Trump-linked SPAC soars on Truth Social downloads
Shares of the special acquisition company or SPAC responsible for ex-President Donald Trump's new social media app jumped on Tuesday after launching over the weekend.
According to Apptopia, Truth Social was downloaded more than 170,000 times since its launch late Sunday, topping downloads on Apple's App Store.
The SPAC was also trending high on investor-focused social media site stocktwits.com, indicating interest from retail traders.
Shares of Digital World Acquisition Corp initially jumped 14% to a level last seen in October, when the blank check firm announced a deal to publicly list Trump Media & Technology Group, the venture behind Truth Social.
But by midday Tuesday, shares had given back more than half of those gains.
Wall Street's top financial regulators are investigating Trump's $1.25 billion deal to float Trump Media & Technology Group on the stock market, according to a filing from December.
Other stocks linked to Trump also whipsawed on Tuesday.
Shares of Phunware, which was hired by Trump's 2020 re-election campaign to build an app, initially climbed 11% but then turned negative at one point.
CF Acquisition Corp VI, the SPAC behind video platform Rumble, which will deliver video and streaming for Truth Social, started the session up 3.3% but was down more than 7% by midday.
Meanwhile, shares of Twitter and Facebook-parent Meta Platforms, which both banned Trump from their services following last year's attack on the U.S. Capitol, fell along with the rest of tech in Tuesday's session.
