Rooting for Donald Trump to fail has rarely been this profitable.

Just ask a hardy band of mostly amateur Wall Street investors who have collectively made tens of millions of dollars over the past month by betting that the stock price of his social media business — Truth Social — will keep dropping despite massive buying by Trump loyalists and wild swings that often mirror the candidate’s latest polls, court trials and outbursts on Truth Social itself.

Several of these investors interviewed by The Associated Press say their bearish gambles using “put” options and other trading tools are driven less by their personal feelings about the former president (most don’t like him) than their faith in the woeful underlying financials of a company that made less money last year than the average Wendy’s hamburger franchise.

    • profdc9@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      It’s glorified gambling, not investing in companies to provide them capital so they can generate profits and reward shareholders. I can’t really sympathize with people to make money gambling or speculating for that reason: they didn’t do anything of value or provide anything of value to someone who needed it or could use it, they just took a risk and happened to win.