Trump investors are among Wall Street’s biggest losers

2 hours ago 1

By Matthew A. Winkler

December 29, 2025 — 11.00am

Investors who put their faith in Donald Trump’s publicly traded media and technology company are among the biggest losers in a stock market that rallied from Amsterdam to Sydney this year, proving the peril of riding the coat tails of a huckster with a history of running businesses that go bust.

Thirty-five years after his debt-laden Taj Mahal casino was placed in bankruptcy – the first of six such failures by the current president of the United States that included other Atlantic City properties, New York’s Plaza Hotel and Trump Entertainment Resorts – Trump’s latest washout is something called Trump Media & Technology Group Corp.

Trump’s fortune continues to grow, but investors in his companies are having a different experience.

To be sure, calling Trump Media a company is a bit of a stretch. For starters, the venture whose primary asset is the Truth Social platform and goes by the ticker “DJT” has managed to generate just $US3.7 million ($5.5 million) in revenue over the 12 months ended September 30 while posting an operating loss of $US186.1 million.

Losses are also piling up in the sharemarket, with shares in Trump Media tumbling 69 per cent in 2025 through Wednesday. Of the 20 internet media services companies in the Russell 1000 Index, it was the worst performer over three months, six months and one year when a majority of the firms appreciated, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Adding insult to injury, Trump Media also brings up the rear among the 97 public internet media services companies worldwide with a market value of at least $US1 billion.

In a move that is hard to interpret as anything other than a desperate pivot after expanding into cryptocurrencies, financial products and sports wagering, Trump Media on Thursday said it agreed to merge with closely held fusion developer TAE Technologies that will leave each with about a 50 per cent stake in the combined company. Although Trump Media’s shares surged 33 per cent on the announcement, that still leaves them down about 66 per cent for the year. The gains probably says more about the fact current Trump Media management will have a greatly diminished role in the combined entity. Each company will end up with about a 50 per cent stake, and Trump Media chairman and chief executive officer Devin Nunes — formerly a Republican member of Congress from California — will become co-CEO with TAE chief executive Michl Binderbauer. Also, TAE board member Michael Schwab will become chairman.

The good news for Trump fans is that the sharemarket isn’t the only way to bet on Trump. The bad news for Trump fans is those other ways are also big money losers.

In January, just days before the inauguration, Trump launched his own memecoin to mark his return to the White House. A memecoin is essentially a type of cryptocurrency with no underlaying assets to back its value and practical purpose other than to use for pure speculation. The coins immediately soared, and the Trump family and their business partners were sitting on at least $US50 billion of them, according to Bloomberg News.

Alas, the gains didn’t last long. Within days the memecoin started to crater and hasn’t stopped, meaning anyone who purchased at the highs in those first few hours following the launch and held on hoping for a rebound have suffered almost a complete loss.

At the same time, Trump’s family businesses are pockmarked in litigation and regulatory investigations. A plan to combine World Liberty Financial, a crypto start-up run by the president’s two oldest sons, with Canada’s Alt5 Sigma Corporation, a digital asset treasury company holding crypto tokens issues by World Liberty, has run into trouble. The tokens, $USWLFI, have lost about half their value and Alt5 Sigma’s shares have plummeted 86 per cent since early August when the deal with the Trumps was announced. At least one investor told Bloomberg News he felt “betrayed”.

Such financial fiascos are exceptional in a year when all 84 equity indexes tracking various regions of the world compiled by Bloomberg show gains for the first time since 2019. Trump Media’s shares peaked this year at a closing price of $US42.91 on January 13, just four days before the inauguration. They never came close to recapturing those heights, steadily falling to as low as $US10.29 in November before closing at $US14.86 on Thursday. The losses are even more painful for those investors who bought in at the beginning, when Trump Media went public in March 2024 through a merger with a special purpose acquisition vehicle called Digital World Acquisition Corp. At the time, the shares closed as high as $US66.22.

Trump’s debt-laden Taj Mahal casino was one of many of his businesses that ended up in bankruptcy

The results are a stark contrast to the confident outlook Trump Media shared with investors in a February 16, 2024, regulatory filing ahead of the merger, asserting the company has “a broad potential user base with demonstrated brand awareness, established brand loyalty and eagerness to seek out change, while making choices of where to spend their media dollars and attention.”

Anyone wondering what professional stock analysts have to say will search in vain because Trump Media is the only company among its 20 domestic peers with no widely disseminated 12-month target share price, revenue estimates or earnings forecasts on the Bloomberg terminal. The spaces where such information is displayed are blank for Trump Media. Also, it is one of only seven companies in the Russell 1000 Index with no target share price.

In some ways, Trump was twice swept into office on the perception that government had become broken, unable to solve problems and improve the lives of everyday Americans. Trump pounced on those frustrations, declaring that only a businessman could fix what ails America. Even if true, why not a businessman with a proven history of success for all stakeholders rather than self-enrichment at the expense of others? For all the financial losses the Trump family has inflicted on investors while inequality expands and affordability is turning into a crisis, the president’s net worth has doubled over the last 24 months to around $US6 billion.

Bloomberg

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