Lofty Valuation Carries Trump’s Social Media Company Into First Trading Day

There’s a new high-flying stock on Wall Street that some investors are eagerly piling into. Its largest shareholder is former President Donald J. Trump.

His social media company, Trump Media & Technology Group, will start trading on the Nasdaq on Tuesday, under the ticker DJT. Trump Media — the parent of Truth Social, the online platform that is Mr. Trump’s main megaphone for reaching supporters and going after critics — closed its merger with a cash-rich public shell company on Monday.

The shell company’s stock surged ahead of the deal, in a frenzied trade that has fueled the company since it proposed the merger with Mr. Trump’s firm in 2021. Monday’s trading suggested that the market valuation of the new company could be well over $6 billion — making it worth more than established corporations like Alaska Airlines, Western Union and American Eagle Outfitters.

The biggest beneficiary of the market action is Mr. Trump, who owns about 60 percent of Trump Media’s shares. At the close of trading on Monday, his stake was worth nearly $4 billion.

Before the merger, shares of the shell company — Digital World Acquisition Corporation — had long behaved as something of a proxy for investor sentiment about Mr. Trump. And that is likely to continue for the merged companies, especially as Mr. Trump remains in the headlines with pending trials and the presidential campaign.

By most traditional measures, Trump Media’s valuation is inordinately high. The company took in just $3.3 million in revenue during the first nine months of last year, all from advertising on Truth Social, and recorded a loss of $49 million.