Trump Media Shares Rally After Assassination Attempt

Shares in Donald Trump’s social media company, Trump Media & Technology Group, which operates the Truth Social network, soared 33 percent in early US trading on Monday after the former US president survived an assassination attempt on Saturday.

During the attempt by a suspect who was quickly shot and killed by Secret Service snipers Trump was shot in the ear, but said he was fine.

Shares in Trump Media had risen as much as 70 percent over the weekend before settling.

Trump is the largest shareholder in the company, which was worth about $7.8 billion (£6bn) following Monday’s gains.

Meme stock

The company’s share price has been highly volatile tending to reflect events in Trump’s life and his prospects for reelection rather than business factors such as revenue and growth.

Analysts said the assassination attempt strengthens Trump’s chances of regaining the White House in November.

Louis Vincent Gave, chief executive of investment research firm Gavekal, said in a report that the incident and other factors “all but guarantee a strong Republican performance in November’s US elections”.

Shares in Trump Media, whose ticker symbol DJT bears the same letters as Trump’s initials, rose in January when Trump defeated Republican competitors in the primary elections.

They rose again in March when the company made its debut on the Nasdaq exchange through a merger with a blank-cheque company, but slumped at the start of Trump’s criminal fraud trial in April, which led to his conviction on felony charges of falsifying business records to cover up hush-money payments.

Social media enthusiasm

Before Monday’s rally the shares had been on a six-week slump.

They remain below their highs in March following the Nasdaq offering, but are up around 128 percent so far this year.

The large market capitalisation of Trump Media is at odds with its relatively small sales of about $770,500 in the first quarter.

By comparison, US Steel, with a comparable market capitalisation of about $8.9bn, booked revenues of $4.2bn in the same period.

Trump Media’s main offering is the Truth Social social media platform, which operates in a similar manner to X, formerly Twitter, and which Trump created after being temporarily banned from Twitter, YouTube and other services in 2021.

The service has about 2 million users, although figures vary according to different sources.