Trump Media shares jump after Trump says he won't sell

By Caroline Valetkevitch and Susan Heavey

NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Shares of Trump Media & Technology Group gained on Friday after U.S. President-elect Donald Trump said he had no intention of selling his shares in the company, which owns his Truth Social media platform.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump rejected what he described as rumors that he was planning to sell shares a day after the stock slumped.

"There are fake, untrue, and probably illegal rumors and/or statements made by, perhaps, market manipulators or short sellers, that I am interested in selling shares of Truth," Trump wrote.

"THOSE RUMORS OR STATEMENTS ARE FALSE. I HAVE NO INTENTION OF SELLING!," Trump added.

Shares of the company closed 15.2% higher on Friday at $31.91 and hit a session high of $33.03.

The stock was briefly halted for volatility after Trump's comments.

On Thursday, shares of the company slumped as speculative bets on Trump winning a second four-year term lost steam a day after his victory over Democrat Kamala Harris. The stock rose 5.9% on Wednesday following Election Day on Tuesday.

While Trump and Vice President Harris were nearly tied in most opinion polls leading up to the election, online betting markets favored the former president more, prompting investors to pile into securities that they viewed as more likely to benefit or come under pressure under his leadership.

That resulted in a roughly a 200% surge in Trump Media stock in the six weeks before the election.

Trump had already said in September that he was not selling his shares in the company and would not leave the social medial platform he founded.

Trump owns nearly 115 million shares and has about a 53% stake in Trump Media. At the stock's price on Friday, his piece of the company was worth about $3.7 billion, while its total market capitalization was at around $7 billion.

The stock's 30-day implied volatility - an options-based measure of how much traders expect the stock to swing in the near term - has retreated from the record high 300% touched right before the election, but remains highly elevated at about 200%, per Trade Alert data.

Even though the presidential election is over, options traders see the stock swinging by as much as 25% over the next week, LSEG options data showed.

(Reporting by Susan Heavey in Washington and Caroline Valetkevitch in New York; additional reporting by Saqib Iqbal Ahmed and Lance Tupper in New York; editing by Rami Ayyub and Jonathan Oatis)