Trump Media’s stock has nothing to do with its business

This is the Weekend Edition of Bloomberg Opinion Today, a roundup of the most popular stories Bloomberg Opinion publishes each week based on [Bloomberg]( This is the Weekend Edition of Bloomberg Opinion Today, a roundup of the most popular stories Bloomberg Opinion publishes each week based on web readership. [Trump Media’s Business Doesn’t Matter]( — Matt Levine With time, I have become more comfortable with the answer to “what are we all doing here?” The answer is “not fundamental analysis.” Maybe it is “having fun online.” Maybe it is “playing a complex game of mass psychology.” Maybe it is “using our investments as a form of self-expression, buying stocks and cryptocurrencies we identify with and feeling better about ourselves if they go up.” The third era is new, and we do not understand the mechanisms here as well as we understand discounted cash flow analysis, but maybe there are mechanisms to discover; maybe in 10 years there will be textbooks on Meme Stock Analysis. And maybe there will be a first-year MBA course in Meme Stock Analysis. And maybe it will have a final exam question — really a first-week pop quiz question — like: “Donald Trump has a publicly traded company with the ticker symbol DJT (his initials), he owns more than half of the stock, its [business model]( is to ‘fight back against the big tech companies … that it believes collude to curtail debate in America and censor voices that contradict their woke ideology,’ and last year it had a [net loss of $58.2 million on $4.1 million of revenue](. How much is that company worth?” And if you write “well Meta Platforms Inc. trades at like 9.3 times revenues so maybe $40 million?” you will fail. I don’t know what you should write! The textbook is not yet written. But it does seem — as an empirical matter, but also just intuitively — like a lot of people would want to buy shares of an electronic token called “DJT” that represents their fondness for Donald Trump, that marks them out as members of a Donald Trump-supporting club, and that actually makes Trump himself richer and supports him in his endeavors. And so they might pay money for that token. And the cash flows just don’t enter into it at all. Read the [whole thing](. [Financial Markets Just Delivered a Powerful Reminder]( — Mohamed A. El-Erian [Amazon’s AI Stores Seemed Too Magical. And They Were.]( — Parmy Olson [What’s Happening in Tennessee Isn’t Funny]( — Mary Ellen Klas [Putin’s New Front in the Ukraine War Is in the Balkans]( — James Stavridis [Exxon’s $60 Billion Fight With Chevron Will Reshape Big Oil]( — Javier Blas [3-Body Problem Is Showcasing China’s Distrust of the West]( — Karishma Vaswani [Wall Street Just Doesn’t Get Retirement]( — Allison Schrager [Tesla’s Sales Flop Is Even More Shocking Than Elon Musk]( — Liam Denning [The Fed Is Wrong About How Low Interest Rates Will Go]( — Bill Dudley More From Bloomberg Opinion Here’s what we’ve been listening to and watching this week. - Without the Google mothership hovering over it, [YouTube can be its own hugely successful company](. Dave Lee explains. - X Broadcast: [Jobs Day!]( Jonathan Levin and Allison Schrager break down the data. - The future of an entire generation [is at stake in India](, says Andy Mukherjee. What do this year’s elections mean for the country? Follow Us Like getting this newsletter? [Subscribe to Bloomberg.com]( for unlimited access to trusted, data-driven journalism and subscriber-only insights. Before it’s here, it’s on the Bloomberg Terminal. Find out more about how the Terminal delivers information and analysis that financial professionals can’t find anywhere else. [Learn more](. Want to sponsor this newsletter? [Get in touch here](. You received this message because you are subscribed to Bloomberg's Opinion Today newsletter. If a friend forwarded you this message, [sign up here]( to get it in your inbox. [Unsubscribe]( [Bloomberg.com]( [Contact Us]( Bloomberg L.P. 731 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10022 [Ads Powered By Liveintent]( [Ad Choices](