CNN
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Former President Donald Trump’s social media shares plummet just before the election, weighing heavily on his fortune.

After an absurd spike over the past five weeks that was based entirely on Trump’s perceived re-election prospects — and had nothing to do with the company’s actual operations — Trump’s social media shares have tanked. It has now lost around 41% of its value in just three days.

Truth The stock price of social owner Trump Media & Technology Group fell another 14% on Friday, after dropping 12% on Thursday and 22% on Wednesday – Trump Media’s biggest single-day loss since going public in March.

After the closing bell on Tuesday, shares were priced at $51, valuing Trump’s dominant stake in the company at about $5.9 billion. On Friday, the value of Trump’s shares fell to $3.5 billion. That means Trump has lost $2.4 billion in net worth since Tuesday.

Trump Media’s stock, which trades under the ticker “DJT,” has become a benchmark for how traders think the presidential election will go. Prediction markets in recent days have increasingly started predicting that Vice President Kamala Harris will win the election, even as polls clearly show this will be an election with no clear favorite.

“Meme stocks, of which DJT is one, are very sensitive to momentum shifts,” said Steve Sosnick, chief strategist at Interactive Brokers, who noted a clear “vibe shift” in the prediction markets in recent days. “Last week’s spike in the prediction markets was a boon for DJT; conversely, a shift would hurt stocks.”

The fundamentals of the company have nothing to do with why the stock is trading. Trump Media has not released any major news that could explain the nosedive.

“Remember, stocks are essentially a binary election bet,” Sosnick said. “If it wins, there’s something to be said for increasing its value. If he loses, it will become a barely profitable company with small revenues again.”

Trump Media stock has been extremely volatile all year. But between September 23 and Tuesday’s closing bell, Trump Media had quadrupled in value.

The huge profits boosted Trump Media’s value to $10.3 billion at the end of Tuesday. That means it was briefly worth more than the implied value of X, Elon Musk’s social network, formerly known as Twitter.

That’s despite the fact that X has about 70 million monthly active US users on iOS and Android, according to Sameweb data shared with CNN. That’s about 100 times Truth Social’s 698,000 monthly active US users.

Even Threads, Meta’s relatively new X competitor, has about 20 times as many users as Truth Social, according to SimilarWeb.

Trump Media’s fundamentals remain very modest for a company still valued at around $6 billion. For context, CBS owner Paramount Global, a company that Trump Media recently surpassed in market value, has brought in more than $14 billion in revenue so far this year.

But Trump Media has only generated $1.6 million in revenue this year.

George Kailas, CEO of Prospero.ai, a research platform that helps traders gather market information, told CNN on Friday that he isn’t surprised by the sudden momentum shift for Trump Media, because that’s what happens with meme stocks.

“It’s like a game of musical chairs. Everyone is happy when the music plays and the stocks rise,” Kailas said. “But since it’s not based on any kind of good tangible value, as soon as it stops everyone panics… and the bottom falls out.”