Donald Trump could get richer now than he ever was. The credit is all due to the “meme-stock” frenzy that surrounds his latest entrepreneurial adventure, the launch of Truth, a social network and publishing group that intends to give a voice to his (many) supporters.
A meme-stock and a financial product whose value swells mainly thanks to the massive investment by small and very small investors, coordinated on social networks such as Reddit, StockTwits and Facebook. The most striking case so far was that of Game Stop, which last winter caused many investment funds to cry overwhelmed by the upward bet on the chain specialized in video games. But a similar effect-meme has had on the Dogecoin cryptocurrency, promoted almost as a joke by Elon Musk and in the meantime become an asset of tens of billions.
Returning to the former American president, his Trump Media & Technology Group plans to go public through a SPAC, merging with the Digital World Acquisition, a shell company launched last month on the financial markets. In the last few hours, the implicit value of the new reality has exceeded 8.2 billion dollars (Bloomberg data). To give an idea of magnitude, in September Trump was excluded from the Forbes list of 400 billionaires because his (estimated) fortune had dropped to 2.5 billion from 3.5 billion in the previous estimate.
According to what was communicated to the SEC, The Donald will own approximately 58% of the company after the listing, which would bring its assets to levels never reached before. All while his real estate empire – in the hands of his son Eric and entangled in legal troubles – is struggling to catch the recovery: the Washington hotel is on sale since 2019, while in the skyscraper that bears his name in Manhattan, real estate increases vacant. His fortune has dropped by more than $ 500 million since he entered the White House.
But in the race for the next big thing in the technology sector, the launch of a social network destined to its considerable audience of nostalgics who aim for a new candidacy in 2024 fits perfectly, to the motto of “Take America Back”, as in the sticker by Michele Fiore. Kara Swisher of the New York Times tells that Trump was approached by various publishers who offered him hundreds of millions of dollars to become their “face”. He has always denied himself, and now it is clear why: his audience is worth billions, why share them with someone else
And not only for the media market: merchandising, organized rallies, and even pharmaceutical companies that invest in home cures against Covid as an alternative to vaccines are strong. A counter-economy that beats in the heart of the republican majority states.
While waiting for the company to launch its first product, it has already been the victim of the first hack by pranksters: the Truth Social page was hacked to make it appear that Trump shared a photo of a pig defecating.
This time hedge funds and social investors found themselves on the same path, unlike the Game Stop case. As reported by the Financial Times, DE Shaw and Saba Capital have already collected potential capital gains of tens of millions on the day Trump’s SPAC grew by 357%.
Craig Samuels, a San Diego investor who has invested in SPAC for years, told FT that these types of investments are reminiscent of one who “walks into a casino, walks past the craps table, and randomly throws chips on it.”
The problem, he explains, is that there is virtually no way to evaluate Trump’s new business, which offered no financial forecasts or operational details in his presentation to investors. “We’ve seen AMC Entertainment go for $ 70 and GameStop for $ 500. It is an opportunistic game for momentum traders who use Trump’s cult status ”.
The CEO, Patrick Orlando, is a former Deutsche Bank derivatives trader who co-founded a sugar trading company and started a holding company, Benessere Capital. But it is unclear how he and Trump intend in a few months to build a Twitter-sized social network, a cloud service that rivals Google and Amazon Web Services, and a streaming channel that competes with Fox News and NewsMax. The meme frenzy will be enough to build the new Trumpian empire
(In photo: Donald Trump at the “Rally to Protect Our Elections” in Phoenix, Arizona, on July 24, 2021 – photo by Gage Skidmore / The Star News Network)
