Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The frogs are rarely mistaken.

“But what about the lurkers?”

Republicans do not pay their debts.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

Fight them, without becoming them!

Tick tock motherfuckers!

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

Democrats are back in array!

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

It could be worse. Vance could have said “post-menopausal sows.” Waiting for that audiotape to surface.

“Loving your country does not mean lying about it’s history.”

Republican also-rans: four mules fighting over a turnip.

Republicans: “Abortion is murder but you can take a bus to get one.” Easy peasy.

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

Speaker Mike Johnson is a vile traitor to the House and the Constitution.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

It’s a good piece. click on over. but then come back!!

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

Trump makes a mockery of the legal system and cowardly judges just sit back and let him.

It’s a doggy dog world.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / A Long Circuitous Path, Along for the Ride

A Long Circuitous Path, Along for the Ride

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DJT, the Truth Social meme stock took a big hit yesterday after their latest filing revealed (shock!) that the shitpile might go out of business.  DJT fell from a high of around $75 to $45 yesterday, and now it’s trading a little over $50.  There were a lot of stories out about how the stock “crashed” and that we were entering the dump portion of our pump-and-dump program.  I think that’s premature.  If you look at the most famous meme stock, GameStop, you can see there were a massive number of ups and downs before the sustained down.  The big uptick in this chart was at the beginning of 2021:

It's a Long Way Down to the Place Where We Started From

I don’t think DJT is going to last as long as GME, but there’s no reason that it couldn’t go for quite a while, because the “fundamentals” are similar.  The most important “fundamental” is that people are buying the stock for a reason extraneous to its underlying value (fetishistic fealty to Trump), and the second fundamental is that a number of idiots who never buy stocks are buying into this one.

The SPAC that became DJT had $300 million when they combined, so no matter how badly Truth Social shits the bed, there’s plenty of cash to keep limping along.  Like his other bullshit investments, Trump will make some money from this one, and it’ll be a long time before the clock finally runs out.

Reader Interactions

60Comments

  1. 1.

    SomeRandomFellow

    Really, no stock is valued based upon its true value – the net present value of one share in the profits. It’s based upon how much other investors will value that stock compared to others.

    That said, TFG’s stock is worth billions, and hasn’t yet generated one billion in revenue, ever. The only thing good about TFG’s stock is, if he’s not CEO, he has no reason to drive it into bankruptcy to make it generate more short term cash for him.

  4. 4.

    Hoppie

    @Manyakitty: Yeah, because of the shadowy backers of the SPAC that “Truth”Antisocial was merged into, it looks a lot like an elaborate bribery mechanism.  We shall see.

  5. 5.

    randy khan

    @SomeRandomFellow:

    The only thing good about TFG’s stock is, if he’s not CEO, he has no reason to drive it into bankruptcy to make it generate more short term cash for him.

    I can think of ways he could drive it into bankruptcy for his own benefit, most of them so ridiculously unethical that it’s hard to describe them, but I think what’s going to happen is that he’s going to dump his stock at some point, possibly the day he’s allowed to do it under the agreement he has, and that will make the stock plummet, to the detriment of all of the investors.

    Then he will abandon the company, and it will bleed users until there’s nothing left.  The real question will be if the execs are smart enough to loot the business on the way down, or if they can find some way to use the cash that’s lying around right now to execute a pivot into some niche social media business.  The former might be tricky, but it seems way more viable than the latter.

  7. 7.

    RepubAnon

    I’m guessing that people are buying this stock based on their belief that Trump could win in November. I expect the stock will last until the election. If Trump wins, it’ll shoot up based on expectations that Trump will be posting lots of stuff. If Trump loses, it’ll tank.

  9. 9.

    Brachiator

    @SomeRandomFellow:

    That said, TFG’s stock is worth billions, and hasn’t yet generated one billion in revenue, ever. The only thing good about TFG’s stock is, if he’s not CEO, he has no reason to drive it into bankruptcy to make it generate more short term cash for him.

    Former presidents used to make money via inflated speaker fees and friends buying up copies of their books.

    This is a scam setup by Trump cronies to provide him with money to pay his legal fees and judgements.

  10. 10.

    Mousebumples

    Wisconsin Spring Primary Weather Report – I voted by mail (ballot received, confirmed!), but the weather is cruddy.

    Hopefully NO wins for both of the constitutional amendments – and if it’s aided by weather inhibited MAGA turnout, no complaints here!

    (Wisconsin Primary note – the August primary is when non Presidential November election candidates are determined)

  12. 12.

    Poe Larity

    I once goaded a nutter golfer to double down on his Enron stock (anyone in Houston knew it was Ponzi).

    How to goad MAGAs to go Diamond Hands AMC stock strategy?

  13. 13.

    Tom Levenson

    @SomeRandomFellow: That’s not the only way to value a stock. Shares like just about every financial asset are not measures of a single moment in time, but by some judgment about the future for some period. That’s why companies that (plausibly) have more room to grow carry a higher present-day p/e.

    Such valuations are imprecise, which means they involve some risk. But they’re not less “real” than pricing a share on the amount of profit it buys you today.

  15. 15.

    Matt McIrvin

    Someone on LGM recently linked to Dan Olson’s amazing 2 1/2 hour YouTube documentary on the GME saga:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pYeoZaoWrA

    It seems to have gone from a meme stock in the traditional sense (which shot up because of a freakish phenomenon in which short sellers were caught in their own trap), to a protest against Wall Street stock manipulation (which is where a lot of the media coverage left off), to… some kind of bizarre and astounding financial apocalyptic cult that leads people to dump more and more of their money into stocks whose value keeps dropping, in hopes that a miracle will make them kings of the world.

    That the same people would be handing money to Donald Trump and associated grifters for nothing is not surprising.

  17. 17.

    Frankensteinbeck

    The stock has value because the purchasing company had value.  Then it did exactly what it told investors it wasn’t going to do – buy a company worth a few million, tops, that was losing money with no prospects for improving.  It’s only worth anything now because it had a high point to start from.

    Trump can’t sell for sixth months.  The stock will be worthless.  This is certainly a pump and dump con job, but Trump is going to find out he’s one of the rubes.

  20. 20.

    Mike in NC

    Per The Atlantic, the scumbag billionaire who bailed out Fat Bastard is Don Hankey, a longtime MAGA enthusiast.

  22. 22.

    scav

    Practically thinking, how do we best wrap this stinky and embarrassing financial turd around its true and only begetter’s neck for as long and definitively as possible. A slow and public death could be another goad that drives him over his ego-maniac self-aggrandizing and self-protective edge.

  26. 26.

    Tom Levenson

    @Frankensteinbeck: I’ve read that the board of the company could reduce the lock-up period and let Trump sell earlier.

    In a rational market simply taking that decision would tank the stock, because the supply of that asset would have just more than doubled.

    In a MAGA-meme market? Who Da Fuk Noes?

    TBC: I have no idea if the board would let Trump sell soon. He does own 58% of the company (I think), so I guess he could simply keep changing the composition of the board until he gets what he wants, but, again, that would be hard to hide. And IANAL, but I wonder if directors might incur liability with regard to every other shareholder if they made such a move.

  27. 27.

    caringandsensitive

    @Mousebumples: I don’t think he’s been disbarred (yet). I think his license to practice has been suspended pending his disbarment hearing

  31. 31.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Mousebumples:

    (Wisconsin Primary note – the August primary is when non Presidential November election candidates are determined) 

    You got two primaries up there?

  32. 32.

    smith

    Looking at this from another angle, it’s puzzling how Truth Social is doing so badly if TFG himself is maintaining his political support. If 45% or so of the voting public is seriously willing to put a senile psychopath back in office, why aren’t they at least willing to lend their eyeballs to his shitty platform? Forget putting money into his stock, or even sending their Social Security check for his legal defense, why aren’t they taking that easy, cost-free step? Could it be his support is much shallower than our media betters think?

  35. 35.

    Old School

    Lou Conter, the final survivor of the USS Arizona, the Navy battleship that was sunk – with a loss of 1,177 lives – during the surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, has died at age 102.

  36. 36.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @MomSense:

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    Adam’s dad, Ed Schiff, turned 96 a few weeks ago. If the person is loved, it’s always too soon — but that is a nice long life, and he had many opportunities to be proud of his son’s accomplishments.

  37. 37.

    Martin

    @Matt McIrvin: I think Dan’s central thesis, which is stated more clearly in the crypto video, is worth surfacing more clearly.

    Essentially, it’s like this:

    The 2007 financial crisis more or less destroyed the American concept of ‘work hard and have a good life’ – or at least the perception of it. A LOT of people worked hard, did what they were recommended to do – buy a house, use that mortgage interest deduction, build equity, and a lot of them got fucked largely through no fault of their own. A lot of people lost jobs through no fault of their own. And the folks who got rich off of that situation just pivoted into using those windfalls to buy foreclosed properties and flip them, getting rich a 2nd time.

    The rules were made pretty clear to a lot of people, particularly young people at that time (millennials) who watched their parents lose decades of retirement effort in a span of weeks and watched the people who did that walk away rich. The lesson was – the conventional rules are for suckers – some rich asshole will game the system and fuck you over, the way to get ahead is to do what the rich asshole does.

    So are crypto and meme stocks last-man-out scams? Absolutely, and to some degree they know it. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t an opportunity in there to make money off of someone else, and that’s how this economy is designed to work, so don’t hate the player, hate the game. That this isn’t a fringe idea, but a significant part of the culture of 1-2 generations is a much more serious problem than we tend to treat it and it does reveal something substantive about the fairness and degree of opportunity in the US economy that quite frankly we aren’t doing anything about.

  40. 40.

    Martin

    @smith: Not really. When Truth was launched, almost all of the far-right socials had been pretty seriously gutted in the wake of Jan 6 by the broader tech industry. They lost their hosting, got deplatformed, etc. So Truth rose as the only place for your daily 2 minute hate.

    But then Musk bought Twitter and pivoted toward Truth’s space, with a much bigger built-in audience. Facebook too has pivoted slightly in response to Twitters move. Suddenly there’s plenty of places to be an open Nazi, and Truth is the one with the smallest social graph, as therefore the least utility.

    But I think Trump has relatively few active supporters, and a LOT of passive ones. A lot of them think he’s kind of a creep, but they’ve fully internalized the Fox News white christian agenda and even though he’s a creep, he can be trusted to shit on brown people, liberals, and all that, and that’s really what they’re here for. They’re still reliable Trump voters, even if they would prefer to keep him at arms length.

  43. 43.

    Ruckus

    @caringandsensitive:

    I read through the court orders and the last one used the word disbarred.

    I’d suggest that one of the lawyers on here read though the final posting and correct me if I’m wrong

    https://discipline.calbar.ca.gov/portal/DocumentViewer/Index/WR3CtyPXSTa3F3Va0_TEPF_IL0cQHVvfM6M4w8NGG0Jd4BRF21Sw8EVD7XKjukeQYXkw9JcsUiVb8bnoYhzffKlFkLRnwcrBsVfYmr-RTOM1?caseNum=SBC-23-O-30029&docType=Disposing%20Document&docName=Decision%20-%20Trial&eventName=Decision%20-%20Trial&docTypeId=266&isVersionId=False&p=

    Of course I see I’ve been beaten to the punch once again…..

  44. 44.

    Gvg

    The thing that I hope is that all financial matters related to Trump are currently getting a lot of official attention and investigation. I think any illegal actions might get found out and prosecuted when they normally would work. This stock may be a foreign bribe and certainly is a pump and dump. Those could be investigated and if proved might get  even some jail. Not necessarily Trump, but other people. He may not be the one doing the crimes this time, except taking bribes….and he isn’t currently in office, so not sure that can count. The bond amount for NY will also be investigated.

    If Trump loses and we get enough Democrats in both houses due to Roe and enthusiasm, there might be a chance to improve some financial regulation and also fund regulatory agencies enough that they can actually do their jobs effectively. Like enforce anti trust laws.

    we need more modern entertainment that brings back knowledge of why anti monopoly laws are better, both for social and capitalist reasons.

  46. 46.

    NotMax

    He sold off his other DJT stock right before the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and it dropped so far the stock was delisted on the NY stock exchange and subsequently went poof.

    Only difference this time will be that it’s trading on NASDAQ, not the NYSE.

  47. 47.

    Hoodie

    @Tom Levenson: He doesn’t have to sell a lot right away, e.g., at the current price he can raise 100 million by selling less than 10% of his stake.  If this thing is a money laundering vehicle (which I strongly suspect), his foreign backers can backfill that to prevent the stock from imploding.   He can also give the rubes a sob story that he “had no choice” but to liquidate some of his stake in “a perfect stock of a great company” to fight those vicious liberals pursuing him in the courts.   This is a combo grift and money laundering scheme that could be strung out for quite a while.

  48. 48.

    Hoodie

    @Martin: This reminds me of a description of the Greek financial crisis that I read some years ago.  Greece’s fiscal problems could be traced to a general failure of Greeks to pay their taxes.   It started with the rich deliberately hiding income, making themselves look poorer on paper than they actually were.   The rest of the Greek public saw that and eventually everyone was doing it.

    Our failure to properly tax the ridiculous concentration of wealth enabled by the enormous leverage provided by global trade and the internet has left a lot of people to conclude that you survive either by winning the lottery or scamming someone else.   Interesting that we’ve seen a concomitant growth in online gambling, which has elements of both.

  51. 51.

    SomeRandomFellow

    @Tom Levenson: I won’t argue against you – you’re right, people *do* value stocks in various ways.

    But the way a corporation used to be, was, you’d provide capital to an enterprise, in hopes of a share of profits when the enterprise became successful. Now, if you buy a share, you’re hoping for the price to increase, instead. That’s what leads to this ridiculous situation.

    No one would want to provide fresh capital to TFG’s latest folly, based upon the notion that it will be profitable, and those profits are worth X_amount per share, net present value.

    But people *would* buy into the new folly, in hopes of being able to jump ship before the *real* suckers, whose common stock will be wiped out in the inevitable bankruptcy.

    It’s a gross oversimplification to say “the price is a bet on what the price will be in the near future,” because, as you say, analysts *do* some analysis, and, some stocks pay dividends.

    In the case of TFG’s folly, though, I think it’s pretty spot-on.

  52. 52.

    Ruckus

    @Hoodie:

    It could be strung out if the outward appearances of him showing signs of senility aren’t what they appear. My take is that with his history and how well he takes care of himself, the likelihood of his existence beyond a few more years is unlikely.

  55. 55.

    Bill Arnold

    @SomeRandomFellow:
    Reminded of this from Keynes:
    John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, Chapter 12. The State of Long-Term Expectation

    Or, to change the metaphor slightly, professional investment may be likened to those newspaper competitions in which the competitors have to pick out the six prettiest faces from a hundred photographs, the prize being awarded to the competitor whose choice most nearly corresponds to the average preferences of the competitors as a whole; so that each competitor has to pick, not those faces which he himself finds prettiest, but those which he thinks likeliest to catch the fancy of the other competitors, all of whom are looking at the problem from the same point of view. It is not a case of choosing those which, to the best of one’s judgment, are really the prettiest, nor even those which average opinion genuinely thinks the prettiest. We have reached the third degree where we devote our intelligences to anticipating what average opinion expects the average opinion to be. And there are some, I believe, who practise the fourth, fifth and higher degrees.

  56. 56.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Martin: It reminds me of the thing Andrew Tate used to say about “The Matrix”: that everyone around you is trapped in the Matrix, a fake world constructed as a system of oppression, but there’s a way out of the Matrix, and that way is… to devote your life to accumulating as much money as possible by any means necessary! Only when you are extremely, extremely rich will you break out of the Matrix, which to Tate means having fancy cars, private jets, babes etc.

    I can only imagine the Wachowskis vomiting when they saw that. But it’s also really just sort of a grotesque parody of the same thing retirement planners will tell you.

  58. 58.

    Another Scott

    Tesla is going through some things, also too. TheStreet.com:

    Tesla (TSLA) shares fell sharply Tuesday, extending their 2024 slump to around $270 billion, after the world’s leading EV maker posted a much weaker-than-expected tally of first-quarter deliveries.

    Tesla delivered 386,810 new cars over the three months ended in March, the company said in a statement, down 8.5% from the year-earlier period and 20% south of the record 484,507 tally reached over the three months ended in December.

    Analysts’ forecasts for deliveries ranged from 425,000 to around 470,000, with LSEG data pegging the March-quarter target at around 455,000 units.

    […]

    Tesla shares were marked 5.1% lower in early Tuesday trading immediately following the delivery data to change hands at $166.74 each, near to the lowest since the spring of last year and a move that extends the stock’s year-to-date decline to around 33%.

    “While we were anticipating a bad first quarter, this was an unmitigated disaster 1Q that is hard to explain away,” said Wedbush analyst Dan Ives, who held his $300 price target and ‘overweight’ rating in place following the delivery data.

    “We view this as a seminal moment in the Tesla story for Musk to either turn this around and reverse the black eye performance,” he added. “Otherwise, some darker days could clearly be ahead that could disrupt the long-term Tesla narrative.”

    […]

    (Emphasis added.)

    Ouch.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

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