Trump to receive bonus worth $1.2bn for Trump Media stock performance

[erronis]

Absolutely amazing - everything is rigged.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/apr/24/trump-media-bonue

A price floor means ex-president gets bonus even though Trump Media & Technology Group’s stock value has plummeted

Former president Donald Trump qualified for a bonus worth $1.2bn after shares in his social media company remained above a certain value despite falling sharply.

Trump is poised to receive 36m additional shares in Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), owner of his Truth Social platform, under an “earn-out” windfall which boosts the paper value of his stake in the business to about $3.7bn.

He was able to receive the bonus if TMTG’s stock traded above $17.50 a share for 20 days out of any 30-day period within the first three years of the firm’s stock market debut – a milestone it reached after closing at $32.57 on Tuesday.

Trump’s shares in his social media company have offered him a financial lifeline as he faces about $500m in legal penalties after being found liable in civil fraud, defamation and sexual abuse cases. While he cannot sell his stock until September due to the terms of a lockup agreement, the shares’ fluctuating value have at times made him one of the world’s wealthiest people on paper.

[kimbutgar]

1. But what if the shares are worthless and who is giving him the money?

I’m confused about this. I used to work in Wall Street and if a stock goes below its IPO price you lose money. And the company eventually goes bankrupt.

[lostnfound]

4. See it as a mechanism for legal money-laundering/bribes?

Timing will be everything. As Stephanie Ruhle points out (and she used to work at Deutsche Bank, which has been helping launder money for the Russians), trump didn’t invest in this company with his own money, so WHATEVER he makes on selling his shares is pure gravy for him.
For someone foreign-backed interested party, it might be a “loss” but it might also just be a payoff to Trump or a down payment on his second term in office. Hell, it might just be a down-payment on creating chaos in the US to an extent that no one else could.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/08/29/deutsche-banks-10-billion-scandal

[kimbutgar]

8. Very valid argument !

This is just another money laundering scam. Why isn’t the SEC investigating this aspect?

[Midnight Writer]

2. No one in history has ever been treated as badly as Trump.

Everything has been rigged against this poor guy since the day he was born.

[Initech]

3. The pump n dump is going according to plan

[JI7]

5. Can someone explain this ?

Is he able to actually get this in cash ?

[jimfields33]

10. Not until September and he most likely won't cash out.

But he might take out 500 million to pay off the judgement after the appeals are exhausted.

[underpants]

6. Jesus Christ

That’s all I’ve got this.

[MOMFUDSKI]

7. There is a sucker born

every minute

[Scrivener7]

9. This is why I couldn't understand the joy when

the stock price went down. So he's only pulling a couple billion out of nothing rather than 4 billion.

This money laundering scheme has already worked.

The only real question is why are these kinds of offerings legal??

Oh. And watch for many many more SPAC offerings going forward.

[WarGamer]

11. SPAC's were big during COVID...

[Scrivener7]

12. And they'll get bigger now, and they're nothing but a way to get around regulation.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

13. There is no real value to this meme stock and investors are relying on the "greater fool" theory

Meme stocks rely on the greater fool theory. I was amused to see that DWAC/Trump Media is classified as a meme stock where the value is due to personality and not due to the real value of issuer of the meme stock. This article is a good discussion of the meme nature of DWAC/TMT.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/donald-trump-truth-social-media-merger

Trump’s financial future now hinges on some of the strangest fads in corporate finance—meme stocks, SPAC deals, and cult-of-personality investing. If Trump can find a way to act fast, it might just be the bailout he desperately needs.

Truth Social is a bad imitation of Twitter, where Trump was an unavoidable presence long before he ran for president. It’s chock full of stale red-pilled memes, MAGA conspiracy theories, and of course, Trump. That’s the main draw. Truth Social is the only place the former president now regularly posts his unfettered thoughts......

DWAC is best thought of as a meme stock. You may remember the meme stock fad from when retail investors on Reddit successfully coordinated a short squeeze with GameStop stock, before glomming onto a series of other millennial nostalgia brands like AMC Entertainment, BlackBerry, and Bed Bath & Beyond. Meme stocks are often publicly traded companies that attract an inordinate percentage of individual investors and their stock performance fluctuates in a way that’s significantly divorced from the reality of their underlying business. Combine those two trends and you’ll start to see why Trump’s media company could be valued at roughly $9 billion if it merges with DWAC.

Jay Ritter, a finance professor at the University of Florida, says meme stocks often depend on the “greater fool theory of investing,” meaning rational investors might buy in expecting the stock price to rise and betting that they can sell their shares to a greater fool willing to buy them at a higher price. In this case, however, Ritter speculates there is an inordinate number of individual retail investors compared to institutional investors, such as hedge funds, that normally own SPAC shares prior to a merger. “Here you’ve got ideology involved [too]—as far as I can tell, the vast majority of DWAC investors are Trump political investors, and they’re to some degree putting their money where their mouth is… My suspicion is most of them have bought the stock as a show of political support.” In this way, Trump is conducting yet another public fundraising from his supporters—this time through the public markets.

Idiots who purchase meme stocks are betting that they can get out before the other idiots figure out that the stock is worthless

[erronis]

15. Evolution is taking too damn long to get rid of these fools.

They continue to pollute the gene pool.

And they feed the gluttonous cons that lead them by the noses.

[Charmin One]

14. I keep saying this over and over again

Nation of PRIVILEGE

[LiberalFighter]

16. Low standards?