U.S. President Donald Trump on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., November 18, 2025 (REUTERS)
President Donald Trump has failed in many of his financial ventures — and now he could be lining up another big swing and miss, according to critics.
The New York Times reports that The Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) thinks it’s ready to hit the Wall Street trading floor with a series of exchange-traded investment funds carrying the brand of Trump’s social media platform, Truth Social. The company’s goal, said the Times, is to pitch the funds, which are baskets of individual stocks, to investors “who share Trump’s worldview.”
“We are here to talk about American superiority,” said Steve Neamtz, chief executive of Yorkville America, speaking to the New York Times. Yorkville America is a New Jersey investment firm with close ties to Trump Media.
Neamtz told the Times that the Truth Social funds are focused on companies in sectors “critical to the American economy, like energy and security,” but they deliberately avoid stocks of companies that are seen as “promoting social causes at the expense of profits.”
“We don’t want activism,” Neamtz said.
But it turns out that picking and choosing your stock targets based on politics is itself a kind of activism — and serious investors like winning, not idealogues.
“It’s a challenge to break through when your difference is connected to politics,” said Todd Rosenbluth, who is head of research at TMX VettaFi, a financial data firm, and a longtime analyst of the E.T.F. market, speaking with the Times, adding that most investors tend not to invest based on their political leanings, and they are mainly looking for funds with a history of generating solid returns.
Coupled with Trump’s past financial failure and bankruptcies make this new platform a hard sell in some circles. And Trump’s Truth Social funds are already hitting the market at a “critical time for Trump Media, which has lost money in every quarter since it went public in March 2024,” according to Times reporter Matthew Goldstein.
“The company’s stock is trading at about $9, down roughly 80 percent since its debut. The value of Mr. Trump’s stake has tumbled to about $1 billion from $6 billion. And traffic is down sharply this summer on Truth Social,” said Goldstein.
The Financial Times reported that Trump’s Truth Social media platform was bleeding users as the unpopular president plays out the second year of his White House return. Kevin McGurn, interim chief executive of Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) told Financial Times that Truth Social does not disclose numbers. However, digital market intelligence company Similarweb estimates the platform had about 261,000 daily active users for its mobile app in July — down from more than 436,000 that same month last year.
Many MAGA sites inextricably tied to Trump are also not doing well in Trump’s twilight months.
The Financial Times added that TMTG shares "have sunk 39 percent over the past year," linked to the price of bitcoin, which makes up the majority of a $2.5 billion investment in crypto and other assets that acts as its corporate treasury.
"TMTG reported a net loss of $712.3 million in 2025, mostly from changes in the value of digital assets given an annual revenue of just $3.7 million," the Times said.
Worse, Trump's conservative PublicSquare marketplace, created as a MAGA-aligned alternative with Donald Trump Jr.’s backing, is already facing severe financial difficulties and a 99 percent collapse in its share price, according to BGNES.
“Despite initial expectations, the conservative marketplace failed to gain traction, resulting in cumulative losses of nearly $160 million from the start of its stock trading in 2023 through the end of July this year,” reports BGNES.
Neamtz, however, sounds upbeat about this new investment, telling the NY Times that the company will be using “podcasts and social media to spread the word about the funds and pitch them to investment advisers at small firms.”
One post reads: “Put your money where your flag is,” over a drawing of an eagle over an American flag, according to the NY Times.