Nasdaq debut, Trump Media stock has lost nearly 84% of its value.

On Monday, the stock fell to its lowest point since before October 2021, when news of a planned merger between Trump Media and the SPAC, Digital World Acquisition Corp., was first made public.

Trump currently owns nearly 57% of the company’s outstanding shares. While the value of his stake has declined by billions of dollars in recent months, it is still worth nearly $1.5 billion.

The Republican presidential nominee and other early investors in the company were barred from selling their shares until lockup agreements had expired, which they did at the closing bell Thursday.

The lockup expiration fueled waves of speculation about whether early investors would seek to dump their shares in the company, whose sole product, Truth Social, has generated scant revenue in recent fiscal quarters.

Trump has vowed not to sell his stake.

But Trump Media warned that other early investors were planning to cash out as soon as the lockups expired.

It was unclear Tuesday morning if any formerly locked-up entities had sought to sell since Thursday. But in most cases, these sales would trigger disclosure requirements with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.