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shares Trump Media Shares closed down 6.6% on Tuesday at $16.14 per share. The drop came 48 hours before the expiration of “lock-up” restrictions that have so far barred the company’s majority shareholder, Donald Trump, and other insiders from selling their holdings.
Until this week, the former president and early investor acquired stock in the company when it merged with a special purpose acquisition company in March and began trading publicly, but was prohibited from selling his stock under a “lockup agreement.”
Those restrictions are set to expire on Thursday.
Last week, Trump said he would not sell his 114,750,000 shares owned by the owners of Truth Social. As of Tuesday’s close, Trump’s stake was worth more than $1.8 billion.
“I have absolutely no intention of selling,” Trump said at a news conference in California on Friday.
After Trump announced the news, the stock price rose 25% and closed up 11% on Friday.
But Trump Media’s losses so far this week have erased those gains.
The stock closed down nearly 4% on Monday after a weekend in which it became apparent that Trump was the subject of a second assassination attempt.
On Sunday, the U.S. Secret Service opened fire on a man armed with a semiautomatic rifle who was hiding on the outside of Trump’s Florida golf club where the Republican candidate was golfing.
The man, 58-year-old Ryan Wesley Routh, was arrested after fleeing the scene. He was charged Monday with two federal firearms offenses.
The weekend threats against Trump had an opposite effect on Trump media stocks than the stock reaction to the first assassination attempt on Trump in July. On July 15, the first trading day after the attempt, Trump Media’s stock price closed up more than 30%.
A Delaware judge also ruled Monday that Trump Media violated an agreement with ARC Global, an early investor in the company that helped take the company public.
Vice Chancellor Lori Will determined that the shell company Digital World Acquisition Corp. underestimated the number of shares ARC Global would receive if Trump Media went public.
Trump Media’s losses on Tuesday accelerated shortly after 3 p.m. ET, leaving the stock just pennies above its lowest closing price since listing on the Nasdaq.
The stock is now down 60% from its recent highs, which followed the first assassination attempt at a Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July. The stock is down 75% from its post-merger high in March.
As of Tuesday’s close, Trump Media’s market value was $3.2 billion.
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