Trump SPAC shares DWAC soar on social media deal news

The stock price of SPAC company Digital World Acquisition Corp. rocketed up more than 90% in extremely trading volume Thursday morning off a news of a deal to launch former President Donald Trump‘s planned social media platform.

Digital World Acquisition was the single most actively traded stock on the Fidelity platform Thursday, and was by far the most traded stock on the consolidated tape of New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq listings. Buy orders for the SPAC are outnumbering sell orders by nearly three-to-one.

Trump on Wednesday said he would roll out the platform called “TRUTH Social,” which he claimed will “stand up to the tyranny of Big Tech.”

Trump has been banned by the social media giants Twitter and Facebook since early this year after he was accused of inciting the Jan. 6 Capitol riot by a mob of his supporters.

Before the ban, Trump had been a compulsive user of Twitter, often sending out multiple tweets per day during his presidency. Since the ban, Trump has struggled to get his off-the-cuff brickbats against political foes heard.

Digital World Acquisition was incorporated in late 2020, shortly after Trump lost a re-election bid against President Joe Biden.

DWAC is a blank-check firm, or special purpose acquisition company, which is specifically created to raise money in the public markets and then to use that capital to merge with a private firm.

DWAC opened trading Thursday at $12.73 per share. By 10:42 am. ET, the share price had risen to nearly $18 per share.

The ticker DWAC was among the top 10 most popular names on Reddit’s WallStreetBets chatroom Thursday, even exceeding meme stock GameStop’s mentions, according to alternative research provider Quiver Quantitative.

That could be a sign that retail investors active on social media platforms were fueling the rally in the SPAC.

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