The market didn’t like what it heard on Tuesday night as Trump and Kamala Harris faced off on the debate stage for the first time. Shares of the Trump Media & Technology Group slipped more than 14 percent in overnight trading and continued to slump after the market opened.
Trump Media, which owns the social media platform Truth Social and trades as DJT, has risen and fallen along with the fortunes of the erstwhile president. It surged after the attempt on his life and after he trounced Joe Biden in their first debate. Ahead of the debate on Tuesday, the company was up 3 percent.
The shares are now tumbling following an awful performance during his first debate with Harris. Bereft of his favored rival Biden, Trump was the old man on stage. He ranted about immigrants devouring ducks and cats while Harris looked on, confused.
Trump has billions of dollars of personal wealth tied up in Trump Media. He owns almost 115 million shares of the company and his personal wealth fluctuates along with the stock price. As he spread a conspiracy theory about immigrants devouring pets before a national audience on Tuesday night, his shares were worth about $2 billion.
The day is coming when Trump can cash in on those shares. A lockup provision that has kept him from selling off his stake ends on September 19. In eight days, if he wanted to, he could cash out his stock and make a mint. Every bad political moment between now and then could weaken that ultimate payout.
Trump Media could always surge again. Both his political fortunes and his stock price are chaotic and prone to wild swings. But even the degenerate gamblers on Polymarket now have Harris beating Trump. Polymarket has been bearish on Trump for weeks now with Harris’ post-convention boost slowly leaking away. The hour before the two took the stage, the predictive gamblers had laid odds on Trump beating Harris. 52% of people were betting Trump would win. Harris was only at 46%.
As the debate wore on, Trump’s numbers slid. People were selling Trump tokens and snatching up Harris’. As of this writing, Harris is up 4% and sitting at 50% total. Trump has slumped down 3% to 49.
Over on Predictit, another binary prediction gambling site like Polymarket, Trump has been out of favor for weeks now. The debate did him no favors there either and bets on Kamala are going for 55¢ over Trump’s 46¢.
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