Rally in Trump-linked stocks fades after social media venture reveals regulatory inquiries

By Bansari Mayur Kamdar

Early gains in a handful of companies tied to former U.S. President Donald Trump’s social media venture fizzled out on Monday after the blank-check firm taking it public said it had received fact-finding inquiries from financial regulators.

Digital World Acquisition fell 2.9% after gaining as much as 22.3% in premarket trading.

The company said on Monday regulators had sought documents relating to communications between the blank-check firm and Trump’s social media venture and other details.

Shares of Digital World and other related stocks had rallied earlier after Trump’s new social media venture said on Saturday it had raised nearly $1 billion.

SPAC CF Acquisition Corp VI, which is taking video platform Rumble Inc. public, rose 10.8% after jumping as much as 30% on Monday. Trump joined Rumble’s platform in June.

Phunware, hired by Trump’s 2020 Presidential re-election campaign to build a phone app, fell 2.7%.

“You’re going to continue to find that these rallies are short lived for the simple reason that we’re not in the type of market environment where people are speculating and taking as many risks as they were two or three months ago,” said Dennis Dick, a trader at Bright Trading LLC.

The hype around the Digital World merger in October sent Phunware and Remark Holdings in a rally that traders have compared to this year’s meme-stock frenzy.

Remark Holdings has been linked to Trump on social media forums, but Reuters could not independently verify the link between Trump and Remark Holdings yet.

CF Acquisition was the second-most traded stock on the Nasdaq, with more than 44 million shares traded, while investors traded 3.7 million and 5.1 million shares of Digital World and Phunware as of 1536 GMT.

Both Digital World and CF Acquisition were among the top trending stocks on investor-focused social media site Stocktwits.com.