Donald Trump Loses $267 Million Over Weekend as Truth Stock Plunges

A smartphone screen displays the logo of Donald Trump's Truth Social app besides that of Facebook (L) with (R) the logo of US online social media and social networking site 'X'. Shares in the former president's social media company have declined in value this weekend.

Donald Trump has lost some $267,367,500 million this weekend from the declining value of shares in his social media company.

Shares in the former president's social media platform, Truth Social, declined in value by 6.29 percent on Monday, wiping millions from the Republican's portfolio.

Truth Social launched in February 2022, about a year after the former president was banned from X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook for posts about the January 6 riots at the U.S. Capitol. While he has since been reinstated to the platforms, he opts to use Truth Social.

Since shareholders of Digital World Acquisition Corp., an existing shell company, agreed to merge with Truth Social's parent company Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) earlier this year—clearing the way for the former president's company to go public—its stock value has fluctuated and has now declined.

According to Google Finance data, as of June 18, the price of a share, traded under the ticket "DJT", plunged to $34.72 per share, down by over 6 percent.

Last week, the stock dipped to under $40 at $39.31 per share, marking the first time the stock had declined to that level since April 25 when it was $38.49. However, the price of a share is still higher than on April 17 when it dipped to $22.84, the lowest the share price had been since January 16, when it was at $22.35, before Digital World merged with Trump's Truth Social.

The former president has a close to 65 percent stake in TMTG. The company offered him 36 million additional shares earlier this month which brought his total stock in the company to 114.75 million shares, according to filings from the firm to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

With the number of shares he owns and the decline in the share value, Trump is down by over $267 million, Matthew Tuttle, founder and CEO of Tuttle Capital Management, told Newsweek.

A TMTG spokesperson told Newsweek: "From stories like this, which have the depth of a third-grade book report, to your bizarre tendency to steal your material from tabloid publications like RawStory, Newsweek constantly demonstrates the reason why it has no readers."

Speaking to Newsweek, Todd Landman, a professor of political science at Nottingham University in the U.K. said the shares were "highly volatile and erratic" making them a "great risk to investors."

He said: "The share price trends have been highly volatile and erratic. The 52-week high for the stock is $79.38, while the 52-week low is $22.55. Such swings in value present great risk to investors, who prefer, by and large, to see steady gains over time. A longer-term view suggests that investors may see a gain in the future, which may cause them to keep the stock. However, a 50-point swing in value appears on the face of it quite risky."

"If Truth Social can increase its number of users and offer new content and services, then there may be a return on investment in the future. The value will also be affected by the results of the election, which comes two months after the deadline when Trump has the option to sell his shares," Landman said.

Meanwhile, TMTG has had wider financial problems. It reported a net loss of $327.6 million for the first quarter of 2024. This loss was primarily attributed to non-cash expenses related to the company's merger with Digital World Acquisition Corp. TMTG posted a net loss of $210,300 the year before.

After Trump was found guilty of falsifying business records in his hush-money trial last month, Truth Social stock plunged and experts told Newsweek the former president's conviction may have impacted the stock's performance.

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