By Brian Swint
Shares of Trump Media & Technology, the social platform majority-owned by former President Donald Trump, were rising sharply early Tuesday as voters prepared to cast their ballots on election day.
The stock, which trades under the ticker DJT, has whipsawed over the past few weeks, rising higher than $50 from as low as $20 a month ago. The shares rose 6.4% to $36.60 in the premarket after gaining 12% in Monday trading.
DJT could be a proxy for Trump's odds of winning the election, or a vehicle for traders to make money on a volatile security. Either way, interest in the operator of Truth Social, which Trump launched as an alternative to X, the site formerly known as Twitter, is as high as ever with the outcome of the vote still on a knife edge.
Betting markets still see Trump as the clear favorite with a 58% chance of winning, though the odds have come down in the past few days, according to RealClearPolitics. Opinion polls show an almost even split, with Vice President Kamala Harris on 48.7% and Trump with 48.6% of the vote.
A winner probably won't be declared after polls close today -- it may take several days or even weeks to tally the vote in the critical swing states that will decide the outcome.
There's still a lot of room for surprises. Almost all polls put the two candidates within the margin of error. Small leads for one or the other can also lead to big differences in the electoral college. The latest unexpected poll came Monday in a poll showing Harris leading an Iowa, a state thought to be leaning hard toward Trump. That pushed Trump Media shares down in early trading, but they recovered in the afternoon.
It isn't clear what will become of Trump Media if the former president loses the election. Its revenue -- it made less than $1 million in sales in the second quarter, the most recent period it reported -- are tiny for a company with a $7 billion market capitalization. It's possible that it could grow into a competitor to Elon Musk's X, or to Meta Platform's Threads app, or Reddit. But it would take a lot of work.
For now, and maybe for a few weeks to come, DJT will probably still rise and fall with Trump's fortunes.
Write to Brian Swint at brian.swint@barrons.com
This content was created by Barron's, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. Barron's is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
November 05, 2024 05:51 ET (10:51 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2024 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
