And many traders are betting that the stock price will continue to fall further.

Shares of Trump Media have erased all their gains since they began trading under the ticker DJT last month.

The stock closed down more than 8% Monday at $37.17 after falling about 11% earlier in the day. It had traded above $79 a share on March 26, the day of its debut.

But experts say it’s hard to draw any firm conclusions about what the stock price’s movement means. That’s because so many available shares — about 12%, one of the highest ratios of any active stock listing — reflect traders’ bets that the stock will fall, said Ihor Dusaniwsky, managing director at S3 Partners, a data and predictive analytics company.

This is called short-selling.

      • Beemo Dinosaurierfuß@feddit.de
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        9 months ago

        Maybe I am misunderstanding you, but I also would never think of actually investing in anything Trump.

        Shortselling is betting that the stock value falls without actually holding the stock.

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          I admit I forgot what it meant when I posted that, but I don’t even think I would want my money involved in that sense. I just wouldn’t want my money involved.

          Also, I don’t quite remember what happens if shorting fails, but it benefits the stock, doesn’t it? I’d hate to be wrong and then help out Truth Social on top of it.

          • maynarkh@feddit.nl
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            9 months ago

            Shorting fails if more people buy for more money. Shorting is basically getting a loan in stock, and expecting the stock to fall so that you can pay it back easier.

            One example I had was that my country had a shitty currency that always lost value against the EUR, and at one point they offered loans with very low to no interest in that currency. If I took that loan, converted it to EUR, then I was basically shorting my country’s currency.

            What you might think of is short squeezes, which happen when some people (or more likely financial institutions) buy up so much of the stock that there simply isn’t any of it the people who owe can buy. Then it goes way up for a time.

            It happened at one point to VW, because Porsche bought most of the company for unrelated reasons, having people who took out loans in VW stock scrambling to find more stock to pay their debts back. You can read up on that incident to get to understand it better.

            • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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              9 months ago

              Shorting is basically getting a loan in stock, and expecting the stock to fall so that you can pay it back easier.

              I’m still confused by this… doesn’t it mean you have to pay for the stock if it doesn’t fall as well? So in that case, it helps benefit Truth Social?

              I guess I’m not understanding who benefits if shorting doesn’t work.

              • Khanzarate@lemmy.world
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                9 months ago

                So you borrow a share of a stock from someone, promising to pay them back the shares and a little fee for them not having their shares available. You turn around and immediately sell their share. Let’s say the share was worth 100$, so you pocket that. You anticipate the stock dropping to 80, and if you’re right, when that happens you buy a stock of that company later and then give that stock to the guy you borrowed it from. You make 20$, pay that little fee, and go about your day.

                If it doesn’t hit your target though, at some point you decide to cut your losses, since the fees associated with not giving back the stock are prohibitively high by design. If the share stayed at 100$, you just lose that little fee. If its 150$, you paid the fee and 50$.

                You always buy a stock later, but shorting weakens a stock because you sold first and that reflects in the stocks price, potentially triggering other sales.

                If you wanna say “ive never bought truth social stock” you can’t short, although you can still say “I’ve never invested in truth social”.

              • Omega@lemmy.world
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                9 months ago

                Whoever actually owns the stock and whoever you sold it to both benefit from the stock increase. Basically, everyone wins except the one shorting.

                • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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                  9 months ago

                  In other words, that would end up generating money for Trump himself.

                  Which sounds like a good enough reason not to make that gamble.

              • maynarkh@feddit.nl
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                9 months ago

                You do have to pay for it, yes.

                So here’s how you get money out of shorts:

                • You have 0 dollars. Let’s assume DJT costs 1 dollar now.
                • You borrow 100 DJT at 1 dollar, and immediately sell it. You have 100 dollars, and owe 100 DJT to the lender.
                • DJT goes to 50 cents.
                • You buy 100 DJT at 50 cents, and pay your debt back. You now have 50 dollars and 0 DJT.

                The point is similar to normal (long) trading, except you sell high first and buy low instead of normally buying low first and then selling high. You take a loan (in stock) to cover the intermediate time.

                And why is this bad for the stock value:

                • Let’s assume there are 500 DJT in existence on the market, all at your broker.
                • You borrow 100 DJT. There is now 600 DJT in existence, 500 at your broker (they still have an IOU for the 100) and 100 with you.
                • You sell the 100 DJT on the market. The value of DJT goes down, since it effectively undergoes inflation.

                So the question you might have is why does the broker say it has 500 after it has lent out 500. The answer in short (no pun intended) is they make the rules, literally. The stock market, the SEC, all of that is just financial institutions governing themselves, with very little government oversight. The SEC is literally the biggest banks on Wall Street, because the government says they are the only ones smart enough to police themselves.

                If this resembles fractional reserve banking, it’s because it’s exactly the same principle. If you don’t know what that is, it’s just banks doing the same “it exists both here and there” thing with loans, causing inflation of currency.

                And if you question “well isn’t this just an infinite money glitch, why don’t they do it infinitely?”, there are some limits on having to keep some reserves to prevent bank runs. That said, this market is 100 times as big as the world’s combined yearly GDP, so you might wonder how effective those rules are.

              • teft@lemmy.world
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                9 months ago

                Welcome to the whacky world of derivatives, Squid. The Big Short movie explains shorting stock pretty well while also covering how the 2008 financial crisis happened. Pretty good movie imho.

                • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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                  9 months ago

                  I’m still very confused despite people doing their best to explain it to me. But I’m glad it sounds like Trump wouldn’t benefit.

          • Beemo Dinosaurierfuß@feddit.de
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            9 months ago

            Also, I don’t quite remember what happens if shorting fails, but it benefits the stock, doesn’t it?

            First things first, I don’t really know how to actually shortsell stuff. My portfolio is super basic and my original comment was only half serious.

            But I think you have the causality the wrong way around.

            It’s less that the stock profits if my short fails.
            It’s more that my short fails (in that I lose money) if the price of the stock goes up.

            A single small shortsale can’t really affect the stock price in a meaningful way, but if it could it would generally lower the stocks price since it is a signal that the market (which the shortseller is a part of) has no trust in the stock.

            That said I am by no means a trading expert myself and could possibly miss some effects on the market.
            I only invest long term in broadly spread ETFs (think MSCI World and similar).

  • TigrisMorte@kbin.social
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    9 months ago

    It has negative income and no rational course to change that. Sadly the short sellers are profiting off the money laundering that was the entire intent.

    • formergijoe@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Of course there’s a natural course to change that. Trump becoming president so people can bribe him through Truth Social ad purchases.

    • MrVilliam@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      If he did, then I’m pretty sure he broke the law. Again. I don’t think he was allowed to do that or use the shares to secure a loan.

      • Nusm@yall.theatl.social
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        9 months ago

        I don’t think he was allowed

        And when exactly has that ever stopped him? And what was the penalty when he did what he wasn’t allowed? Wellllllllll………

        • MrVilliam@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          Yep. Just pointing this out so we can dial up the pressure ahead of time. Continuous pressure has finally gotten Biden to start talking about a ceasefire in Gaza, so pressure does work, even if it takes an unacceptably long time.

      • venusaur@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Ah, I thought he was gonna use his shares to pay off his fines, but maybe he made money another way with the IPO?

        • MrVilliam@lemmy.world
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          People were publicly pointing out that the money made from that IPO was theoretical and unrealized gains that couldn’t be sold off for 6 months per SEC rules specifically because it was assumed that he would probably try. If it’s found that that’s what happened, we need to pressure the SEC to make the punishment more than just the cost of doing business. I’m tired of seeing businesses and billionaires getting fined only a couple million for stealing a couple billion.

          • the_wise_wolf@feddit.de
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            9 months ago

            I just looked it up. He has a 6 months lock-in period. CNN article

            Btw. this was not an IPO, but a reverse-merger using a SPAC. That way the company going public doesn’t have to adhere to the SEC’s strict IPO regulations.

          • pm_me_your_quackers@lemmy.ca
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            9 months ago

            Any wrongdoing is just gonna be another slap on the wrist, again. Turns out in America, billionaires hoard second chances, too; even the fake ones.