The shares of Trump Media & Technology Group may have temporarily benefited from the lackluster performance of President Joe Biden during the Jan. 27 presidential debate. Its shares climbed 13% in n the premarket trading on Friday before quickly shedding 10% after the opening bell.
Biden delivered a not-so-stellar performance during Thursday's first debate of the 2024 presidential campaign while Trump threw punches using baseless attacks and made-up facts. Ahead of the election, the two rivals have been throwing personal insults against each other.
"Investors are probably going to give Trump the benefit of the doubt given how positive he was for markets in his presidency," mentioned Ben Laidler, a global strategist for eToro, a digital brokerage.
"If you're looking for a real-time proxy of investor expectations for the result in November, they're (Trump stocks) telling you that Trump is in pole position for this election, and he's cemented his perceived lead last night," she added, as reported by Reuters.
The report noted that shares of Trump Media in premarket, which is the owner of Trump's social media platform Truth Social, went up to 7.3% at $39.54. At 9:35 a.m. ET, the stock's price was down to $37.85. It further slid to $35.84 by 10:20 a.m.
Phunware, a software developer that worked on the election campaign app of the former president, saw an increase of 8.1% to $6.81. Rumble, another video sharing platform that has grown in popularity among conservatives, also increased by 0.5% to $5.7.
"We will see these movements linked increasingly to how the election expectations evolve around Trump ... markets are happy to have one indicator to look to in order to price in all this,"noted Ipek Ozkardeskaya, a Swissquote Bank's senior analyst.
"Fundamentally speaking, there is nothing much behind the Trump Media & Technology Group. The moves that we see are mostly speculative," he added.
TMTG'S shares saw a huge jump of about 110% this year when Trump started gaining momentum in his bid to be the Republican candidate for the November elections. One thing that threw a wedge in the stocks' roaring performance was the verdict on Trump's hush money case, where he was found guilty of the charges filed against him.
As of June 10, the majority of TMTG is owned by Trump at 64.9%. At its last close, it was valued at $4.2 billion, US News noted.
