Former President Donald Trump criticized Nasdaq for implementing a routine trading halt in shares of his social media company, Truth Social. He even threatened to move the listing to the New York Stock Exchange. “Why is NASDAQ halting the sale of DJT?” Trump questioned, referring to the ticker symbol of Truth Social owner Trump Media & Technology Group.
“What right do they have to do this? They have done it twice today. What’s going on?”
Trump implied that Nasdaq was “taking orders from the SEC,” an agency he accused of delaying Trump Media’s merger “for political reasons.
Trump Media’s stock, which trades on the Nasdaq Composite, experienced a significant increase on Friday after Trump announced he would not be selling shares in the company.
That spike triggered two five-minute trading pauses designed to provide a cooling period, which are routine and occur frequently for various stocks. For Trump Media, the first halt took place at 2:26 p.m. ET and was lifted at 2:31 p.m. ET, moments after Trump announced during a press conference that he was “not selling” shares in the company.
Trump questions Nasdaq’s trading halt
That comment lifted the stock by 25%. Trading resumed before it was halted again at 2:34 p.m. ET for another five-minute pause. A Nasdaq spokesperson indicated that “single-stock trading pauses, also known as ‘Limit up/Limit down,’ are SEC-mandated market-wide mechanisms deployed across all US exchanges, both companies and investors and minimize excess volatility in a single stock or the wider market.
Joe Saluzzi, a market structure expert and co-founder of Themis Trading, explained that “these types of halts are very common” and noted that they are mandated by federal regulators.
“So, Mr. Trump’s threat about moving his stock from Nasdaq to NYSE would have no effect since both Nasdaq and NYSE follow the same SEC rules,” he said. Despite the routine nature of the halts, Trump threatened to hold Nasdaq, and possibly the SEC, accountable.
I am going to hold NASDAQ, and maybe the SEC, liable for doing what they are doing,” he said in his Truth Social post. “If they do it again, we will move the stock to the New York Stock Exchange.”
Nasdaq did not respond to a request for comment.
