Investors in Trump Media ($DJT) believe that they can prove who had inside knowledge of the assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump.
But most of their claims are based on misreading a document filed last week with the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC).
$DJT investors and short sellers waged an intense battle after the stock went live on the NASDAQ, with accusations Trump haters want to use the stock to sink the president.
But a gunman firing on the Trump has set things over the edge.
Was Trump Media shorted before the assassination attempt?
The claim that people heavily shorted $DJT before the Trump assassination attempt floated around X. Posters claimed that traders placed shorts on Friday, June 12—the day before the attempt.
People shorting the stock expect its value to fall. The price soared on Monday given Trump’s survival. If the attempt succeeded, it’s likely the stock, which is based entirely on his persona and value, would have plummeted.
“BREAKING: WHO KNEW THE HIT WAS COMING,” posted @JohnnyTabacco. “$DJT SHORTS SKYROCKETED THE WEEK BEFORE THE HIT. FOLLOW THE SHORTS: $DJT shorts went from 7M to 15M from July 1 -July 12. They thought Monday morning Trump would be dead. Who shorted Millions of shares the week before the HIT JOB?”
“This is a gr8 question: can the shorting be traced?” asked @LaLaRueFrench75.
“Keep your eyes on who shorted the stock…they knew,” posted @hodgetwins.
The morning of the shooting, an account on Truth Social noticed an uptick in shorts that corresponds to the above chart.
“$DJT Daily Short Volume still coming in above 60%. The nonsense continues…..” they wrote, highlight the change over the week.
Some accounts on Truth Social pointed the finger at a Texas-based investment firm they thought might have had advanced knowledge.
“[The firm] shorted 12,000,000 shares of $DJT on 7/12/24,” posted @Honk4Liberty. Congress needs to ask them some questions.”
Those posters pointed to data from an investment research platform called fintel.io, which reported that the firm filed an SEC document on July 12 disclosing 12,000,000 puts on $DJT. Puts are essentially bets placed on stocks on the expectation that the price will go down, though they’re less risky than shorts.
The firm, which the Daily Dot is not naming, did file an SEC document on July 12 disclosing that they’d placed 12,000,000 puts on Trump’s stock, but there’s no information in the filing about whether those puts are shorts. fintel.io says they it considers all put option positions to be short positions and report them as such.
The firm did not immediately respond to questions from the Daily Dot.
But claims that the firm placed puts specifically right before the assassination don’t hold water. The filing is a report for a calendar year or quarter ending on June 30, the latest date for the firm to place the the puts.
Fiirms could have shorted DJT on July 12. Reports revealing that are not currently available.
Trump Media stock jumped up 30% on Monday, the first day markets opened after the assassination attempt. Since then they’ve declined a little bit, but are still above what they were last week.
Still, that didn’t stop the speculation among $DJT backers, who also tried to point the blame at another firm already mired in assassination conspiracies.
“Trump Shooter is associated with BlackRock (was in their commercials). Someone with DEEP Pockets shorts $DJT HARD on Friday expecting Trump dead on Monday. Short would have to be an entity with the ability to use advanced algorithmic trading (Aladdin). Theory: BlackRock is the short!!” posted @chadnedohin in the $DJT group on Truth Social on Wednesday, a post that’s since been deleted.
Conspiracy theories connecting Trump’s would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks to BlackRock, a massive, deep-pocketed investment company, swirled after online sleuths unearthed a Blackrock ad filmed at Bethel Park High School. Crooks, alongside other students, featured in the background of the video.
“Institutions have a majority ownership in BlackRock and guess who’s been shorting the shit out of DJT? You guessed right, institutions! They doubled their short positions before the assassination attempt!! Why, to reap the rewards for trying to kill a former President!” posted @WallStreetGreg on Truth Social.
While offing a former president seems like a long way to go to make a quick buck, the stock market and massive events often face conspiratorial accusations.
Stock market shorts of airlines the day before Sept. 11, 2001 have long led to furious speculation that some people traded on advance knowledge of the attacks.
Update 10:34am CT, July 18: The investment firm said in a statement to the Daily Dot that the SEC filing which showed 12,000,000 put options was filed in error. It said that a third-party vendor responsible for filing the second quarter report incorrectly applied a multiplier to the number of all options contracts it reported, including for $DJT. It clarified in an email that the firm assumed it provided the information in contracts, which are equal to 100 shares per contract, rather than actual shares.
The company filed an amended report on July 16 which includes no mention of $DJT contracts, because they didn’t hold enough to be required by minimum reporting requirements. According to the statement, the correct holding amount was 12 contracts, or 1,200 shares, not 12 million shares.
“We filed the report on July 12 to reflect our positions on June 28. We amended it on July 16,” it said in the statement. “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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