Trump’s DJT Stock Earns Meme Status

If the stock price performance of Trump Media & Technology Group Corp. is any indication of Donald Trump’s chances of winning back the White House, the odds might be tilting in his favor.

The parent company of Trump’s social media enterprise, Truth Social, which trades under the ticker symbol of the former president’s initials, DJT, is up more than 125% this year.

The ride has been nothing if not volatile as a lot of casual observers are likely associating the stock with support for Trump or as a way to bet on his chances of winning or both. In reality, it’s little of the above and, like most of Trump’s business enterprises, instead boils down to clever branding and marketing.

But for investors laying down cash to back what is essentially a fledgling and still unprofitable company, DJT stock offers an exhilarating journey that has included a peak of nearly $80 a share in late March after Trump won a bid to pause a $454 million civil fraud judgment.

DJT Stock Is Up More Than 125% in 2024

That high-water mark in March represented a 360% gain from the start of the year but was promptly followed by a 72% decline three weeks later to the $22 range.

From there, DJT stock climbed up to the $55 range in May before gradually finding the $30 range leading up to Trump’s debate with Joe Biden, which pushed the stock price up to $40.

Two days before Trump was shot in an assassination attempt, DJT was trading around $29 and spiked to $39 two days after he was shot, which coincided with the start of the Republican National Convention.

But the stock price declined steadily from there to less than $13 on Sept. 24.

Then came the next run, which is where people are making the connection between DJT and Trump’s chances of being reelected. With analysts and pundits describing Trump in a virtual dead heat with Kamala Harris leading up to election day, DJT shares peaked at more than $50 on Oct. 29 before pulling back to $31 on Nov. 1, then climbing back up to $40 on election day.

According to etf.com, there are 37 ETFs that offer exposure to DJT shares, but the allocations are small. At 1.7%, the Optimize Strategy Index ETF (OPTZ) is the only ETF with more than a 1% weighting in DJT.

It would be difficult to read too much into the connection between Trump’s presidential run and the fluctuating price of DJT. For starters, there is not a comparable stock associated with Harris.

Investors keen on betting on the outcome of the presidential election have a host of options, including Polymarket, which showed Trump leading Harris 61% to 39% on election day.

A major distinction between something like Polymarket and DJT is that Polymarket is about wagering on outcomes in the same way one might bet on a horse race or a football game. DJT is a publicly traded company that has become the latest meme stock for no other reason than its association with Donald Trump.