Not Coach Jimbo said:

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Kansas Kid said:

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The stock is valued at $7b and had less than $3MM of revenue over the last 12 months. It is estimated to have around 120,000 active daily users.

To put it into perspective, Musk paid $44b for Twitter which had 3.4b of revenue and 220MM daily active users. So in other words, at the price Musk paid, Trump Media is worth about $40MM.

That is why many people are betting against the stock via puts or a short position. Does anyone here want to say they think Trump Media is a good stock to buy and hold at the current valuation?

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Merger just happened at the end of March...

While I agree on pretty much everything in your post, the time frame and expectations are a little exaggerated from an analyitics stand point.

I just don't see another social media platform succeeding unless it finds a niche and/or gets rolled into an existing platform.

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There active user trends are dropping. The merger doesn't do much for them other than offer some cash and a public currency. The proof of the lack of users is Texags. Has anyone posted anything from Truth that wasn't a Trump or Trump campaign post? I can't recall a single one.

In other words, no one uses it and with Musk fully on board with Trump, the few Trump supporters using Truth will almost certainly go back to Twitter as shown by recent traffic trends.

samurai_science said:

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A_Gang_Ag_06 said:

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Tramp96 said:

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I watched Billions and I still don't understand shorting stocks.

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The Big Short film had the best explanations for that stuff and was a great movie.

This is a good fifteen second explanation but like you, I can't wrap my head around this stuff.

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The movie was crap and failed to point the fingers at Democrats in Congress who where warned by Bush as early as 2003 of the problem.

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The democrats won't take responsibility for their actual racist history and you want them to catch some blame in a Hollywood film?

You know they would have tried some mental gymnastics of a pseudo great switch that the democrats in 2003 were not actually democrats.

PA24 said:

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They Lost a fortune betting on a 20 year old to make a head shot.

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Wow! This is bold! And I love the truth of it!

Exactly my point with needing to find a niche and/or sell to another social media.

If Musk didn't turn X into a champion for free speech it might have filled a need.

Same group had amazing convenient timing on 9/10/01

It’s amazing how lucky one group keeps getting

They bet against the Dow Jones on 9/10 2001

They bet against the Israeli stock exchange on October 6th 2023

Now they short Trump The day before he was shot pic.twitter.com/nxiYrLRxGl

— Jake Shields (@jakeshieldsajj) July 18, 2024

Put option is essentially insurance. If I own a stock and want to hedge against it dropping, I can buy a put option and if it drops then I have a guaranteed buyer at my strike price.

Plenty of people speculated there could be an assassination attempt, maybe these people wanted to hedge their portfolio against that. I don't see them shorting a stock so much as taking out insurance in this scenario

highlonesomeaggie said:

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I always thought that shorting stocks was when you would sell stocks that you didn't own with the promise to buy after the fact. Sell high and buy low. Say someone sold a stock at $100 a share then bought the shares when stock dropped to $50, you would make $50 per share. As far as "puts", you are in effect "putting " stocks in the market for transactions - stocks to be sold.

At least that is my very rudimentary understanding of this.

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I believe that is called a naked short. A put is similar but limits your downside risk if I remember correctly.

Why would a firm plotting to assassinate Trump and profit off of it be stupid enough to put in such a large put-option order in one batch?

Firms break their orders up into much smaller baskets as a regular course of action.

For those implying this was a conspiracy, what's the perceived logic behind making it a single order?

Pretty impressive for a firm founded in 2010 to have bet on 9/11.

https://radientanalytics.com/firm/adv/austin-private-wealth-llc-304344

Four Seasons Landscaping said:

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Why would a firm plotting to assassinate Trump and profit off of it be stupid enough to put in such a large put-option order in one batch?

Firms break their orders up into much smaller baskets as a regular course of action.

For those implying this was a conspiracy, what's the perceived logic behind making it a single order?

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The filing is a standard SEC filing and showed all of their positions as of 6/30. This likely wasn't a single trade.

Vanguard (Soros) and BlackRock are among the largest holders in Austin Private Wealth LLC pic.twitter.com/LzVU9ihqGv

— Kyle Becker (@kylenabecker) July 18, 2024

Vanguard and Blackrock are the largest holders of almost every company/firm. That's mostly the reason why climate change and DEI are a thing.

Edit: it was a reporting error EOT
https://austinprivatewealth.com/news-and-events

That's why it wasn't in any of the option chain open interest.

richardag said:

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How an Investor Can Make Money Short Selling Stocks
quote from the article

• Suppose you think that Meta Platforms Inc. (META), formerly Facebook, is overvalued at $200 per share and that its price is due to go down. You "borrow" 10 shares of Meta from a broker and then sell the shares for the market price of $200. Let's say all goes as planned, and later, you buy back the 10 shares at $125 after the stock price has gone down and return the borrowed shares to the broker. You would net $750 ($2,000 - $1,250).

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This.

BlueTaze said:

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Vanguard and Blackrock are the largest holders of almost every company/firm. That's mostly the reason why climate change and DEI are a thing.

Edit: it was a reporting error EOT
https://austinprivatewealth.com/news-and-events

That's why it wasn't in any of the option chain open interest.

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This thread shows why there is a lot of misinformation in the world.

1) We have a journalist saying Soros and BlackRock own APW when in reality those are the ETFs that APW owns for their clients
2) we have a tweet saying they profited off 9/11 with a position taken the day before the shooting when the firm wasn't founded until 2010. Note that X poster provided zero proof. The same person started this by saying they bought their position the day before the shooting without doing any basic research that shows the report is disclosing positions from 6/30.
3) the error in the position of 12mm share puts was a mistake by APW but it was easy to see the open positions on options and see that there was no way that could be accurate (also, there is no way that size of position could be put on a company with the limited float of DJT

Despite the corrections by APW on the position, I am sure this rumor will live on as proof of a conspiracy.

A naked short is defined as when someone sells the shares short without locating shares to borrow from an existing shareholder that is willing to lend you their shares. This has been illegal under SEC regulations since 2008.

BlueTaze said:

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Vanguard and Blackrock are the largest holders of almost every company/firm. That's mostly the reason why climate change and DEI are a thing.

Edit: it was a reporting error EOT
https://austinprivatewealth.com/news-and-events

That's why it wasn't in any of the option chain open interest.

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If it wasn't a reporting error I would think they were expecting the RNC to bomb and reflect negatively on the company.

techno-ag said:

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BlueTaze said:

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Vanguard and Blackrock are the largest holders of almost every company/firm. That's mostly the reason why climate change and DEI are a thing.

Edit: it was a reporting error EOT
https://austinprivatewealth.com/news-and-events

That's why it wasn't in any of the option chain open interest.

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If it wasn't a reporting error I would think they were expecting the RNC to bomb and reflect negatively on the company.

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I guarantee there are a lot of financial firms that would want to put on a massive short of that size based on any basic valuation method but won't because 1) you risk getting taken out in a meme stock rally like GameStop a few years ago, 2) you could never get that number of shares to short or buy a put on given the limited float of the stock and 3) the interest rate you would pay on the shares being lent to you would mean you need to have the stock drop quickly. At my broker, the annual interest rate paid on the loan is 25%.

With the puts, the price would be extremely expensive because of the volatility of the stock which has a massive impact on the cost to purchase them.

Right before the RNC convention, maybe it was a bet that he either flubbed his nomination, or made a really unpopular VP pick.

Hell you can even go light conspiracy and say they had media mouthpieces ready to badmouth the VP pick and they hoped it hurt DJT.

It wasn't exactly a slow news week, even before the shooting.

I don't doubt that Soros owns shares in some Vanguard funds.
Most who have any investment funds likely own shares in Vanguard funds. Most TexAgs posters likely own shares in Vanguard funds.

Vanguard, owned by Soros, …
vs
Vanguard, owned by TexAgs F16 posters, …

Both statements are true, but the impression has changed.

Stating that Soros owns Vanguard is misleading. Probably the entire X-post is intentionally misleading.

Kansas Kid said:

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BlueTaze said:

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Vanguard and Blackrock are the largest holders of almost every company/firm. That's mostly the reason why climate change and DEI are a thing.

Edit: it was a reporting error EOT
https://austinprivatewealth.com/news-and-events

That's why it wasn't in any of the option chain open interest.

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This thread shows why there is a lot of misinformation in the world.

1) We have a journalist saying Soros and BlackRock own APW when in reality those are the ETFs that APW owns for their clients
2) we have a tweet saying they profited off 9/11 with a position taken the day before the shooting when the firm wasn't founded until 2010. Note that X poster provided zero proof. The same person started this by saying they bought their position the day before the shooting without doing any basic research that shows the report is disclosing positions from 6/30.
3) the error in the position of 12mm share puts was a mistake by APW but it was easy to see the open positions on options and see that there was no way that could be accurate (also, there is no way that size of position could be put on a company with the limited float of DJT

Despite the corrections by APW on the position, I am sure this rumor will live on as proof of a conspiracy.

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Add to that that a lot of the accounts sharing stuff like that are only doing it to farm engagement even though they know it's false or a non-story that's being reframed to make people think it's a big deal. You can usually tell by how the tweet is written pretty quickly whether it should be investigated further but the people sharing know no one will do that. Community notes has helped but they don't really move fast enough still.

Austin Private Wealth official statement that the put listing was a mistake:

Quote:

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Statement on Incorrect Filing with the SEC
7/17/2024

The SEC filing which showed that Austin Private Wealth shorted a large number of shares of Trump Media & Technology Group Corp (DJT) was incorrect and we immediately amended it as soon as we learned of the error.

No client of APW holds, or has ever held, a put on DJT in the quantity initially reported. The correct holding amount was 12 contracts, or 1,200 shares not 12 million shares, as was filed in error. In submitting the required report for the second quarter of 2024, a multiplier was applied by a third-party vendor that increased the number of the shares by a multiple of 10,000 for all options contracts (not just DJT). We did not catch the error before approving the filing.

We filed the report on July 12 to reflect our positions on June 28. We amended it on July 16.
We deeply regret this error and the concern it has caused, especially at such a fraught moment for our nation. We are committed to full transparency and maintaining the trust of our clients. As such, we are reviewing our internal procedures and our processes with the third-party vendor that assists with SEC filings to better understand how this happened and avoid similar issues moving forward.

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Austin, TX | 401K Planning Austin Private Wealth

I agree with you. I don't think most people understand that Vanguard is owned by each of their funds which are then in turn owned by the shareholders in proportion to their ownership. Given the size of Vanguard, there ownership group is massive and Soros (and every other person) would have way less than 1%.

Again, the X post from the "reporter" confused holding of APW with the shareholders of APW which I would assume is their executive management team.

AgBQ-00 said:

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Put options is basically making a bet that a stock is going to decline in value. Normally optioned for a certain time period. Someone was expecting DJT stock to suffer and make a profit off of that drop.

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But isn't that stock a notoriously bad stock anyway? The company isn't making money and lots of folks have been shorting it for a while.

Charpie said:

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AgBQ-00 said:

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Put options is basically making a bet that a stock is going to decline in value. Normally optioned for a certain time period. Someone was expecting DJT stock to suffer and make a profit off of that drop.

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But isn't that stock a notoriously bad stock anyway? The company isn't making money and lots of folks have been shorting it for a while.

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I think they've been shorting it because it has gone up this year. But it's been a good year for the market so far in general.

I don't know. Was just giving my understanding of puts and the reasoning behind why someone would have those options. Was not speaking to the current or past performance of that stock.

AgBQ-00 said:

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I don't know. Was just giving my understanding of puts and the reasoning behind why someone would have those options. Was not speaking to the current or past performance of that stock.

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Gotcha. Thanks

I didn't read the thread so I don't know if a put option has properly been explained, but here's the simple...


A put option is a promise to sell a certain amount of stocks THAT YOU DO NOT OR MAY NOT OWN at a certain price on a certain date.

If you do not own the stocks you promised to sell then on the date of the put option you have to buy those stocks first so you can complete your promise.

If the price of the stock is lower than what you promised to sell the stocks for then you profit. If the price of the stock is greater than your promised sell price then you lose money.

They said the filing reported holdings from June 28, and that their vendor incorrectly multiplied all option contracts by 10,000. All can and should be verified. I haven't pulled the filing before and then the filing after to not all of the changes.

Once the conspiracy takes hold no amount of facts will disprove. Still have some that cling to overnight 2020 election data dumps and Rudy's videos of Georgia election site ballot stealing, etc.

Kansas Kid said:

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BlueTaze said:

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Vanguard and Blackrock are the largest holders of almost every company/firm. That's mostly the reason why climate change and DEI are a thing.

Edit: it was a reporting error EOT
https://austinprivatewealth.com/news-and-events

That's why it wasn't in any of the option chain open interest.

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This thread shows why there is a lot of misinformation in the world.

1) We have a journalist saying Soros and BlackRock own APW when in reality those are the ETFs that APW owns for their clients
2) we have a tweet saying they profited off 9/11 with a position taken the day before the shooting when the firm wasn't founded until 2010. Note that X poster provided zero proof. The same person started this by saying they bought their position the day before the shooting without doing any basic research that shows the report is disclosing positions from 6/30.
3) the error in the position of 12mm share puts was a mistake by APW but it was easy to see the open positions on options and see that there was no way that could be accurate (also, there is no way that size of position could be put on a company with the limited float of DJT

Despite the corrections by APW on the position, I am sure this rumor will live on as proof of a conspiracy.

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Unfortunately it's a lot easier to make an unsubstantiated conspiracy theory claim than it is to debunk one. The latter takes time and effort, the former just takes imagination and people with a lack of discernment willing to spread it.

Kansas Kid said:

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The stock is valued at $7b and had less than $3MM of revenue over the last 12 months. It is estimated to have around 120,000 active daily users.

To put it into perspective, Musk paid $44b for Twitter which had 3.4b of revenue and 220MM daily active users. So in other words, at the price Musk paid, Trump Media is worth about $40MM.

That is why many people are betting against the stock via puts or a short position. Does anyone here want to say they think Trump Media is a good stock to buy and hold at the current valuation?

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Truth Social is a garbage investment as a stand alone social media company. But as a tool for supporters to provide DJT with liquidity that will only be taxed as a capital gain, it's superb.

The question for investors is whether you think his global support has peaked? If so then short the stock, if you think his support will grow as President, ride the share price and cash out before DJT does.

BCG Disciple said:

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They said the filing reported holdings from June 28, and that their vendor incorrectly multiplied all option contracts by 10,000. All can and should be verified. I haven't pulled the filing before and then the filing after to not all of the changes.

Once the conspiracy takes hold no amount of facts will disprove. Still have some that cling to overnight 2020 election data dumps and Rudy's videos of Georgia election site ballot stealing, etc.

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Yep. I suspect many intelligent people will still believe this one ...

Kansas Kid said:

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The stock is valued at $7b and had less than $3MM of revenue over the last 12 months. It is estimated to have around 120,000 active daily users.

To put it into perspective, Musk paid $44b for Twitter which had 3.4b of revenue and 220MM daily active users. So in other words, at the price Musk paid, Trump Media is worth about $40MM.

That is why many people are betting against the stock via puts or a short position. Does anyone here want to say they think Trump Media is a good stock to buy and hold at the current valuation?

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Trump will be a great president but selling this stock looks like a pretty good idea. Probably not as good as not buying it to start with….But folks enjoy gambling too.

Trump looks great after the assassination attempt, Dems in chaos with Biden looking to drop out: Trump's stock should be at a peak. Probably a smart bet that the DJT will drop at some point in the next several months (excitement over a Biden* replacement and/or the heat of this moment wanes).

I see it as classless, but I'm not going to get my hackles up. Just another play at Buy low, sell high.