(Reuters) – Shares of Trump Media & Technology Group dipped in choppy trading on Friday, erasing earlier gains driven by President Joe Biden’s shaky performance against Republican rival Donald Trump at the first 2024 U.S. presidential debate.
TMTG shares have been volatile all year, as the stock is mostly driven by speculative bets around Trump and his quest to return to the White House. The company itself loses money and is by some measures one of the most overvalued stocks among U.S. listings.
“Fundamentally speaking, there is nothing much behind the Trump Media & Technology Group. The moves that we see are mostly speculative,” said Ipek Ozkardeskaya, senior analyst at Swissquote Bank.
Trading volumes surged after Thursday’s debate and shares shot up in the morning as traders responded to Biden’s performance. But the stock was unable to hold on to its gains and was last off by 1.7%.
It came under pressure earlier this month after a jury found Trump guilty of falsifying documents to cover up a payment to silence a porn star.
The company, owner of Trump’s social media platform Truth Social, reported revenue of $770,500 for the March quarter and an adjusted operating loss of $12.1 million. It was last valued at $6.7 billion.
TMTG shares rose as much as 8% early in the session as Biden’s allies scrambled to contain the fallout from his performance after he struggled to stem a barrage of attacks and false claims from Trump.
Retail traders were net buyers of the stock on Friday, with their buy orders outnumbering sell orders by a 1.7 ratio at 10:30 a.m. ET, J.P. Morgan data showed.
Trump owned 64.9% of TMTG as of June 10, worth about $4.2 billion as of the stock’s last close, according to LSEG data.
(Reporting by Sruthi Shankar and Pranav Kashyap in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta and Devika Syamnath)
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