Trump Media shares halted after sudden stock plunge

Trump Media shares closed down nearly 10% Tuesday, after a wild trading session that was briefly halted due to volatility when the Truth Social owner’s stock suddenly plunged in price.

DJT shares, which had been up more than 13% earlier Tuesday afternoon, abruptly turned more than 6% lower on the day at the time the halt occurred. Trump Media continued to fall after the five-minute trading halt lifted at 2:47 p.m. ET.

Trump Media settled at $27.06 per share.

The stock price whipsawed during an extremely volatile trading session in which more than 97 million shares traded hands — multiple times the company’s 30-day average trading volume.

That figure marks Trump Media’s highest-volume day since it started publicly trading on the Nasdaq in late March, following a business merger with a blank-check firm.

The previous busiest trading day was July 15, the first session after the company’s majority owner, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, narrowly survived an assassination attempt at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.

Many of Trump Media’s retail investors are fans of the former president, and analysts suggest they are often buying and selling the stock as a way to support him or bet on his chances of beating Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.

Tuesday’s slide reversed a weekslong stock surge, which coincided with developments in the presidential race that his supporters have touted as good news.

A handful of online betting markets recently shifted in Trump’s favor after weeks of showing either a neck-and-neck race or a slight lead for Harris. Odds and gambling platforms do not use methodologies used by traditional political polling, and therefore are not substitutes for political polls.

Trump owns nearly 57% of Trump Media, according to a Sept. 5 regulatory filing. His stake is worth about $3 billion, more than half his on-paper net worth, per Forbes’ estimate.

Trump and other company insiders were barred from selling their shares until Sept. 19, when a lockup agreement expired.

Trump had vowed not to sell his shares. But days after the lockup lifted, Trump Media revealed that another major shareholder, United Atlantic Ventures, had dumped nearly its entire 11 million share stake.

In a Truth Social post Tuesday morning at 1:37 a.m. ET, Trump wrote, “I LOVE TRUTH, THE REAL VOICE OF AMERICA!”