Trump Media & Technology stock goes up, and then goes down. It's performing like a true meme stock.
Pool/Getty Images
Remember when Trump Media & Technology Group Corp, the company that operates Truth Social, Donald Trump's social network, turned into a publicly traded stock? Which then tanked?
OK. I'll remind you: That was a month ago. And at the time, confident headlines explained that the stock's collapse was because of new disclosures, which explained that Truth Social was a bad, money-losing business.
Those explanations made no sense: Earlier public filings had already made it abundantly clear that Truth Social is a bad business.
But that story did set up a useful pattern over the next few weeks: Trump Media shares would plummet again, and then explainers would explain that there was a new reason for the fall. The company was offering more shares for sale. Or Trump's hush money payment trial had begun.
So how do we explain that over the course of the past two weeks, Trump Media shares had doubled again? Or that after that bull run, the shares are collapsing again on Wednesday?
People get paid to explain this stuff, even if they don't really know, so they're trying: Maybe Trump's criminal trial is good for Truth Social since it draws attention to the fact that he posts on it a lot? Or maybe the shares went up because of the company's cynical campaign to blame the stock drop on evil stock manipulators who are shorting the stock — even though Trump Media shares are difficult and expensive to short?
It's kind of exhausting, really. Which is why people are barely trying to explain the most recent collapse: CNBC notes that the company just disclosed that Trump himself will get more Trump shares, but … eh. That doesn't even count as a half-hearted explanation.
OK. My turn. Here is the reason that Trump shares collapse, or rally, or collapse again: There is no underlying reason.
By any objective measure, Trump Media is barely a company, and would be worth at best a tiny fraction of the billions the market assigns it on any given day. But Trump Media is a meme stock, and as such it can gyrate wildly based on … vibes? Or mojo? Or, in some cases, the misplaced faith that some of its retail investors have in Donald Trump, the person?
We do know that over the long haul, meme stocks seem to de-memeify themselves, and their frothy shares eventually end up reflecting something closer to reality. (See, for instance, the multi-year performance of pandemic favorites like GameStop, Bed Bath and Beyond, and AMC.)
But in the near term, on any given day, you'd be very hard-pressed to find a rational reason for their market moves. It's like Jon Stewart trying to explain how the Knicks blew game five against the Sixers.
So go ahead and bet on, or against Trump Media — on any given day, you could be right? But don't delude yourself that you're doing anything other than putting your money on a roulette wheel.
