Posted on 04/24/2024 2:16:42 PM PDT by MtnClimber
"Such an inquiry is needed to protect shareholders, including TMTG’s retail investors," Nunes says.
Devin Nunes, CEO of the Trump Media & Technology Group, is asking House committee leaders to investigate the potential "unlawful manipulation of DJT stock."
In a letter to the committees, Nunes pointed out that DJT [the initials for Donald J. Trump] has appeared every day since April 2 on Nasdaq’s "Reg SHO threshold list," which he said is "indicative of unlawful trading activity."
The concern follows Trump Media & Technology Group, whose flagship product is social networking site Truth Social, began being traded late last month on the Nasdaq stock market.
"This is particularly troubling given that 'naked' short selling often entails sophisticated market participants profiting at the expense of retail investors," Nunes wrote in the letter released on Tuesday. "Reports indicate that, as of April 3, 2024, DJT was the single most expensive stock to short in U.S. markets by a significant margin, meaning that brokers have a significant financial incentive to lend non-existent shares."
The California Republican is also a former chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
Nunes also wrote that "data made available to us indicate that just four market participants have been responsible for over 60% of the extraordinary volume of DJT shares traded: Citadel Securities, VIRTU Americas, G1 Execution Services, and Jane Street Capital."
The former House Intelligence Committee chairman called on the committees to "open an investigation of anomalous trading of DJT to determine its extent and purpose, and whether any laws including RICO statutes and tax evasion laws were violated, so that the perpetrators of any illegal activity can be held to account."
He argued that "such an inquiry is needed to protect shareholders, including TMTG’s retail investors" and might also "shed light on the need for policy changes such as closing the Reg SHO loophole for market makers, requiring brokers to better document their efforts to locate and borrow stock, and stiffening penalties for illegal naked short sellers."
Where is the SEC? Are they only worried about ESG scores now?
Yea. I bought 60 shares of DJT at 62. It’s now trading at 35.67. I got screwed.
The fat lady hasn’t sung yet. I bought Walmart in 1995 for 20 bucks. It’s split and split many times. I definitely have made a mint. You just have to sit on it and be patient. You will make money. But never sell. That where people make mistakes.
This just in.......the Biden SEC is surveilling financial data
from stock trades being made on the American exchanges......
So Biden “must know” how insider trading has profited the Congress
and the amt of taxes our duly elected ones are paying ......../s.
The Biden Crime Family is all atwitter as Joe fiddles
around stocks and bonds to get the family fortune’s up.
So, you are saying that there is hope for my Coleco computer shares. Awesome.
When did you buy?
I believe shares of Fascist Book halved just a few weeks into its initial offering.
I bought DWAC on day 2 when it was at 71. Didn’t wat to sell when it was recently higher than that.
A few days after the IPO. I should have bought DWAC at 42. I was too slow. I didn’t have a trading account.
I’ve been buying over the last couple of years and now my average is 2350. A lot of my Shares are much higher than that so it took a big chunk to get it down to where it needed to be but I hold out great hope that this is going to be solid. They just announced streaming is rolling out and I think they’re going to buy with Rumble for tick tock. That’s a total gas in my part but I know that their first filing after the merger was complete said that they’ve done extensive due diligence on a video company. I think it was Rumble but it could have been tiktok. Or someone else
Yeah I should have bought on the first day of the IPO as well but I got in late, thinking it was going back up over 100. Been holding since. Did buy more at the low 20s last year.
I’m not a stock guy. It appears the ‘short sellers’ are creating a buy/sell frenzy to drive down the stock price so they can then sell their short positions at a profit while undermining the company’s value. Do I have that right?
they’re driving the stock down to destroy the company and MAGA. Shorts have to BUY to cover and that’s where they’re in a real pickle as they are mostly naked shorting, meaning they never identified shares they could borrow when they shorted so when this starts going up it’s going to rocket on them. they will have to buy at higher and higher prices to cover their short position.
“Buy on the rumour, sell on the news”
Unfortunately, you bought on the news.
The SEC won’t do it; they are no different than the DOJ. Just a political arm.
States have security boards with overlapping jurisdiction. They’ll have much better luck prosecuting these crooks under state law in Texas or Florida.
Could see this coming. Naked short selling orchestrated by antiTrump traders. Even without that, never buy an IPO during its opening bubble. Maybe Trumpers can pump it back up like the jokers did with AMC and the other meme stocks a couple years ago.
“Reports indicate that, as of April 3, 2024, DJT was the single most expensive stock to short in U.S. markets by a significant margin”
I believe that it is the single most expensive stock to short in US market history.
The borrow fees hit 500 or 600% APR-
by contrast-Countrywide Financial fees were 150-200% when it was obviously going bankrupt.
This is caused by the demand to borrow shares AND shareholders notifying their brokers to not lend their shares out.
Folks that own the stock should tell their brokers either to not lend it out or credit their account with the borrow fees when it is lent out.
As I understand the dynamic, a lot of short selling can benefit the investors who purchased the stock early. At some point, the short sellers must go into the market to buy shares to cover their short position. Their hope is that, by the time that happens, the stock price will have fallen and they can buy shares cheaply. The risk is that other short sellers will also be looking to buy the stock, which drives the price up.
From Wikipedia (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_squeeze for full article):
“Short squeezes result when short sellers of a stock move to cover their positions, purchasing large volumes of stock relative to the market volume. Purchasing the stock to cover their short positions raises the price of the shorted stock, thus triggering more short sellers to cover their positions by buying the stock; i.e., there is increasing demand. This dynamic can result in a cascade of stock purchases and an even bigger jump of the share price.[2][3] Borrow, buy and sell timing can lead to more than 100% of a company’s shares sold short.[4][5] This does not necessarily imply naked short selling, since shorted shares are put back onto the market, potentially allowing the same share to be borrowed multiple times.[6]
“Short squeezes tend to happen in stocks that have expensive borrow rates. Expensive borrow rates can increase the pressure on short sellers to cover their positions, further adding to the reflexive nature of this phenomenon.”
Many individuals and institutions want to short the DJT stock simply because they dislike Donald Trump. That raises the potential that, down the road, there could be a short squeeze that would send the price skyrocketing, as spacejunkie2001 wrote.
IMPORTANT CAVEAT: The foregoing is not investment advice. I’m just offering wild guesses based on what I read in the mass media. I, personally, am neither buying nor selling the stock. Good luck to those of you who do!
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