A handful of institutional investors bought large positions in former President Donald Trump’s media company in the second quarter ahead of the company’s inclusion in two Russell indexes, regulatory filings released on Wednesday showed.
Among the biggest purchasers of shares of Trump Media & Technology Group (DJT.O), opens new tab, the parent company of the Truth Social platform, were asset managers Vanguard, State Street and BlackRock, which are known for their passive investing businesses. Those include exchange traded funds that buy shares of companies included in a wide range of indexes that they track.
Vanguard Group initiated a new position with the purchase of nearly 2.9 million shares of Trump Media, with a market value of approximately $94.3 million at the end of the quarter, the filings showed. BlackRock initiated a new position with the purchase of nearly 2.2 million shares, while State Street initiated a new position with just over 440,000 shares.
There’s nothing to see here.
Index funds, such as those run by Vanguard, are required by their own policy to hold all the components of the stock index that they track, and DJT.O was added to a major index.
The moment the company drops in value and falls out of the index is the same moment the index funds sell their holdings of it.
BlackRock is a huge hedge fund though.
The real batshit crazy part is that DJT.O was somehow deemed valuable enough to be included in an index despite having almost no revenue.
The only thing keeping the stock value up is the MAGA crazies pumping their money into it, magically thinking it’ll become profitable and make them rich.
It’s money laundering.
Makes sense. Same reason most index funds include some holdings in Tesla. Had to hunt for one that didn’t… Vanguard’s VSMAX fit the bill.