MARKETWATCH: "Cha-ching!"

From Brett Arends' 2-17-24 MARKETWATCH article entitled "Cha-ching! How Trump Is Making $4 Billion from His 2024 Campaign for President.":

Away from the legal headlines, Donald Trump has just made a staggering amount of money, all of it driven by the publicity from his campaign for the White House. (A terribly, terribly cynical person might even suggest that is part of the point.)

How much? Forget these fines, which add up to less than $500 million. Trump is suddenly on track for a windfall of nearly $4 billion. And he has made most of it just in the five weeks since his big win in the Iowa caucus put him in pole position for the Republican nomination.

The windfall is from the forthcoming IPO of his social media platform, “Truth Social,” which he launched – amid massive derision from the liberal media, I might add – in 2021 after he got kicked off Twitter.

Truth Social got approval for its IPO from the Securities and Exchange Commission this week.

It will come to the stock market through a merger with a so-called blank check or “shell” company known as Digital World Acquisition Corp [DWAC, -4.00%]. (Bank check companies are paper companies that list on the stock market first, then find a business to buy or merge with).

Under the terms of the deal, which has been in the pipelines since 2021, Trump personally will end up with 79 million shares in the company when the deal is complete, possibly as soon as this quarter.

Or so reports this SEC company filing, on page 309.

The value of those shares today: $48. They dropped $2 on Friday, but only after a phenomenal run that has taken them from just $17 in early January, just before the Iowa caucus.

That makes Trump’s personal stake valued at $3.8 billion: A rise of $2.5 billion just since winning the Iowa caucus. Who says it costs money to run for president?

To read the entire article, click HERE.