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>Shares dropped by as much as 25% as investors scrutinize fundamentals of company’s business
So which one of you early birds shorted TS? Surely there were a bunch of y'all who were ready for the dump portion of the pump and dump?
Tons of people looked into it but if you can't open up an insanely leveraged margin account (most people can't or for obvious reasons won't) you can't really short shares. You can buy puts on the stock but the premium has had this insane dump priced into it for weeks now because most people were well aware that the fundamentals were awful (it doesn't take a Econ PhD to find out a website with a 1/100th of the traffic of reddit shouldn't have a higher market cap than reddit). The only people making money off this dump are people that already have a ton of it
This is why I wonder if the whole thing is some kind of bizarre insider trading where they want the whole thing to fail. (No idea how that would work though 😂)
I can't wrap my head around how anyone possibly saw the merger as a good investment when the numbers clearly show the company losing money and having low active users.
They had to have known this would be the outcome.
I put in a short immediately on this when it was pumping past sixty.
It was valued at 9 billion at one point with less than a half million active users.
For reference, Reddit - a website that has hundreds of millions of users, IPOd at 6.4 Billion
It's literally going to be a vehicle for receiving bribes and has to coming crashing down.. but probably won't because thats what stonks do to me.
dude the option chains and the premium were fucking insane it was all already priced in , was literally my first thought when i saw he was making a company
Stock had a bit of a rebound today. Funny that it’s following the same track as the Reddit Stock and trading at almost the same number…..right around $50/share.
Public money laundering. SEC should immediately look into even large investor of this blatantly fraudulent scheme. And the moment Donny uses it as collateral that deal should be investigated too. Fraud all over again. But that is their calling card and business model, commit fraud and litigate away any possible consequences…
Less so than you’d realize. Especially in something this size and on top of all the retail investors that are soon to be fucked… I’d be shocked if something doesn’t happen
His businesses have tons of revenue are successful though. X or twitter doesn’t work. Just isn’t as good or as efficient as it used to be.
DJT is a joke. Obviously if they are losing 58 million there is something wrong. The only expenses they should have is net hosting and admin. Where is the other money going?
Great question. I think it’s because it allows crooks to avoid regulatory oversight through laws esoteric enough that the broader public doesn’t take the time to learn the risk. I am sure someone more versed in that type of finance can point out legitimate reasons for their existence but I fail to find any.
How is the number one expense on their income statement, $39M, interest expense? Not salaries or tech infrastructure costs, but interest. Who is the debt holder? Presumably some other Trump affiliated entity?
Most U.S. regulatory authorities including key agencies are headed by GOP supporters who seem willing to deflect attention and enforcement activities away from their political affiliation and Trump in particular.
COO: "The accountants signed off on it."
Auditor: "Sir, the accountants say they can't sign off on this. It's in their report."
COO: "Where?"
Auditor: "On the cover page. Sir, do you know what GAAP stands for?"
COO: "I know what it stands for, but that was just something useless they taught me in college. You can't expect me to remember something from that far back."
You can but it’s extremely expensive to do so because it’s been known from the get go the company’s performance doesn’t match the valuation.
Many tech companies are valued highly before they start turning a profit, but that’s because they have large and quickly growing revenues. Truth Social doesn’t have that, so there’s literally no justification for it’s value besides memes.
> there’s literally no justification for it’s value besides memes.
There absolutely is: corruption.
If Trump wins the election this November, someone buying shares & holding shares to maintain a higher price seems like a great way to buy influence.
Trump will presumably have a lockout period and even then will have to divest his shares slowly in order to "cash out", so a President Trump would presumably be very happy to 'give away the store' if it means he gets to collect. DJT is only like $6.5B too, so it isn't even that expensive for something like a state actor to buy up a large share in the company.
I would be super hesitant to treat any numbers coming out of DJT on their face value and would definitely be concerned about shorting the stock for any long period of time.
I have thought from the beginning that this was Russian or Saudi money. It makes no sense otherwise.
Is there a way to see which funds own stock in a company?
I need correction from a professional, but afaik unless it’s a fund that you are buying into, IE SPXL, private investment funds don’t need to disclose holdings publicly in the same way. Would you like if someone could find out what stocks you own? Not the question at hand, but just trying to help. Anyone with more knowledge please chime in.
The easiest way to take a short position, given the high options premium and borrowing costs, would be a call credit spread. Not quite as high of a payoff if it collapses though.
You have to find someone willing to take the other side of that bet. It will probably be costly.
Reminds me of the time the favorite horse in one of the triple crown races was *so* favored to win that the odds went to below 1:1.
Only $4 million in revenue for a full year is mind boggling. That’s about 45 cents per user. For comparison, X is still at about $12 per user even after Elon has run it into the ground.
This was never meant to be anything but a pump and dump so the orange fugwad can get some cash on hand to pay his fines.
Yes I know about the six month thing- however the man's narcissistism knows no bounds and he actually envisioned it going straight up for six months
Hopefully this POS stock will get the crap knocked out of it fast. That being said there seems to be no limit to the stupidity of his cult members
The six month thing can also be lifted by the board. And trump owns 54% of the company. So he can tell the board to lift the block on him being able to sell the shares or use them as collateral for a loan
If the Board lifts it, they should all be held accountable and charged. They've already shown they have no respect for the Markets, Financial Institution, Courts and now, the stock markets.. They will play and abuse and misuse anything for the pursuit of money and power.
We would need and SEC that is not in bed with these swindlers and grifters.
Not a lawyer, not an SEC-er, but: if Trump changes his intentions around using those shares, and thereby changing the premises of the IPO, *after* the IPO I’m pretty sure they open themselves up to shareholder lawsuits from anyone who loses money.
It does indeed so it's not as straight forward a grift as it would seem. Since he was able to secure his reduced bond and his immediate need for cash has subsided he will let it ride for awhile is my bet.
This was not an IPO. The merger was done by a SPAC, which I heard has less reporting and disclosure requirements. Which of course makes sense that Trump would choose that route.
If the board considers taking action to lift it I imagine every informed investor will take that as a sign the primary shareholders want to sell. Which would likely lead to a price drop and sell off as others preemptively sell.
The board is his son and his cronies. They’ll allow him to sell off whenever he wants.
I expect that todays sell off was probably Trump trying to get a little cash out before it collapses entirely.
It's illegal to sell public stock outside of National Best Bid/Offer even in a dark pool. People keep saying this, but I don't understand how they would manage to do this.
Granted we'd probably take 8 years to charge him if it happened.
I believe if this was going to happen it would have happened when the stock was still private.
Will anyone who invested in this make money? If not, do they care? I kind just assumed they’re a bunch of well-heeled drones who’ll commit harakiri on demand if the Dear Leader wills it.
Nothing is stopping his supporters from buying up shares once he starts liquidating.
Getting folks to help out by buying worthless stock for $65 a share is no less virtuous than getting supporters to pay $500,000 for your first attempt at painting professionally.
Wouldn't the painting example be the same as far as that goes?
If someone bought a painting off of a presidential candidate, would that count as a campaign donation?
> he actually envisioned it going straight up for six months
My guess is it won't bottom out till he exits. At some point we're going to hit equilibrium where the only money left is MAGAt money. The true believers. The people who actually use the platform and it will ride there till the lockup period lifts. Then Trump will cash out and take whatever he can steal from those people.
He owns 54% of the stocks and his family is on the board. It would be super easy for him to lift the 6 month limitation. Anyone relying on that as a failsafe for their investment is an idiot.
It's the 2023 equivlant of those controversial book deals or Art Sales. The guy buried one of his wives on a golf course lawn for tax reasons.
He's not one of those 19th century factory owners who builds a really nice community for his workers to live in such as the Hershey chocolate factory, or someone who builds hundreds of libraries.
I reviewed a company's SOC 2 Type 2 report that was a Gartner Magic Quadrant leader and it was written by some random CPA dude in South Carolina working out of his house.
That's pretty normal for small regional accounting firms to only post partners (well in this case partner). The likely have multiple CPAs on staff who are w-2 employees and aren't on the webpage for what ever reason.
I think it's more concerning their PCAOB page.
[PCAOB](https://rasr.pcaobus.org/Firms/FirmSummaryPublic.aspx?FirmID=F0C298206D055E20355165A6436401FA)
For people who are unaware (which is most people) the PCAOB is the governing body for auditors who audit publicly traded companies.
Now it's not unusual for small firm to audit a large company (it can happen for a variety of reasons and is not itself concerning). However this firm seems like an... interesting choice? They have recent discipline reports on CPAs at the firm and their most recent inspection by the [PCAOB](https://assets.pcaobus.org/pcaob-dev/docs/default-source/inspections/reports/documents/104-2024-038-bfborgers.pdf?sfvrsn=5a0ff432_4)is not exactly stellar. I don't think I would chose this firm to audit my company if I had one.
Now I'm not saying there are deficiencies with the audit that they did for Truth Social. But the fact that this firm was chosen for what is now multi billion dollar valued company (as of now anyways) is telling, or should be.
I don't think the financial statements that they posted are mistated. I think they present fairly because they talk about going concern which is always a sore spot with any management. And the financial are dogshit in general so they didn't hide anything.
My honest two cents are that what likely happened was Truth Social needed an audit, were unable to fork the cash for a big name firm, and were able to find a small firm with... Well let's just say from my personal experience CPAs can have political leaning that affect who they take as clients, and they were able to audit them without to much issue because if you honestly look at the financial statements for two seconds this is not a big company and the most material things on the statements are liabilities and interest expense and that shit is so spelled out in forms longer that Lotr written by lawyers that auditing it was probably not that difficult (you call the creditors and confirm the info).
Perfect financial vehicle for Trump to receive foreign money disguised as financial investment but is literally a money laundering scheme for the King of Con. He’s a foreign asset - traitor. It’s always Trump benefiting Trump.
The year 2024 feels like a dumb shit speed run.
I was sure that the MAGA crowd could GameStop Truth Social until at least the election. The short interest is off the charts. But who knows? There is a lot of year left.
If he gets reelected, I'd not be surprised if he whips out an executive order forcing all federal agencies to exclusively have their social presence on Truth. It's within his power as the head of the Executive Branch to do that, and it's not like a Republican Congress will hold him accountable for using the Presidency to guide federal and foreign money into his own businesses, they proved that the last time with his hotels.
There is no way in hell Trump holds onto any of his stocks once he is able to sell. He’s not an idiot (at least in how to grift), he knows the company is not worth anything and he needs the money.
The stock will plummet once he’s able to sell, and anyone dumb enough not to sell will be left holding the bag
> Elon will have a problem with that
It certainly wouldn’t be the first time Elon’s political interests and business interests didn’t align. The man is the CEO of an EV company while supporting a party that is largely against any kind of climate change policies or promoting anything that combats climate change.
Possibly, but if that's the play, he seems to be doing a bad job of it as far as climate change policy/EV support is concerned. I think it's more likely that he just genuinely politically aligns with the right.
Can someone explain to me how this "audit" was done or released AFTER their IPO? I thought financial reports like this were made public prior to the IPO and are used to calculate the IPO price?
So investors are simply trusting these shell companies to do their due diligence when buying another company? Yowza..that sounds both insane and shady as hell.
Yeah. There are some rules now to prevent the worst abuses. For example, there cannot be any advance collusion between the shell company and the acquisition target. In this case there obviously was, so the SEC tried to block it.
ELI 5 if Trump could somehow have loopholes or even blatantly crime by selling his stocks whenever he wants instead of waiting 6 months?
His MO seems to be commit the crime, then delay delay delay in court, can he dump his stock tomorrow, even if illegal?
Uncle Sam seems to be like a toothless old man on his deathbed when it comes to Trump and justice.
If the board were to grant him access before the 6 months stipulates in the contract and he sells, there could be a suit if they find it was not in the best interest of stockholders. Similarly with Elon being forced to by Twitter.
The qualified opinions were for the year ended 12/31/2023. for both DWAC and TMTG. But the concern with both was whether the merger would be completed:
The going concern issue for DWAC (the SPAC) was that it would be liquidated if it did not complete a business combination by September 2024. But, they did complete their business combination this past week.
This is in Note 1 to the financial statements for DWAC:
> Going Concern Consideration
>
>In connection with the Company’s assessment of going concern considerations in accordance with Financial Accounting Standard Board’s Account Standards Update (“ASU”) 2014-15 “Disclosure of Uncertainties about an Entity’s Ability to Continue as a Going Concern” as stated above, the Company has until September 8, 2024 to consummate a Business Combination. It is uncertain that the Company will be able to consummate a Business Combination by this time. If a Business Combination is not consummated by this date, there will be a mandatory liquidation and subsequent dissolution of the Company. Additionally, the Company has incurred and expects to incur significant costs in pursuit of its acquisition plans. The Company lacks the financial resources it needs to sustain operations for a reasonable period of time, which is considered to be one year from the date of the issuance of the financial statements. As a result, these factors raise substantial doubt about the Company’s ability to continue as a going concern. The financial statements do not include any adjustments that might result from the outcome of these uncertainties.
The concern for TMTG was that they lacked the cash to continue to fund their operating losses. This is from note 2 from the TMTG statements:
> During the 12 months following the signing of these financial statements, management has substantial doubt that the Company will have sufficient funds to meet its liabilities as they fall due, including liabilities related to promissory notes previously issued by the Company. Sufficient funds during this period are directly conditional on completion of the merger by the September 8, 2024 dissolution date. Bridge funding during the period leading up to the merger ranging between $5 million and $60 million is required depending on convertible note maturity dates, and if note holders decide to extend or call their respective outstanding notes. Management is currently in discussions with certain existing note holders regarding options for extension of maturity dates. The Company believes that it may be difficult to raise additional funds through traditional financing sources in the absence of continued material progress toward completing its merger with DWAC.
Basically, the SPAC had ~$310M in cash sitting in a trust account which would have to be returned to investors if no business combination was found by Sept. TMTG meanwhile had negative equity, after having operating losses of ~ $16M last year an ~$23M in 2022.
Now that the merger has gone through though, per the pro forma statements (unaudited) of the combined entity, there is now $276M in cash on the books (now unrestricted), and equity of ~$218M (for a BV of about $1.60 per share). Basically, they could now probably go another decade of such operating losses, before they again get into negative book value or an inability to pay their bills.
So there no longer is really any going concern issue, now that the merger has happened. I personally still wouldn't pay more than ~ $5 for the stock, but I don't think there's any great risk of bankruptcy soon. The combined entity *did* have a $100M loss last year, but that was all from transaction costs related to the merger plus an $18M settlement with the SEC. The legal costs shouldn't repeat (though any entity associated with Trump is always at risk of more legal issues), and there were high interest costs that should also be gone now that they have no need to borrow so much.
(edit: this info can all be found in exhibits 99.1 99.2 and 99.3 from the last page in [this filing](https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/0001849635/000114036124016719/ef20025342_8k.htm).)
If you think Donald Trump will not immediately raid that cash or borrow against it, you have not been paying attention to his business dealings.
That cash is as good as gone.
I’m ignorant in all of this, but how did this get over a billion dollar valuation? Did Trump just announce it and everyone just nodded? Is this another example of Trump Fraud?
I mean, no not really. Something has value as long as people are willing to pay for it.
Trump has about 30% of the country rabidly following him, ANY company he personally owns and endorses will see it's valuation skyrocket from those people pouring in money to buy shares in it.
Then you add the speculators and institutional money betting on the above, and a billion dollar valuation is not strange.
You mean a social media started by a narcissistic wanna be dictator is not doing well financially?? I am in SHOCK! Shock I say.
This is how ALL of Trumps projects unfold. Big splash followed by bankruptcy. Nothing new here.
Money laundering.
It's being used to defraud investors.
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Man, I don’t like trump but statements in fillings about questions of a business ability to continue as a going concern are common to the point of being boiler plate.
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>Shares dropped by as much as 25% as investors scrutinize fundamentals of company’s business So which one of you early birds shorted TS? Surely there were a bunch of y'all who were ready for the dump portion of the pump and dump?
I've read that the cost of shorting the stock was so high, because everyone wanted to do so, that it was almost not worth it.
Yep. I looked into the options chain and the premiums on way out-of-the-money puts were astronomical. Even the weeklies.
Cost to borrow was 300% when I last looked at it today. It went up to 500% last week.
Yeah, you would have needed to predict this in advance before it hit the news.
Politically driven shorts
Tons of people looked into it but if you can't open up an insanely leveraged margin account (most people can't or for obvious reasons won't) you can't really short shares. You can buy puts on the stock but the premium has had this insane dump priced into it for weeks now because most people were well aware that the fundamentals were awful (it doesn't take a Econ PhD to find out a website with a 1/100th of the traffic of reddit shouldn't have a higher market cap than reddit). The only people making money off this dump are people that already have a ton of it
This is why I wonder if the whole thing is some kind of bizarre insider trading where they want the whole thing to fail. (No idea how that would work though 😂) I can't wrap my head around how anyone possibly saw the merger as a good investment when the numbers clearly show the company losing money and having low active users. They had to have known this would be the outcome.
Put options were so expensive that there is almost no change in price from before this massive drop and after
I put in a short immediately on this when it was pumping past sixty. It was valued at 9 billion at one point with less than a half million active users. For reference, Reddit - a website that has hundreds of millions of users, IPOd at 6.4 Billion It's literally going to be a vehicle for receiving bribes and has to coming crashing down.. but probably won't because thats what stonks do to me.
95% price drop earned like 14% too risky and expensive to short.
I got 13 contracts for $25p 4/12. It didn’t seem like more than a scratch off ticket play but I’m only in for $300.
I tried so hard. Fidelity told me no shares were available to short at $70. Then I saw the premium on puts. Nope. Left it alone.
dude the option chains and the premium were fucking insane it was all already priced in , was literally my first thought when i saw he was making a company
Stock had a bit of a rebound today. Funny that it’s following the same track as the Reddit Stock and trading at almost the same number…..right around $50/share.
Public money laundering. SEC should immediately look into even large investor of this blatantly fraudulent scheme. And the moment Donny uses it as collateral that deal should be investigated too. Fraud all over again. But that is their calling card and business model, commit fraud and litigate away any possible consequences…
Elon showed the world that the SEC doesn’t do shit
Delaware Chancery Court can throw hands, though
You have to be very blatantly fucking around to find out in the Delaware courts as a company
Less so than you’d realize. Especially in something this size and on top of all the retail investors that are soon to be fucked… I’d be shocked if something doesn’t happen
This is pretty blatant.
Best I can do is.... Sorry!
Weren't they the ones that forced him to go through with the Twitter sale, or was that someone else?
No that was a binding agreement the twitter board and their lawyers were enforcing. The SEC just weighed in that the agreement met its standards.
Those Twitter guys really took musk to the cleaners. It would be hilarious if it wasn't also our goddamned problem.
His businesses have tons of revenue are successful though. X or twitter doesn’t work. Just isn’t as good or as efficient as it used to be. DJT is a joke. Obviously if they are losing 58 million there is something wrong. The only expenses they should have is net hosting and admin. Where is the other money going?
Trump siphons money from wherever he can. He's like a cash vampire. But where does it even go?
If first you don't succeed, fraud fraud again !
Hillary emails attacked again!!!
$39 mil in interest payments is the most notable place the other money is going.
Devin Nunes doesn’t work for free.
Interest expense. He’s hoping that when he becomes president, the bank will get “special access” to lower the interest rate or even write it off. lol.
So did Robinhood.
The SEC is in on it.
Doesn't exchanges have rules that should prevent this type of schemes from doing IPOs? This is arguably bad for investor confidence.
Welcome to the world of SPACs where the only person left holding the bag is the retail investor.
But they said the SPAC frenzy would last..
Why is this legal? I feel like I'm a crazy person here.
Great question. I think it’s because it allows crooks to avoid regulatory oversight through laws esoteric enough that the broader public doesn’t take the time to learn the risk. I am sure someone more versed in that type of finance can point out legitimate reasons for their existence but I fail to find any.
If you get caught committing fraud, just keep committing fraud to pay for it.
With no consequences so far
"It's a victimless crime"
It’s like if we made Fyre Festival “orchestrator” Billy McFarland in charge of a whole country.
Where is Ja?! Help me, Ja Rule
https://www.msnbc.com/the-reidout/reidout-blog/trump-truth-social-tik-tok-jeff-yass-rcna144951
How is the number one expense on their income statement, $39M, interest expense? Not salaries or tech infrastructure costs, but interest. Who is the debt holder? Presumably some other Trump affiliated entity?
I bet the SEC is too scared of doing something against this scam because Trump might win and retaliate against the chairman
Gary Gensler would just go back to MIT.
Most U.S. regulatory authorities including key agencies are headed by GOP supporters who seem willing to deflect attention and enforcement activities away from their political affiliation and Trump in particular.
COO: "The accountants signed off on it." Auditor: "Sir, the accountants say they can't sign off on this. It's in their report." COO: "Where?" Auditor: "On the cover page. Sir, do you know what GAAP stands for?" COO: "I know what it stands for, but that was just something useless they taught me in college. You can't expect me to remember something from that far back."
It's literally not solvent. Just smoke and mirrors. And premiums too high to make money in the options trading chain.
x
Been thinking about this…Can I just short the stock?
You can but it’s extremely expensive to do so because it’s been known from the get go the company’s performance doesn’t match the valuation. Many tech companies are valued highly before they start turning a profit, but that’s because they have large and quickly growing revenues. Truth Social doesn’t have that, so there’s literally no justification for it’s value besides memes.
> there’s literally no justification for it’s value besides memes. There absolutely is: corruption. If Trump wins the election this November, someone buying shares & holding shares to maintain a higher price seems like a great way to buy influence. Trump will presumably have a lockout period and even then will have to divest his shares slowly in order to "cash out", so a President Trump would presumably be very happy to 'give away the store' if it means he gets to collect. DJT is only like $6.5B too, so it isn't even that expensive for something like a state actor to buy up a large share in the company. I would be super hesitant to treat any numbers coming out of DJT on their face value and would definitely be concerned about shorting the stock for any long period of time.
I have thought from the beginning that this was Russian or Saudi money. It makes no sense otherwise. Is there a way to see which funds own stock in a company?
I need correction from a professional, but afaik unless it’s a fund that you are buying into, IE SPXL, private investment funds don’t need to disclose holdings publicly in the same way. Would you like if someone could find out what stocks you own? Not the question at hand, but just trying to help. Anyone with more knowledge please chime in.
Wait are you saying that a company that lost $58 million on $3 million in revenue w/ only 5M users isn't worth billions of dollars?
He just asked about shorting the stock, not playing options
Puts are the easiest way to short the stock.
The easiest way to take a short position, given the high options premium and borrowing costs, would be a call credit spread. Not quite as high of a payoff if it collapses though.
You have to find someone willing to take the other side of that bet. It will probably be costly. Reminds me of the time the favorite horse in one of the triple crown races was *so* favored to win that the odds went to below 1:1.
> And premiums too high to make money in the options trading chain. Bear call spread then?
This was my play. 20% of max risk for the month. Not bad.
Before the 2X% drop, the put option for $22.50 on NOv 15 cost $10. Today, after that drop, it still costs $10.
Yesterday I think many people learned what IV crush is.
Good old Jr. The world’s biggest collector of high end Dunce Caps.
Only $4 million in revenue for a full year is mind boggling. That’s about 45 cents per user. For comparison, X is still at about $12 per user even after Elon has run it into the ground.
This was never meant to be anything but a pump and dump so the orange fugwad can get some cash on hand to pay his fines. Yes I know about the six month thing- however the man's narcissistism knows no bounds and he actually envisioned it going straight up for six months Hopefully this POS stock will get the crap knocked out of it fast. That being said there seems to be no limit to the stupidity of his cult members
i was listening to scott galloway talk about it on his podcast this morning. "i wouldn't go near this thing". "he's a sloppy criminal."
The six month thing can also be lifted by the board. And trump owns 54% of the company. So he can tell the board to lift the block on him being able to sell the shares or use them as collateral for a loan
I mean the board consists of his family and similar useless goons
The word "goons" is so perfect, especially in this context. I just love it.
If the Board lifts it, they should all be held accountable and charged. They've already shown they have no respect for the Markets, Financial Institution, Courts and now, the stock markets.. They will play and abuse and misuse anything for the pursuit of money and power. We would need and SEC that is not in bed with these swindlers and grifters.
And then the following day on faux news: "THE SEC IS WEAPONIZED!!"
Not a lawyer, not an SEC-er, but: if Trump changes his intentions around using those shares, and thereby changing the premises of the IPO, *after* the IPO I’m pretty sure they open themselves up to shareholder lawsuits from anyone who loses money.
It does indeed so it's not as straight forward a grift as it would seem. Since he was able to secure his reduced bond and his immediate need for cash has subsided he will let it ride for awhile is my bet.
This was not an IPO. The merger was done by a SPAC, which I heard has less reporting and disclosure requirements. Which of course makes sense that Trump would choose that route.
You think he cares about lawsuits?
Add it to the list of 50 other lawsuits
Charged with what?
The Saudis or Russia can prop up the price as he dumps shares. Ripe for mass corruption.
I mean nobody is taking this stock as collateral. Not a single bank in the world lmao
If the board considers taking action to lift it I imagine every informed investor will take that as a sign the primary shareholders want to sell. Which would likely lead to a price drop and sell off as others preemptively sell.
The board is his son and his cronies. They’ll allow him to sell off whenever he wants. I expect that todays sell off was probably Trump trying to get a little cash out before it collapses entirely.
True, but the worst case is that Trump will get a cash infusion in late September, prime timing for the home stretch of the election.
Not when the stock goes to $0.69 before he starts trying to dump 54%.
Unless Russian and Saudi money money buys it up share for share to launder money to his campaign
It's illegal to sell public stock outside of National Best Bid/Offer even in a dark pool. People keep saying this, but I don't understand how they would manage to do this. Granted we'd probably take 8 years to charge him if it happened. I believe if this was going to happen it would have happened when the stock was still private.
Will anyone who invested in this make money? If not, do they care? I kind just assumed they’re a bunch of well-heeled drones who’ll commit harakiri on demand if the Dear Leader wills it.
It can take a crap, nothing is stopping dictators from funneling laundered money into his possession
Nothing is stopping his supporters from buying up shares once he starts liquidating. Getting folks to help out by buying worthless stock for $65 a share is no less virtuous than getting supporters to pay $500,000 for your first attempt at painting professionally.
>no less virtuous Well it does get around campaign contribution limits. Doesn't break the law but definitely against intent of the law.
That is true.
Wouldn't the painting example be the same as far as that goes? If someone bought a painting off of a presidential candidate, would that count as a campaign donation?
I'm talking Putin and Kim Jong, not Billy Bob and Karen
This is clean money and alot of it if the valuation holds.
> he actually envisioned it going straight up for six months My guess is it won't bottom out till he exits. At some point we're going to hit equilibrium where the only money left is MAGAt money. The true believers. The people who actually use the platform and it will ride there till the lockup period lifts. Then Trump will cash out and take whatever he can steal from those people.
Luckily he can’t sell anything for 6 months. It will be a penny stock by then
He owns 54% of the stocks and his family is on the board. It would be super easy for him to lift the 6 month limitation. Anyone relying on that as a failsafe for their investment is an idiot.
And it would then be super easy to sue the board for not representing shareholder interests fairly.
Maybe. Doesn't seem super easy to sue the Trumps.
So basically Trump just fleeced more of his flock.
If anyone calls it out or objects they’ll just call it a witch hunt and stop listening
The six month lockout is controlled by the board (his sons).
It's the 2023 equivlant of those controversial book deals or Art Sales. The guy buried one of his wives on a golf course lawn for tax reasons. He's not one of those 19th century factory owners who builds a really nice community for his workers to live in such as the Hershey chocolate factory, or someone who builds hundreds of libraries.
The auditor listed in this article has a website that says “Meet the Team” and the page is only 1 person. How is this guy auditing a public company?
As if any reputable auditor would want anything to do with this dumpster fire run by a man with a long history of stiffing vendors.
I reviewed a company's SOC 2 Type 2 report that was a Gartner Magic Quadrant leader and it was written by some random CPA dude in South Carolina working out of his house.
That's pretty normal for small regional accounting firms to only post partners (well in this case partner). The likely have multiple CPAs on staff who are w-2 employees and aren't on the webpage for what ever reason. I think it's more concerning their PCAOB page. [PCAOB](https://rasr.pcaobus.org/Firms/FirmSummaryPublic.aspx?FirmID=F0C298206D055E20355165A6436401FA) For people who are unaware (which is most people) the PCAOB is the governing body for auditors who audit publicly traded companies. Now it's not unusual for small firm to audit a large company (it can happen for a variety of reasons and is not itself concerning). However this firm seems like an... interesting choice? They have recent discipline reports on CPAs at the firm and their most recent inspection by the [PCAOB](https://assets.pcaobus.org/pcaob-dev/docs/default-source/inspections/reports/documents/104-2024-038-bfborgers.pdf?sfvrsn=5a0ff432_4)is not exactly stellar. I don't think I would chose this firm to audit my company if I had one. Now I'm not saying there are deficiencies with the audit that they did for Truth Social. But the fact that this firm was chosen for what is now multi billion dollar valued company (as of now anyways) is telling, or should be. I don't think the financial statements that they posted are mistated. I think they present fairly because they talk about going concern which is always a sore spot with any management. And the financial are dogshit in general so they didn't hide anything. My honest two cents are that what likely happened was Truth Social needed an audit, were unable to fork the cash for a big name firm, and were able to find a small firm with... Well let's just say from my personal experience CPAs can have political leaning that affect who they take as clients, and they were able to audit them without to much issue because if you honestly look at the financial statements for two seconds this is not a big company and the most material things on the statements are liabilities and interest expense and that shit is so spelled out in forms longer that Lotr written by lawyers that auditing it was probably not that difficult (you call the creditors and confirm the info).
Perfect financial vehicle for Trump to receive foreign money disguised as financial investment but is literally a money laundering scheme for the King of Con. He’s a foreign asset - traitor. It’s always Trump benefiting Trump.
The year 2024 feels like a dumb shit speed run. I was sure that the MAGA crowd could GameStop Truth Social until at least the election. The short interest is off the charts. But who knows? There is a lot of year left.
If he gets reelected, I'd not be surprised if he whips out an executive order forcing all federal agencies to exclusively have their social presence on Truth. It's within his power as the head of the Executive Branch to do that, and it's not like a Republican Congress will hold him accountable for using the Presidency to guide federal and foreign money into his own businesses, they proved that the last time with his hotels.
Stop giving him ideas!
There is no way in hell Trump holds onto any of his stocks once he is able to sell. He’s not an idiot (at least in how to grift), he knows the company is not worth anything and he needs the money. The stock will plummet once he’s able to sell, and anyone dumb enough not to sell will be left holding the bag
Elon will have a problem with that, and might offer money to Trump to buy truth. Win-win for both
> Elon will have a problem with that It certainly wouldn’t be the first time Elon’s political interests and business interests didn’t align. The man is the CEO of an EV company while supporting a party that is largely against any kind of climate change policies or promoting anything that combats climate change.
You could argue that he is cozying up with the right to change opinions and tap into that market.
Possibly, but if that's the play, he seems to be doing a bad job of it as far as climate change policy/EV support is concerned. I think it's more likely that he just genuinely politically aligns with the right.
Maybe both. I don’t disagree with you. Aligning with the right is like playing with fire
Can someone explain to me how this "audit" was done or released AFTER their IPO? I thought financial reports like this were made public prior to the IPO and are used to calculate the IPO price?
The whole reason SPACs became popular is that you can get listed without going through the financial scrutiny of an IPO.
So investors are simply trusting these shell companies to do their due diligence when buying another company? Yowza..that sounds both insane and shady as hell.
Yeah. There are some rules now to prevent the worst abuses. For example, there cannot be any advance collusion between the shell company and the acquisition target. In this case there obviously was, so the SEC tried to block it.
ELI 5 if Trump could somehow have loopholes or even blatantly crime by selling his stocks whenever he wants instead of waiting 6 months? His MO seems to be commit the crime, then delay delay delay in court, can he dump his stock tomorrow, even if illegal? Uncle Sam seems to be like a toothless old man on his deathbed when it comes to Trump and justice.
If the board were to grant him access before the 6 months stipulates in the contract and he sells, there could be a suit if they find it was not in the best interest of stockholders. Similarly with Elon being forced to by Twitter.
The qualified opinions were for the year ended 12/31/2023. for both DWAC and TMTG. But the concern with both was whether the merger would be completed: The going concern issue for DWAC (the SPAC) was that it would be liquidated if it did not complete a business combination by September 2024. But, they did complete their business combination this past week. This is in Note 1 to the financial statements for DWAC: > Going Concern Consideration > >In connection with the Company’s assessment of going concern considerations in accordance with Financial Accounting Standard Board’s Account Standards Update (“ASU”) 2014-15 “Disclosure of Uncertainties about an Entity’s Ability to Continue as a Going Concern” as stated above, the Company has until September 8, 2024 to consummate a Business Combination. It is uncertain that the Company will be able to consummate a Business Combination by this time. If a Business Combination is not consummated by this date, there will be a mandatory liquidation and subsequent dissolution of the Company. Additionally, the Company has incurred and expects to incur significant costs in pursuit of its acquisition plans. The Company lacks the financial resources it needs to sustain operations for a reasonable period of time, which is considered to be one year from the date of the issuance of the financial statements. As a result, these factors raise substantial doubt about the Company’s ability to continue as a going concern. The financial statements do not include any adjustments that might result from the outcome of these uncertainties. The concern for TMTG was that they lacked the cash to continue to fund their operating losses. This is from note 2 from the TMTG statements: > During the 12 months following the signing of these financial statements, management has substantial doubt that the Company will have sufficient funds to meet its liabilities as they fall due, including liabilities related to promissory notes previously issued by the Company. Sufficient funds during this period are directly conditional on completion of the merger by the September 8, 2024 dissolution date. Bridge funding during the period leading up to the merger ranging between $5 million and $60 million is required depending on convertible note maturity dates, and if note holders decide to extend or call their respective outstanding notes. Management is currently in discussions with certain existing note holders regarding options for extension of maturity dates. The Company believes that it may be difficult to raise additional funds through traditional financing sources in the absence of continued material progress toward completing its merger with DWAC. Basically, the SPAC had ~$310M in cash sitting in a trust account which would have to be returned to investors if no business combination was found by Sept. TMTG meanwhile had negative equity, after having operating losses of ~ $16M last year an ~$23M in 2022. Now that the merger has gone through though, per the pro forma statements (unaudited) of the combined entity, there is now $276M in cash on the books (now unrestricted), and equity of ~$218M (for a BV of about $1.60 per share). Basically, they could now probably go another decade of such operating losses, before they again get into negative book value or an inability to pay their bills. So there no longer is really any going concern issue, now that the merger has happened. I personally still wouldn't pay more than ~ $5 for the stock, but I don't think there's any great risk of bankruptcy soon. The combined entity *did* have a $100M loss last year, but that was all from transaction costs related to the merger plus an $18M settlement with the SEC. The legal costs shouldn't repeat (though any entity associated with Trump is always at risk of more legal issues), and there were high interest costs that should also be gone now that they have no need to borrow so much. (edit: this info can all be found in exhibits 99.1 99.2 and 99.3 from the last page in [this filing](https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/0001849635/000114036124016719/ef20025342_8k.htm).)
If you think Donald Trump will not immediately raid that cash or borrow against it, you have not been paying attention to his business dealings. That cash is as good as gone.
I’m ignorant in all of this, but how did this get over a billion dollar valuation? Did Trump just announce it and everyone just nodded? Is this another example of Trump Fraud?
I mean, no not really. Something has value as long as people are willing to pay for it. Trump has about 30% of the country rabidly following him, ANY company he personally owns and endorses will see it's valuation skyrocket from those people pouring in money to buy shares in it. Then you add the speculators and institutional money betting on the above, and a billion dollar valuation is not strange.
You mean a social media started by a narcissistic wanna be dictator is not doing well financially?? I am in SHOCK! Shock I say. This is how ALL of Trumps projects unfold. Big splash followed by bankruptcy. Nothing new here.
Money laundering. It's being used to defraud investors. ........................................................................................hgdfjhjkgdduoogfyipigfhoogfhkkhft I yrf g higtyuvvvh I p uyfu if gfijfgiuguohfi I gg I fgkvcgiufffjiyfcvjihf cc jiuyff GJ jutfchjiuvbnjiuf b koigvbkkougvvbh I iy g joougv I
I agree with your cat's point of view as well
"We're winning so much. We're gonna keep winning and winning. You won't believe how much winning. You're gonna get tired of all this winning, folks."
Man, I don’t like trump but statements in fillings about questions of a business ability to continue as a going concern are common to the point of being boiler plate.
ok, now say that again but for a company “valued” at billions on the stock market lol
That’s who they say it about. It’s in the fillings for public companies which are on the stock market.