They bet on the wrong horse: investors in his media group thought they would get rich thanks to Trump's return to the White House, they lost $2.2 billion

Donald Trump's business is not in the best shape. The stock of Trump Media & Technology Group collapsed, inflicting heavy losses on its investors. According to a Reuters estimate, shareholders outside the company collectively lost more than $2.2 billion.

A setback for those who were banking on a second presidency of Donald Trump... to increase the value of the group. This fall can be explained in particular by the difficulties of its branch dedicated to social networks, which is swallowing up significant cash while struggling to attract new users.

Added to this is the sharp depreciation of its investments in cryptocurrencies. Even the stock's staunchest defenders are starting to lose hope as the stock hits historic lows. To establish its estimate, Reuters analyzed stock transactions since 2021 by Trump Media, its former entities, including Digital World Acquisition Corp.

, as well as its founders and directors. Based on the company's financial and legal documents, the agency compared the issue prices to the current stock price, taking into account share buybacks. These operations represent a total of 2.7 billion dollars.

Trump Media strongly disputed this methodology, calling Reuters' calculations "questionable and biased." The company says millions of its shares trade on the stock market every day, making it impossible, it says, to determine the actual gains or losses made by each seller. Reuters, however, defends its approach, consistent with financial evaluation practices, and indicates that it was validated by three finance professors.

Make business great again Beyond his media activity, Donald Trump and his family have also sought to profit from their political popularity through various financial investments. The president has notably associated his name with a social media platform, a meme-inspired cryptocurrency and several digital tokens, drawing on the popularity of the MAGA ("Make America Great Again") movement. According to stock filings, Donald Trump and his family have invested very little, if any, of their own money in Trump Media.

In 2024, the president notably received 114.75 million free shares during the merger with Digital World Acquisition. Despite the stock's collapse, that stake is still worth about $460 million, down from more than $6 billion at its peak. Investors in four major projects linked to Donald Trump, including his humorous cryptocurrency platform World Liberty Financial, his mining business American Bitcoin and company AI Financial, have already suffered a total of $2.3 billion in losses through April, according to a previous Reuters investigation.

Machine-translated from French