the agenda driven forces are NAKED shorting this company to destroy it. The float is low in the scheme of things so they can’t find shares to borrow. you can buy naked puts too
The naked shorting has to stop. It’s criminal that the prime brokerages permit it. The prime brokers do have an exemption though. If they are forced to book a large number of puts, they can go naked short to hedge their position. That’s one of the loopholes. And it is exploited. And it adds to volatility and creates artificial inventory because someone has to buy those naked shorts as a long position. The increase in supply obviously negatively impacts the share price.
There is certainly plenty of surface level evidence of possible conspiracy, or just plain negligence. The obvious one being leaving a rooftop within eyesight of the President without cover. Now we have this shorting, though I’d like to see (as you seem to be suggesting) how much shorting was going on not just the days before but the last weeks and months. My initial thought was Trump may sell some shares to cover potential legal fees, fines etc esp that absurd $400 million out of NY. Plus another apx $100 mil to Carrol. It’s absurd but there’s still a chance he can’t win on appeal. He also owes $175 million to the guy who put up the appeal bond.
I don’t know how many shares he’d have to sell to cover the $500 million, and whether he’d lose outright control of DJT. Though he may lose an outright controlling interest he would still likely be able to control the company with the proxy votes of other shareholders. Elon Musk only controls 13% of Tesla (his brother another large chunk from their solar city acquisitions). That said, the forces trying to short the stock may indeed be trying to deprive him of the ability to use those shares to raise capital. There is no other reason, except plain old greed. Which is also possible.