NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Shares of Trump Media & Technology Group jumped on Friday after U.S. President-elect Donald Trump said he had no intention of selling his shares in the company, which owns his Truth Social media platform.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump rejected what he described as rumors that he was planning to sell shares a day after the stock slumped.
“There are fake, untrue, and probably illegal rumors and/or statements made by, perhaps, market manipulators or short sellers, that I am interested in selling shares of Truth,” Trump wrote.
“THOSE RUMORS OR STATEMENTS ARE FALSE. I HAVE NO INTENTION OF SELLING!,” Trump added.
Shares of the company were up about 12% at $31.04 by midday Friday and hit a high for the session of $32.
The stock was briefly halted for volatility after Trump’s comments.
On Thursday, shares of the company slumped as speculative bets on Trump winning a second four-year term lost steam a day after his victory over Democrat Kamala Harris. The stock rose 5.9% on Wednesday following Election Day on Tuesday.
While Trump and Vice President Harris were nearly tied in most opinion polls leading up to the election, online betting markets favored the former president more, prompting investors to pile into securities that they viewed as more likely to benefit or come under pressure under his leadership.
That resulted in a roughly a 200% surge in Trump Media stock in the six weeks before the election.
Trump had already said in September that he was not selling his shares in the company and would not leave the social medial platform he founded.
Trump owns nearly 115 million shares and has about a 53% stake in Trump Media. At the stock’s price on Friday, his piece of the company was worth about $3.6 billion, while its total market capitalization was at about $6.7 billion.
A report on Wednesday by financial analytics firm S3 Partners showed that investors betting against Trump Media have lost $420 million since the stock began tracking the odds of Trump winning the election.
(This story has been corrected to fix the stake to $3.6 billion, not $4 billion, in paragraph 11)
(Reporting by Susan Heavey in Washington and Caroline Valetkevitch in New York; editing by Rami Ayyub and Jonathan Oatis)
