At the same time, Trump’s family businesses are pockmarked in litigation and regulatory investigations. A plan to combine World Liberty Financial, a crypto start-up run by the president’s two oldest sons, with Canada’s Alt5 Sigma Corporation, a digital asset treasury company holding crypto tokens issued by World Liberty, has run into trouble. The tokens, $USWLFI, have lost about half their value and Alt5 Sigma’s shares have plummeted 86 per cent since early August, when the deal with the Trumps was announced. At least one investor told Bloomberg News he felt “betrayed”.
Such financial fiascos are exceptional in a year when all 84 equity indexes tracking various regions of the world compiled by Bloomberg show gains for the first time since 2019. Trump Media’s shares peaked this year at a closing price of $US42.91 on January 13, just four days before the inauguration. They never came close to recapturing those heights, steadily falling to as low as $US10.29 in November before closing at $US14.86 on Thursday. The losses are even more painful for those investors who bought in at the beginning, when Trump Media went public in March 2024 through a merger with a special purpose acquisition vehicle called Digital World Acquisition Corp. At the time, the shares closed as high as $US66.22.
Donald Trump’s debt-laden Taj Mahal casino was one of many of his businesses that ended up in bankruptcyCredit: AP
The results are a stark contrast to the confident outlook Trump Media shared with investors in a February 16, 2024, regulatory filing ahead of the merger, asserting the company has “a broad potential user base with demonstrated brand awareness, established brand loyalty and eagerness to seek out change, while making choices of where to spend their media dollars and attention”.
Anyone wondering what professional stock analysts have to say will search in vain because Trump Media is the only company among its 20 domestic peers with no widely disseminated 12-month target share price, revenue estimates or earnings forecasts on the Bloomberg terminal. The spaces where such information is displayed are blank for Trump Media. Also, it is one of only seven companies in the Russell 1000 Index with no target share price.
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In some ways, Trump was twice swept into office on the perception that government had become broken, unable to solve problems and improve the lives of everyday Americans. Trump pounced on those frustrations, declaring that only a businessman could fix what ails America. Even if true, why not a businessman with a proven history of success for all stakeholders rather than self-enrichment at the expense of others? For all the financial losses the Trump family has inflicted on investors while inequality expands and affordability is turning into a crisis, the president’s net worth has doubled over the last 24 months to about $US6 billion.
Bloomberg
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