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Shares in Donald Trumpโs social media company fell after the president opened the door to selling his entire $2.3bn stake, just as global investors were bracing themselves for his โliberation dayโ tariffs.
Shares in Trump Media and Technology Group, which operates Truth Social, fell 8 per cent on Wednesday after the company said in a filing with regulators that it planned to sell more than 142mn shares.
The filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission late on Tuesday showed that Trumpโs 114mn shares are included in the sale, which will take place โfrom time to time in one or more offeringsโ. The stake is worth about $2.3bn and held in a trust controlled by his son Donald Trump Jr.
Existing shareholders including the president, US attorney-general Pam Bondi, TMTG chairman Devin Nunes and a Cayman Islands-registered company called Yorkville will seek to sell a total of 134mn shares, the filing shows. TMTG also plans to issue 8.4mn new shares.
Shares in TMTG, which trades under the ticker DJT, have plunged more than 40 per cent this year amid a US stock market sell-off fuelled by the presidentโs aggressive trade agenda and concerns that the levies on some of Americaโs key trading partners will weigh on the worldโs largest economy.
Later on Wednesday, which he has dubbed โliberation dayโ, Trump will announce his new โreciprocalโ tariffs on foreign countries in a ceremony in the Rose Garden of the White House.
In September, DJT surged after Trump said he did not plan to sell any of his own shares in the company. Trading in the stock was temporarily halted by Nasdaq later that day.ย
Trump later accused Nasdaq of โtaking orders fromโ the SEC. Writing on Truth Social, the president said at the time: โWhat right do [Nasdaq] have to do this? They have done it twice today. Whatโs going on?โย ย
Earlier this week TMTG became the first group to list on the New York Stock Exchangeโs Texas platform, though its primary listing will remain on Nasdaq.
The stock had become a popular way for individual investors to show their support for the president, despite TMTG reporting a net loss of $19.2mn in the third quarter. In October, the company said it had approximately 650,000 shareholders โwith a unique profile overwhelmingly comprising retail investorsโ.
โOnly roughly 2,100 investors owned more than 5,000 shares, and fewer than 1,000 investors owned more than 10,000 shares,โ the company said.
