The price of Trump media Shares fell below $30 in early trading Friday morning, down from the $40 the social media company’s shares sold for on March 26 when it began public trading.

Shares of DJT fell more than 8% within the first hour of trading on Friday.

The latest drop in ticker prices continued a slide that included a 5.4% drop on Thursday and a more than 8.5% drop on Wednesday.

Shares of Trump Media, which owns the Truth social app, have fallen more than 47 percent in the month to date, wiping billions of dollars off the company’s market capitalization.

Former President Donald Trump is the company’s largest shareholder, owning about 60 percent of its stock. Trump is set to begin jury selection in Manhattan Supreme Court on Monday for his criminal trial on charges of falsifying business records related to a 2016 hush money payment to porn star Stormi Daniels. Is.

Trump Media opened its first day of trading on March 26 at $70.90 per share, touching a high of nearly $80 later that day. During trading that day, the company’s market capitalization reached $9.5 billion.

As of 1:07 p.m. ET on Friday, Trump Media had a market cap of $4.28 billion, after early share prices fell. The stock was trading at $31.26 per share, down more than 3.5% at the time.

Trump Media began public trading a day after merging with shell company Digital World Acquisition Corp., which was created to help a private firm go public.

Trump Media had revenue of just $4.1 million last year, and reported a net loss of $58 million.

This performance and the relatively high price of the company’s stock have attracted keen interest from short sellers, who make trades that effectively bet that the company’s share price will fall.

As of this week, called short interest in DJT was $208.7 million, short of 5.44 million shares, according to Ihor Dusaniwsky, managing director of predictive analytics at S3 Partners, a leading financial data marketplace platform.

Less than 100,000 shares of Trump Media were available for borrowing to sell short. Traders who want to sell stock short must borrow shares to sell, with the hope that they will later buy the same number of shares at a lower price to return them to the lender, the price between trades. Pocket the difference.

Trump Media has 136.7 million shares outstanding.

As of a week ago, traders who wanted to short Trump Media shares had to pay up to 900% in annual financing costs, meaning they would need to drop $30 per share within a month to close their trades, Dusaniewski said. Can also stop.

However, since then, financing costs for short trades in Trump media had fallen sharply to 200%.

Trump Media was launched after social media giant X, then known as Twitter, banned Trump from the app following the attack on the US Capitol by a mob of his supporters on January 6, 2021. imposed

Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, frequently posts on Truth Social. He has used the app to denounce the four pending criminal cases he is facing, as well as civil cases that have resulted in judgments against him of up to $500 million.

Trump hosted a party this week to celebrate the Trump media at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida.

“I think the truth has become very important. It’s strong, it’s dedicated,” Trump told the audience, according to a report on the RSBN news site.

“Remember we have no debt, and we have over $200 million in cash, which is very liquid,” Trump said of the company, whose CEO is former Republican congressman Devin Nunes.

– Additional reporting from CNBC Nick Wells.

This is developing news. Check back for updates.