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.
Gambling is still gambling no matter how much of a “sure thing” it seems like it would be. The more “obvious” something is, the less pay-off and higher cost there would be.
Plus, the money from gambling on the stock market comes from all the people being financially ruined by choosing wrong. Is that where you want your money to come from? Would you be able to stomache that?
In any normal circumstances, no, but I’ve very little empathy for anyone who still supports Donald Trump. Someone will inevitably take their money because they’re idiots, it might as well be me.
It’s either gonna be Trump or shorters, so…
The only people who actually believe DJT is worth anything (both the person and the stock) are typically the kind of person I’m OK with screwing over. They gleefully cheer when harm comes to people I love, so I have no problem doing the same to them. Plus, his tax cuts for the wealthy actually increased my taxes a noticeable amount (the hard limit on tax exemption for high state tax areas), so I would feel like I’m just getting mine back from the people who voted for him.