Trump Media & Technology Group, the owner of struggling social media platform Truth Social, is began its long-delayed journey as a public company at Tuesday’s opening bell under the ticker symbol “DJT.”
The stock surged about 56% at the open, to $78, and trading was briefly halted for volatility. Trump Media shares have since stabilized at around $70, marking a 40% increase from Monday’s close.
Wall Street is assigning Trump Media an eye-popping valuation of around $13 billion — a price tag that experts warn is untethered to reality.
The skyrocketing share price comes despite the fact that Trump Media is burning through cash; piling up losses; and its main product, Truth Social, is losing users.
“This is a very unusual situation. The stock is pretty much divorced from fundamentals,” said Jay Ritter, a finance professor at the University of Florida’s Warrington College of Business, who has been studying initial public offerings (IPOs) for over 40 years.
You know… In my life I’ve had to talk a few people out of scams.
I know they were scammed, it’s blatantly a scam, the evidence is overwhelming, my experience is solid, everyone I know of’s experience says the same.
Yet they will argue with you back and forth and never really be satisfied because they want to believe it so much, and I imagine it stings a good bit being told you’re being ripped the fuck off and you’re too stupid or inexperienced to understand that.
I’m never confrontational about it, I just make it very perfectly clear that proceeding would be extremely ill advised, and that even their own worries brought them to me asking for my opinion because they trust my judgment.
It scares me how long it takes to convince them, and how often in the end they come to me a month later and I ask them how it went, and they went and bought it anyway, for whatever far fetched rationalization they managed to construct for themselves.
Psychology is real, psychology is simple, all it takes to control humans is to have no care for anything but yourself.
“Yes, I know it’s scammy, but I’m getting in on the ground floor so I’m not the one who will be holding the bag” is a sentiment I’ve seen (and occasionally held) entirely too often.