By Utkarsh Shetti
(Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump’s re-election prompted a run-up in the broad stock market that has since receded. The same has happened in a number of tiny companies linked to the president’s two eldest sons.
In the last few months, Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump have announced their involvement in several smaller companies ranging from the e-commerce, drone manufacturing and financial advisory industries.
The announcements sparked a frenzy of buying in those stocks – generally thinly traded names with tiny market valuations and minimal revenue – only to give back most of those gains.
Donald Jr and Eric Trump currently run the Trump Organization, the president’s real estate company. Their association with smaller, publicly listed companies since the election indicates their interest in leveraging that win in the business world.
On February 24, the duo disclosed a combined 13.4% stake in biotech firm-turned-financial advisory Dominari Holdings, which is headquartered at the Trump Tower in New York. They were appointed to Dominari’s board of advisers on February 11.
Shares doubled after the announcement, but are now down about 6% since their appointment. More than 23 million shares in the stock traded a day before the announcement, LSEG data showed. By contrast, average volume in 2024 was just 13,000 shares a day, according to Reuters calculations.
The Trump Organization and Dominari Holdings did not respond to requests for comment.
Drone maker Unusual Machines in November added Don Jr to its advisory board, who noted in a statement the need for America to “stop buying Chinese drones and parts.” The company, however, said in a filing last year that it was heavily dependent on Chinese imports for products and operations.
Allan Evans, CEO of Unusual Machines, told Reuters the company was making progress on shifting its supply chain to domestic production, estimating that Chinese imports would account for less than 50% of the supply chain by year-end.
Shares jumped 260% on the news of Donald Jr’s appointment, but have since fallen back. They are still up about 14% since the announcement for a market value of about $93 million.
Dominari and Unusual share another link. Dominari was an underwriter in Unusual’s IPO in 2024 and was its placement agent when it raised about $2 million in October in a private fundraising. Evans said Donald Jr joined the company as an investor in that private placement. He owned 331,580 shares of Unusual as of December, according to regulatory filings.
Dominari reported revenue of $11.6 million in the first nine months of 2024, while Unusual posted about $3.6 million.
James Wood, CEO of short-selling researcher Differentiated Analytics, said the companies were benefiting from the name recognition. The firm has a short position in PSQ Holdings, which added Donald Jr to its board of directors in December.
“The apparent purpose of these appointments is to drum up investor hype. I thus expect the bump in the share price to be ephemeral,” Wood said.
Michael Seifert, CEO of PSQ, which owns online shopping website PublicSquare, said Donald Jr’s appointment was not due to hype, but a natural progression in his involvement with the company since first investing in it before it went public in July 2023.
The company bills itself as “anti-woke,” with a goal of connecting shoppers to brands aligned with the conservative movement. Upon Donald Jr’s appointment, PSQ stock rose as much as 270%, but has since given back most of those gains; it is up 22% since the announcement and is worth about $87 million.
(Reporting by Utkarsh Shetti in Bengaluru; Editing by David Gaffen and Anil D’Silva)
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