Trump Media and Technology Group’s investor site FAQ page now includes a section on “How do I prevent my shares from being loaned for a short interest position? 🎯” in a plainly desperate attempt to stop $DJT’s bleeding, which is down 63 percent (even after a minor bounce) from its debut on the NASDAQ just over three weeks ago, per CNBC, who report that the “FAQ” was added Wednesday.
“Brokerage firms may facilitate short selling in DJT’s shares by lending DJT’s shareholders’ shares held in margin accounts. Through this practice, brokerage firms earn an alternative source of revenue by ‘lending’ shares to sophisticated and institutional investors who are betting that the price of the particular stock will decrease over a period of time. If the price of the stock in fact decreases, then the brokerage firm and the sophisticated and institutional investors will have made a profit, while the ultimate retail investor has not,” which is the whole goddamned point of shorting it, lol.
They even go through all the tips like moving shares to “Odyssey Transfer and Trust Company, the Company’s transfer agent,” which we’re sure is on the up and up and not connected to the Kremlin at all, or writing a form letter reading include a form letter to a brokerage reading, “Dear Sir or Madam: Please accept this written instruction to make sure that the following securities are held in my cash account only and accordingly are not available for any stock loan activities. I hereby expressly opt-out of any securities lending programs and instruct you to not loan out any of my shares. Securities: [Number] shares of Trump Media & Technology Group Corp (DJT) and any DJT shares subsequently acquired. Please confirm receipt and compliance with this request.”
Shot in the dark here: The vast majority of the shareholders are MAGA meme stock assholes with at most a few hundred bucks’ worth shares. Fanboys who didn’t use an actual brokerage and purchased their shares on a massive, monolithic platform like E*Trade or something that requires too many annoying steps to move their stock out of the interest-earning loanable buckets – even probably incentivizing them against it with small bonus credits to continue playing the market.
Or something like that. Whatever the real financial-world implications are of TMTG’s lame attempts at defeating shorting, CNBC seems to be implying that this FAQ isn’t something normal publicly traded companies do, as they don’t list any similar historical examples. They do however quote some Wall Street bro saying shorting $DJT is HOT right now, even with only 5 million out of 136 million shares available for the position. “What I’m hearing on the Street is that if [an amount] of stock becomes available, shorts are taking it down,” said S3 Partners’ Ihor Dusaniwsky.