The company behind Donald Trump's new social media platform is already delivering massive stock market gains on Friday, despite a lack of financial results and even a live product.
Trading on shares of Digital World Acquisition Corp (DWAC) had to be halted 12 times through the morning as a bombardment of activity sent its value into wild fluctuation, at least in part thanks to Reddit investing forum WallStreetBets.
DWAC is a special purpose acquisition company, also known as a blank-check company. These firms go public in order to raise money to acquire a private company, which would then also become publicly traded while side-stepping the lengthy public offering process.
DWAC saw its market cap rise 300 percent to hit $1.5 billion after announcing its merger with Trump Media & Technology Group on Thursday, Donald Trump's newest venture.
The ex-president's new firm has no revenue or tested business plan but has raised nearly $300 million in investor cash. It will be the launchpad for his social media site, Truth Social.
On Trump Media & Technology Group's website, the company outlines its goal to 'create a media powerhouse to rival the liberal media consortium and fight back against the Big Tech companies of Silicon Valley.'
WallStreetBets, which describes itself as 'like 4chan found a Bloomberg Terminal,' is at least partially responsible for DWAC shares' volatile activity on Friday
Trump is chairman of his new media venture, Trump Media & Technology Group, which is aiming to disrupt Netflix, Amazon, Google and Facebook, among other tech giants
It aims to disrupt a broad swath of media businesses, naming Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google among others.
Alongside his social media site Trump also aims to launch an on-demand streaming service called TMTG+ which promises to provide 'non-woke entertainment.'
A 22-page presentation publicly available on the company site details why it claims the circumstances are right for its brand, without going into how it intends to see those ambitious goals through.
That did not deter traders as of Friday morning, however, who sent the stock price surging 1,200 percent since Wednesday.
It was last up 138.5 percent at $108.52 today after earlier hitting a high of $175.
Trump's social media company Truth Social is set for a wide launch in early 2022
Its recent trading was reminiscent of the meme stock frenzy earlier this year, Reuters reports, when an army of retail investors coordinated on online forums to drive shares of GameStop, AMC Entertainment and other stocks.
And similarly to that situation, Reddit's WallStreetBets community was filled with posts about DWAC's activity.
Millions of individual traders post their wins and losses to the site, along with memes expressing glee or frustration at current market situations.
In the community bio it describes itself as 'Like 4chan
