You’d think investing alongside the most powerful person on Earth would be a slam dunk.
It isn’t. Not even close.
While the S&P 500 posted a 17.9% gain in 2025 and Bitcoin hit an all-time high above $126,000, virtually every investment carrying the Trump name has gone in the opposite direction. We’re talking losses of 76% to 99%.
Before we continue, this isn’t a political hit piece. I don’t have “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”
This article is simply a warning from an investor with 45 years of experience about what can happen when you invest based on fame instead of facts.
Let’s walk through the numbers.
1. The performance is catastrophic
Trump Media (DJT) debuted on the Nasdaq in March 2024 at an opening price of about $71 per share. As I write this, it’s hovering around $10. That’s roughly an 86% loss for anyone who bought on day one.
The $TRUMP meme coin? It spiked to about $74 the day before the inauguration in January 2025. It’s now trading near $2.83 — a 96% nosedive.
The World Liberty Financial governance token (WLFI) has dropped about 76% from its September 2025 peak. And the $MELANIA coin? Down more than 99% from its launch-day high.
If you’d put $10,000 into each of those four investments at their peaks, or $40,000, you’d have about $4,300 left today.
2. The businesses behind them are terrible
Trump Media reported just $3.7 million in revenue for all of 2025. That’s not a quarterly number. That’s the whole year.
Meanwhile, the company posted a net loss of $712.3 million.
For context, a local car wash probably generates more revenue. Yet at its peak, DJT carried a market cap north of $8 billion. There’s no business case here. There’s only hype.
3. The Trumps win even when you lose
Here’s what makes this different from a normal bad investment. The Trump family has structured these deals so they get paid no matter what happens to your money.
According to The Wall Street Journal, a holding company controlled by the Trump family is entitled to 75% of the net revenue from World Liberty Financial’s token sales. That’s roughly $400 million in guaranteed payouts from the $550 million raised.
What do investors get? WLFI governance tokens they can’t easily sell. Trump listed more than $57 million in personal income from World Liberty on his 2025 financial disclosure, according to NBC News.
The family cashes out. You hold the bag. As we recently explored in “Trump’s New Businesses Are Making Billions. Are His Investors Making a Dime?,” the gap between family profits and investor returns has become almost comically wide.
If there’s ever been a greater example of “the rich get richer, while the poor get poorer,” I can’t imagine what it would be.
4. The conflicts of interest are staggering
No president in history has personally profited from financial products while simultaneously setting the regulatory rules for those same products.
Trump launched his $TRUMP meme coin days before his inauguration. His administration then overhauled crypto regulation, with the SEC dropping cases against major crypto firms — including Justin Sun, who happens to be one of the largest investors in Trump’s crypto ventures.
In May 2025, Trump hosted a dinner at his Virginia golf club for the top 220 holders of his meme coin. Democratic members of Congress demanded a Department of Justice investigation, calling it a potential violation of bribery laws and the foreign emoluments clause.
A House Judiciary Committee report later found the family’s crypto holdings had reached as much as $11.6 billion, with more than $800 million in income from crypto asset sales in just the first half of 2025.
When the people who regulate an industry are the same people selling you an investment in that industry, you’ve got a problem that goes beyond “buyer beware.”
5. The market has been screaming the answer
Let’s make this painfully simple.
If you’d put $10,000 into the S&P 500 at the start of 2025, you’d have about $11,790 by year’s end. That’s boring. That’s diversified. That’s how wealth actually gets built.
If you’d put that same $10,000 into DJT stock at the start of 2025, you’d have roughly $3,400 today. Trump Media has declined more than 30% just in 2026 alone, even as the broader Nasdaq has pushed to record highs.
The divergence isn’t subtle. It’s a canyon. And it tells you everything you need to know about how the market values these ventures when forced to judge them on fundamentals rather than fan loyalty.
6. Even the insiders are turning on each other
Justin Sun, the Chinese-born crypto entrepreneur who pledged $75 million to World Liberty Financial, has publicly accused the project of misleading investors. He called it a “trap door.”
And Bloomberg reported this month that World Liberty Financial is proposing to keep early investors’ tokens locked — potentially indefinitely, or at least until Trump leaves office. Investors who don’t agree? Their tokens get frozen with no timeline at all.
Think about that. You invest your money, the value craters, and then they tell you that you can’t sell even if you wanted to.
That’s not an investment. That’s a hostage situation.
7. You’re not investing — you’re donating
At the end of the day, the people buying Trump-branded investments aren’t making a financial decision. They’re making an emotional one.
And look, I get it. People feel strongly about this president, one way or another. But your portfolio doesn’t care about your politics. It only cares about returns.
If you’re thinking about putting money into anything crypto-related — whether it carries the Trump name or not — you should understand what you’re getting into. I’ve been skeptical about digital currencies for years, and I laid out my reasoning in “3 Reasons I Hate Crypto — and 3 Reasons I Own It Anyway.”
And if your employer starts offering crypto in your retirement plan, think long and hard before you check that box. We covered the risks in “Crypto Meets Your 401(k): A Risk Too Big for Retirement?”
The bottom line
I’ve been covering personal finance since 1991. I’ve seen countless investments that rely on celebrity, hype, and emotional loyalty rather than earnings, revenue, and sound management.
They all end the same way.
If you want to support a president, vote. Volunteer. Put a bumper sticker on your car. But don’t put your savings into investments that carry his name, generate almost no revenue, and are structured to enrich the people at the top while everyone else watches their money evaporate.
Your money deserves better.
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