Trump Media shares up 100% from recent low

Shares of Trump Media shot up more than 17% Thursday, keeping up the momentum of a rally that has recovered some of the Truth Social operator’s steep losses from a recent weekslong sell-off.

DJT stock closed at $24.12 per share, more than double the $11.75 price it fetched in an intraday trading low just over two weeks ago.

The surge came amid little positive news about the company, but coincided with some recent presidential election polls and other indicators that allies of former President Donald Trump, its majority shareholder, took as positive signs.

Many analysts have described Trump Media as a meme stock that is being bought and sold in large part by fans of Trump, who view investing in the company as a way to support the Republican presidential nominee and wager on his odds of winning the White House.

“It doesn’t have anything to do with fundamentals,” said Anne Stevenson-Yang, founder and research director of short seller J Capital Research, in an interview with CNBC.

“It’s a bet on Trump, is all,” she said.

The latest jump came during a very heavy trading session, which had already surpassed Trump Media’s 30-day average volume — about 15.1 million shares, according to FactSet — less than an hour after the market opened.

More than 43 million Trump Media shares changed hands Thursday.

The gains notched Trump Media’s fifth positive day in six. It put the company on track for its best week since late March, when it had just started publicly trading after completing a business merger with a blank-check firm.

The recent surge marks the end of a monthslong slide that had erased more than 80% of Trump Media’s value from its postmerger highs.

But the stock price remained far below its intraday peak of $79.38 per share, which it hit during its Nasdaq debut.