DJT stock sees wild swings ahead of election results, briefly halted for volatility

Trump Media & Technology Group stock (DJT) was briefly halted for volatility in late afternoon trading on Tuesday as investors brace for more wild swings with Election Day underway in the US.

Shares quickly erased 15% gains and reversed Monday’s double-digit percentage rise to kick off the week.

The stock somewhat recovered from steeper losses but still closed down a little over 1%.

Shares suffered their largest percentage decline last week and closed down around 20% to end the five-day period on Friday, which shaved off around $4 billion from the company’s market cap. The stock has still more than doubled from its September lows.

The latest price action comes as investors await the results of the presidential election between Republican nominee Donald Trump and Democratic candidate Kamala Harris.

Volatility in the stock is expected to continue. One investor has warned that if Trump loses the election, shares of DJT could plunge to $0.

“It’s a binary bet on the election,” Matthew Tuttle, CEO of investment fund Tuttle Capital Management, recently told Yahoo Finance’s Catalysts.

Read more: Trump vs. Harris: 4 ways the next president could impact your bank accounts

Tuttle, who currently owns put options on the stock, said the trajectory of shares hinges on “a buy the rumor, sell the fact” trading strategy.

“I would imagine that the day after him winning, you’d see this come down,” he surmised. “If he loses, I think it goes to zero.”

Interactive Brokers’ chief strategist Steve Sosnick said DJT has taken on a meme-stock “life of its own.”

“It was volatile on the way up, and when a stock is that volatile in one direction, it has a tendency to be that volatile in the other direction,” he said on a call with Yahoo Finance last week.

Prior to the recent volatility, shares in the company — the home of the Republican nominee’s social media platform, Truth Social — had been steadily rising in recent weeks as both domestic and overseas betting markets shifted in favor of a Trump victory.

Prediction sites like Polymarket, PredictIt, and Kalshi all showed Trump’s presidential chances ahead of those of Democratic nominee and current Vice President Kamala Harris. That lead, however, narrowed significantly over the weekend as new polling showed Harris surpassing Trump in Iowa, which has historically voted Republican.

And as betting markets tighten, national polls show both candidates in a virtually deadlocked race. Polls in key battleground states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, which are likely to decide the fate of the election, also show razor-thin margins.

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In September, the stock traded at its lowest level since the company’s debut following the expiration of its highly publicized lockup period. Shares had also been under pressure, as previous polling in September saw Harris with a bigger lead over the former president.

Trump founded Truth Social after he was kicked off major social media apps like Facebook (META) and Twitter, now X, following the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riots. Trump has since been reinstated on those platforms. He officially returned to posting on X in mid-August after about a year’s hiatus.

As Truth Social attempts to take on social media incumbents, the fundamentals of the company have long been in question.

On Tuesday, DJT dropped third quarter results after the market close that revealed a net loss of $19.25 million for the quarter ending Sept. 30. This was narrower than the $26.03 million the company reported in the year-ago period.

DJT also reported revenue of $1.01 million, a slight year-over-year drop compared to the $1.07 million it reported in the third quarter of 2023. Over the past nine months ending Sept. 30, revenue has fallen 23% from the prior-year period.

Shares initially fell as much as 6% in after-hours trading on the heels of the report but bounced back to trade about 1% in higher.

Last month, the company revealed that its COO had stepped down in September.

Trump maintains a roughly 60% interest in DJT. At current levels of around $35 a share, Trump Media boasts a market cap of about $6.8 billion, giving the former president a stake worth around $4.1 billion.

Alexandra Canal is a Senior Reporter at Yahoo Finance. Follow her on X @allie_canal, LinkedIn, and email her at alexandra.canal@yahoofinance.com.

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