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Trump Media scrambles to stop short sellers from tanking share prices
Trump Media and Technology Group, the parent company of Truth Social, is scrambling to stop short sellers from tanking its share values.
NBC News reports that Trump Media this week sent around suggestions to shareholders to prevent their shares in the company from winding up in the hands of short sellers who are essentially betting on the company's failure to make money.
According to NBC, the "tips include holding DJT shares in a cash account at a brokerage firm as opposed to a margin account, 'opting out of any securities lending program,' moving Trump Media shares to the company’s designated transfer agent, and transferring shares to a bank and 'holding them in your retirement account.'"
Short sellers essentially pay brokerage firms fees to borrow shares on a temporary basis on the belief that the shares will sink in price.
READ MORE: From 'really rich' to begging: Inside Trump's U-turn on one of his first campaign lies
After borrowing the shares, the short sellers proceed to sell them on the open market and then by them back by a specific date when they have to be returned to their owners.
If the share price in that time has indeed gone down, then the short sellers pocket the difference they made between the original sale and the repurchase.
If the share price increases, however, the short sellers lose money because they'll be buying back the shares at a higher price than the original sale.
Short sellers have swarmed to Trump Media shares for weeks now, as its price has plummeted from a high of $66.22 on March 27th to a low of $22.84 on Tuesday, although its price has recovered some of that lost value in the last day-and-a-half of trading.
The longer-term threat to Trump Media's value likely isn't short sellers, however, but simply a lack of profitability. The selloff in shares started earlier this month when the company released an earnings report showing that it lost $58 million in the last fiscal year while generating just $4 million in revenues.
‘Understandable’: LA Times mistakenly claims Trump served O.J.’s prison term
A major newspaper mixed up Donald Trump's name for O.J. Simpson's in an obituary for the NFL star-turned-accused murderer.
The Los Angeles Times used the former president's name in a prewritten obituary, which media outlets typically have at the ready for celebrities, political figures and other noteworthy individuals, instead of using Simpson's name in a published version that was quickly corrected.
"Long before the city woke up on a fall morning in 2017, Trump walked out of Lovelock Correctional Center outside Reno, a free man for the first time in nine years," the obituary initially read upon publication. "He didn’t go far, moving into a 5,000-square-foot home in Las Vegas with a Bentley in the driveway."
Simpson, a star running back in the 1960s for the University of Southern California and in the 1970s for the NFL's Buffalo Bills, died at age 76 following a battle with cancer.
He was charged in the brutal 1994 murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman, and although he was widely presumed to be guilty, Simpson was acquitted a year later in a trial that drew unprecedented attention and raised still-simmering questions about race and justice.
Simpson was later convicted in 2008 on armed robbery, kidnapping, conspiracy and other charges related to an ill-fated attempt to recover valuable memorabilia he claimed had been stolen from him, and he served nine years of a 33-year sentence.
Conservative attorney and prominent Trump critic George Conway said he understood the Times' mixup.
"Understandable mistake," Conway tweeted. "It can be hard to keep all these clearly guilty sociopaths straight."
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