Near the end of a press conference near Los Angeles on Friday afternoon, former President Donald Trump was asked about the waning shares of his social media company and whether he’s selling his shares.
No, he quickly promised. “I’m not selling,” he said.
The comment immediately pushed up shares in Trump Media & Technology Group (DJT) by as much as 25% at one point Friday afternoon before it pared those gains. DJT is the publicly traded parent company of Truth Social.
“I’m not leaving, I love it,” Trump told reporters during an answer where he repeatedly reiterated what he says are his plans to both stay posting on his Truth Social account and also keep possession of his shares.
Trump has been subject to a lockup period on his stake in the company, but that ends next week on Sept. 19, when the GOP nominee could potentially begin to sell and gain access to what could be a multibillion-dollar windfall.
But the stock has tumbled in recent weeks as Trump returned to the X platform, where he has over 90 million followers. Most recently, the stock sank to new all-time lows after Tuesday’s debate, which swung bets toward Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris to win the election.
In total, the fallout is over 70% from its peak earlier in the election season. The moves have cost Trump, who owns more than 50% of the company, billions of dollars in net worth and pushed him off the Bloomberg Billionaire’s Index of the world’s 500 richest people.
“A lot of people think I’m going,” he said at another point, saying Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk, who has endorsed Trump, would love to see him switch over completely to X — but he plans to stay where he is.
Ben Werschkul is Washington correspondent for Yahoo Finance.
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