Republican presidential nominee and former President Donald Trump holds a rally at Madison Square Garden in New York on Oct. 27, 2024.
The Washington Post | The Washington Post | Getty Images
Shares of Donald Trump’s social media company surged more than 21% Monday, on the heels of the Republican presidential nominee’s campaign rally in New York City.
Trump Media stock closed $47.36 per share, eclipsing its recent peak in mid-July, when the company’s market value soared after Trump was nearly assassinated at a rally in Pennsylvania.
That spike was followed by a major sell-off that hit bottom in late September, when DJT stock scraped below $12 a share.
But the Truth Social operator recovered all of those losses in October, as the election between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, entered its final weeks.
Trump Media (DJT) Stock Price
Trump owns nearly 57% of Trump Media. That stake at Monday’s intraday high totaled about $5.4 billion — more than half of Trump’s on-paper net worth, according to Forbes.
The value of Trump’s majority stake has increased about $4 billion in the weeks since Trump Media hit its late-September lows.
During that time, the company has rolled out a separate streaming app, Truth+, and announced the resignation of its chief operating officer.
But analysts have frequently suggested that Trump Media’s multibillion-dollar market value and volatile stock movements have little to do with company news — or the performance of Truth Social, which generates scant revenue and draws a relatively miniscule audience.
They have instead come to view the stock as an outlet for the company’s many pro-Trump retail investors to support the former president, and a proxy for betting on his odds of retaking the White House.
Monday’s stock surge could suggest those traders are feeling a burst of enthusiasm after Trump’s much-promoted rally in Manhattan’s Madison Square Garden, which drew thousands of his supporters to the heart of a deep-blue metropolis.
“Our dear President @realDonaldTrump packs MSG yesterday for the Rally of a lifetime and TODAY, the entire market is UP UP UP!!! $DJT,” one Truth Social user wrote Monday morning in a Trump Media shareholder group.
Trump Media’s recent gains have coincided with a shift in the Republican’s favor on political betting sites such as Polymarket and Kalshi, even as polls broadly show a neck-and-neck race.
Odds and gambling platforms do not use the same methodologies used by traditional political polling, and therefore are not substitutes for political polls.
Critics have raised concerns that the election betting markets are being manipulated.
Polymarket confirmed last week that a single French national built a massive pro-Trump position on its presidential election bet using four separate accounts.