Trump Media lockup deadline leaves Trump with a choice: trigger a fire sale or hold a meme stock

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

64% : Later this month, for the first time since Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) -- which owns Truth Social -- went public, Trump will be allowed to sell his shares in the company.
60% : Shareholders, many of whom are retail investors who bought the stock as a show of support for Trump, could see their investments greatly devalued or wiped out.
54% : In the case of TMTG the stock moves on news of its majority shareholder -- Trump, according to Ritter, the UF professor and IPO researcher.
53% : The price hasn't dropped below $15 on any trading day since Aug. 22.Trump currently owns 114.5 million shares of TMTG (ticker symbol: DJT), which are worth about $1.85 billion.
49% : The lockup period for Trump, who owns about 57% of TMTG and is its largest stakeholder, will expire on Sept. 25 at the latest.
49% : Doing so, Litinsky and Moss allege, was against the conditions of their original contract with Trump and TMTG (then called Trump Media Group Corp.), which granted them the right to approve both the issuance of new shares and the creation of any new classes of stock.
43% : The outcome of any one of the at least seven different criminal and civil court cases involving Trump could determine the success of a company with already precarious finances.
42% : But, as the largest shareholder of the company, no one would have more to lose from a cratering TMTG share price than Trump.
40% : Two former contestants on The Apprentice, Wesley Moss and Andrew Litinsky, approached Trump with the idea to start their own social media site since he had recently been banned from mainstream platforms in the wake of Jan. 6.
37% : As the former chair of TMTG and a major insider, Trump is subject to a "lockup" provision that prevents insiders from selling stock in the newly public company before a certain date.
34% : Trump had been a plaintiff in 1,900 of those cases, a defendant in 1,450, and in 150 he had either been a third party or involved in a bankruptcy proceeding.
32% : But holding on to TMTG stock poses its own set of risks, namely that its share price appears entirely divorced from its underlying business results, trading mostly on the fervent devotion Trump inspires in his followers rather than any market fundamentals.
30% : That means Trump, as by far the largest shareholder, is caught between a rock and hard place.
30% : The company responded by questioning Fortune's journalistic methods:"By cherrypicking statements from our filings while omitting all countervailing information, and touting quotes from supposed experts who just happen to support all the reporter's biases, Fortune offers a great lesson in how to manufacture fake news," the spokesperson said.TMTG was founded shortly after Trump left the White House in 2021.
24% : TMTG cites Trump extensively as one of its risk factors, citing the possibility that the company's fate is tied to his political fortunes, according to the SEC filings.
22% : In fact, throughout its official documents TMTG admits that much of its future hinges on Trump and Trump alone.
17% : The company's management acknowledged in an SEC filing that Trump's personal legal issues -- one of which resulted in 34 felony convictions that Trump is currently appealing -- leaves the company's future hanging in the balance.

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