Trump’s SPAC Is A Suckers Bet

Former President Trump announced on Thursday that a newly formed company, TMTG or Trump Media & Technology Group, would merge with Digital World Acquisition Corporation. Digital World is a SPAC or Special Purpose Acquisition Company that was formed in September and whose stock price had essentially been trading around $10 before the TMTG announcement. On Thursday the stock rose to $52 before closing at $45.50 and on Friday it hit a high of $175 and closed at $94.20.

Digital World (symbol DWAC) raised $299 million on September 8 when it sold 29.9 million shares at $10 each. It appears from TMTG’s press release that essentially all the money that was raised will be available for TMTG to use. The devil will be in the details with the soon to be published SEC filings.

Prior to Digital World’s IPO there were 6.25 million shares sold for $25,000 or $0.004 per share as Founder shares, which from reading the prospectus are owned by Patrick Orlando, Digital World’s CEO. After the IPO these shares are a bit less than 20% of all the outstanding shares.

After Digital World’s IPO it had just over 36 million outstanding shares. At Friday’s peak price of $175 it was valued at $6.3 billion and at its close of $94.20 was worth $3.4 billion.

Chuck Jones work history—

I provide independent research of technology companies

previously an analyst for Atlantic Trust

analyst for Smith Barney

analyst at Salomon Brothers.

Prior to becoming an equity analyst, I spent 16 years at IBM

I so many words, Chuck Jones has been terminated many times.

Yes, Forbes is owned by China, but it was a Hong Kong investment group who bought it back in 2014. I don't think Steve Forbes would lose control to Beijing. One reason for this move was to spike up international editions of Forbes. Here's what they have today:

Now Fortune Magazine is the U.S. business pub that is totally in bed with China and the Leftists here in the U.S.

The magazine is becoming practically unreadable because of their bias in politics, global warming -- you name it. Also it seems almost every story has to feature a woman business hero. And this is a heritage from the 2 year window when the publisher of Lady's Home Journal owned Fortune (before selling out to China via a Thai firm with one of China's biggest financial firms in control).

Fortune can't make money anymore. They promise 10 issues a year. But a few days ago I got a combined issue for "October November". Think about that: October and November are hot months for advertising, but they don't have enough financial support to run single issues!

My guess is it's make or break time. Looks like they are headed down the same path as Newsweak. It's sad to see this publication downhill because at the height of the Internet boom, they featured splendid articles across many industries.

Meanwhile I got Forbes the other day and it's a huge Billionaires Ranking issue loaded full with advertising pages and infomercials.

I bought 200 shares at $24 and sold them at $100.
Seemed like a no-brainer.

Sure, in retrospect I should have bought more shares, bought them cheaper and sold them when they were peaking - but hindsight is always 20-20.

I just wish there were opportunities like that every day!

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