Donald Trump’s march toward the Republican party’s presidential nomination has sparked a historic surge in shares of Digital World Acquisition Corp., the company taking Trump’s media company public.
And ahead of the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday, the special-purpose acquisition company that has agreed to buy Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent of Trump’s social-media platform, Truth Social, saw its stock
DWAC,
run up 4.9% in volatile trading toward the highest close since April 2022.
Trading volume ballooned to 22.7 million shares, compared with the full-day average over the past 30 days of about 2.4 million shares, according to FactSet data.
The stock traded down as much as 19.2% at Tuesday’s intraday low of $40.13, hit around 10 a.m. Eastern, and up as much as 18.2% at the intraday high of $58.72, reached just before 2 p.m., before paring gains.
The stock has now rocketed 208.2% amid a seven-day win streak, which would be the longest since it started trading in September 2021.
The win streak included a 29% jump on Jan. 16 on volume of 8.1 million shares, after Trump’s win in Iowa, and an 88.4% run up on volume of 29.7 million shares Monday, after challenger Ron DeSantis dropped out of the primary race.
The merger between Digital World and Trump Media, originally announced in October 2021, is expected to be completed “as soon as the first quarter of 2024,” Digital World said in a regulatory filing last month.
The so-called reverse merger, which would take Trump Media public, has run into long delays, due in part to fraud charges against Digital World that the merger partner settled and the need for the SPAC to restate financials.
The next primaries are in Nevada in early February and in South Carolina later that month. But if Trump wins in New Hampshire, the state many consider to be Nikki Haley’s best chance for a primary win, those upcoming primaries may no longer act as a catalyst for Digital World’s stock, as Trump would all but lock up the nomination.
Read: Wall Street is already weighing potential market impact of a Trump presidency
Digital World’s stock has now shot up 251.4% over the past three months. In comparison, the S&P 500 index
SPX
has gained 15.2%.
