Trump Media And Technology Group Banks On Louisiana After Failing To Get Much Traction On The Stock Manipulation Probe

This is not investment advice. The author has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Wccftech.com has a disclosure and ethics policy.

The management of Trump Media and Technology Group could be found wanting on a number of metrics, but not for a lack of tenacity. It appears that the company is determined to leave no stone unturned in its quest to halt what it terms as illegal manipulation of its stock price.

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To wit, Trump Media and Technology Group has now written a letter to Commissioner P. Scott Jolly of the Office of Financial Institutions for the State of Louisiana, demanding an investigation into its stock price manipulation by short-sellers and certain market makers. The letter notes:

The letter then demands that Jolly investigate whether "the trading in DJT has violated Louisiana Securities Law."

In recent weeks, Trump Media and Technology Group has written letters to the Nasdaq exchange, several Congressional committee chairs, and the attorney general of Florida, Ashley Moody, demanding a dedicated investigation into the alleged manipulation of its stock price.

Trump Media and Technology Group views with a lot of trepidation its repetitive inclusion in the so-called threshold list, which is a tabulation of stocks that have an aberrantly high number of Failures to Deliver (FTDs) and can be potentially indicative of illegal naked short-selling. The firm also believes that "some sellers have been paying a drastically reduced rate to obtain so-called “locates” for seemingly illegitimate “naked” short sales."

As we noted in a dedicated post, Trump Media earned just $770,500 in revenue in Q1 2024, which translated into an operating loss of $12.1 million for the quarter. As a rare bright spot, do note that this loss was inflated by around $6.3 million in "one-time payments related to the closing of TMTG’s merger with Digital World."