CHRIS CRUCIAL: Is Truth Social's stock price the key? 🔑
CHRIS CRUCIAL: Is Truth Social's stock price the key? 🔑
PLUS: My Friday "Ask Me Anything"
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1. What Truth Social knows
As I wrote last night, everyone is in search of the key that unlocks the identity of the winner of this presidential election.
I noted that enthusiasm is on Kamala Harris’ side — and that we might look back on her double-digit edge on that front as the deciding factor if she wins.
A Republican friend — who shall go unnamed — flagged another potential key indicator to me on Friday: The stock price of Truth Social, the Trump-owned social media company.
Here’s how Truth Social has traded in the last five days — via Marketwatch:
Not great!
Here’s how CNN covered the stock’s slippage this week:
After a ridiculous spike over the past five weeks that had absolutely nothing to do with the company’s actual business, former President Donald Trump’s social media stock is suffering a sudden setback.
Truth Social owner Trump Media & Technology Group’s share price plunged 22.3% on Wednesday. That marks Trump Media’s worst one-day loss since going public in March, narrowly exceeding a loss of 21.5% on April 1.
At Tuesday’s close above $51, Trump’s dominant stake in the company was valued at about $5.9 billion. By the end of trading on Wednesday, the value of Trump’s shares tumbled to $4.6 billion. That means Trump lost $1.3 billion in net worth in a single day.
My GOP friend’s theory works like this: The Trump Social stock is, basically, a stalking horse for what the financial markets (and the investors/bettors who populate them) think of Trump’s chances of winning the White House.
As in: The more likely that markets think it is that Trump wins, the higher the Truth Social stock goes. A dip in Truth Social’s stock price means increased pessimism about the former president’s chances.
This is all driven by a belief — and one I think is right — that a President Trump (again) would make his social media site a WAY bigger deal in the national conversation and, therefore, much more valuable. And that if Trump loses and returns to the private sector than Truth Social stock is, basically, worthless.
Pretty intriguing, right?
It’s also worth noting that while futures markets still favor Trump, he has lost ground in both Polymarket and Kalshi in the last few days.
Which, in a vacuum, might not make me think much. But when you combine it with the Truth Social stock decline, it makes me wonder whether my friend is on to something.
2. Friday AMA
Every Friday, I spend an hour answering questions LIVE on my YouTube channel. I am going to do a bunch more of these livestreams over the final days of the race. So make sure to SUBSCRIBE to my YouTube channel so that you get alerted when I go live. Here’s today’s edition:
3. Some good news
I ❤️ a good celebrity chef story. Especially when it’s a celebrity chef in my town!
Meet Kwame Onwuachi (via the New York Times):
At 34, he has achieved a prominence that eludes peers who have been cooking for longer and control more restaurants. The past decade has given us car-seat food critics and TikTok bakers, but hardly any new stars whose fame came primarily from working in a restaurant.
Mr. Onwuachi is the exception. His talent in the kitchen and his charisma outside it conspire with a rare ability, seen more often in pop stars than in chefs, to read the currents of the moment and align his own energies with them so that he seems to be traveling in unison with the rest of the culture.
Anna Wintour recently put him in charge of the food at the Met Gala next year, announcing his role at a news conference inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art that was like “being in a Batman movie,” he said. “I felt like green gas was going to come up and the Joker was going to bust in.”
He played in the N.B.A. All-Star Celebrity Game in February, taking the court with the singer Jennifer Hudson and Micah Parsons of the Dallas Cowboys. In September, he cooked for the Black Excellence Brunch on the South Lawn of the White House. This month, he will be the focus of an episode of the Netflix series “Chef’s Table.”
He has endorsed or partnered with Lexus, American Express, Warby Parker, Macy’s and other companies that have approached Jordan Solomon, one of his representatives at Creative Artists Agency. In his posts on Instagram, he is as likely to be showing off his Microsoft Surface Pro tablet as sharing the latest accolade for his New York restaurant, Tatiana, where tables are still maddeningly, tantalizingly hard to get, nearly two years into its run.
“Kwame is a completely different celebrity chef from the Bobby Flays and Mario Batalis,” said the chef Alexander Smalls, a friend and mentor. While earlier cooking stars were defined by their profession, Mr. Onwuachi has already transcended his.
NOTABLE QUOTABLE
“So I apologize to anyone who felt slighted or upset by my response. As I said, it wasn’t about Trump voters, supporters or employees. Current or former. And, I set myself up for the 6 sec soundbite. No excuses. Can’t nail every interview. My skin is thick enough.” — Mark Cuban apologizes for saying no smart and strong women are in Donald Trump’s campaign
ONE GOOD CHART
Regular readers know I love this WaPo graphic that tracks where high-quality state polling shows the race in the battlegrounds. It’s, uh, really close.
SONG OF THE DAY
The Cure released its first new album in 15 years on Friday. It’s called “Songs of a Lost World” and I am really digging it so far. This is “Alone,” the first track off the new record.
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You are right about the DJT stock. I’ve watched it since the beginning and wondered (I am a retired Senior Vice President at a major Wall Street firm) where the hell is the SEC and state regulators? This company has no reason to trade at these prices…it’s all hype and insider trading. Keep watching. Trump needs the money to pay Letitia James, and any sign that he is selling will expose the scam and crater the stock. You’ll see.
No offense, but anyone looking to the political betting markets as a predictive tool is a moron and doesn't understand what they are or how they work. Only one of the markets allows betting by Americans. That means that Polymarket and the rest are all foreign influenced. One French dude made a $45 million dollar bet that moved a whole market. What unique insight into the American electorate do we think he has?
Those markets have extremely low liquidity, so relatively small amounts of money move them in big ways. They are also subject to market washing, which means that a number of transactions get made by the same trader to try and simulate a volume of activity. This would be illegal in an actual stock market, but in an unregulated market like these stupid political futures markets, any moron can get away with it. Most of these markets can be meaningfully moved for the price of an average mid-price sedan. Lastly -- go look at their history of accurate prediction. They almost always get it wrong. They had Hillary beating Trump and Trump beating Biden. The whole thing is stupid. It is basically a way for some political people to help a campaign, but also be able to write the investment off as a loss if it goes south.