READY, FIRE, AIM: Who Can Stop the Bleeding?

My earliest memory dates to a somewhat traumatic event that occurred at some point prior to my second birthday.  I can’t say the exact day, because nothing is ‘exact’ when you are less than two years old.

The memory is somewhat vague, as 60-year-old memories are likely to be.  I seem to be standing that the bottom of a staircase, and something made of glass lies broken on the floor.   It might have been a fishbowl?

A much older boy with brown hair — maybe twelve years old? — has cut his finger picking up a piece of broken glass.  I can see the blood.

Bright red blood.

The memory is slightly traumatic because my two-year-old self had never before seen a person bleed real blood.

Then the memory ends.  I have no idea who the boy was, or what house this occurred in, or what glass object, exactly, had broken.  But the blood is vividly real in my memory.

Maybe other Daily Post readers have similar memories?

I’m thinking about bleeding, because there are various ways to bleed.  Like for example, a person can bleed financial resources.

I don’t typically invest in the stock market, but a while back, I found $10,000 tucked away in my sock drawer, and I decided it was time to invest in my future.

So I purchased 200 shares in DJT — Trump Media & Technology — on the wild assumption that Donald Trump would win the presidential election in November, and the value of my investment would skyrocket. The investment made a lot of sense last March, because former President Trump was running against seated President Joe Biden.

Yes, Joe Biden. No more need be said about that potential outcome.

But then Biden dropped out of the race on July 21.  A dark day for me, even though a lot of Democrats were enormously relieved.

Trump could have beat Biden, blindfolded and with one hand tied behind his back. But Kamala Harris? The messenger of joy and hope?

The stock market seems to think the prospects are not too good. The 200 shares in DJT I bought in March for $10,000 are now worth about $2,500.

I should have left the money in my sock drawer.

When the Trump Media company was formed — through a series of starts and stops and investigations — the founders were prohibited from selling their own shares until September 19… a so-called lock-up period. Donald Trump owns about 57% of the company, and United Atlantic Ventures and ARC Global Investments together own about 11% of Trump Media shares. Altogether, the insiders own about 20 million shares.

According to the Lamestream Media, if any of them start cashing in their shares, that will likely result in the shares losing even more value.

You see what I mean about ‘bleeding’?

But our former President is not going to sell his shares, even though he can. He confirmed his intentions at a recent news conference.

“A lot of people think the reason [the share price has dropped] is a lot of people think I’m going to sell, and if I sell, it’s not going to be the same,” Trump said. “But I have absolutely no intention of selling.”

‘Lock-ups’ are a common restriction on Wall Street, designed to prohibit major investors from dumping their shares in a company soon after the company goes public. That’s because large stock sales by insiders can cause a company’s shares to tank.

I’m not an insider, unfortunately. But even if I was, I wouldn’t want the shares to tank.

The question, though, is whether I should believe Donald Trump when he says, “I have absolutely no intention of selling.”

According to The Washington Post, Trump accumulated 30,573 “false or misleading statements” during his four-year presidency — averaging about 21 erroneous claims per day.

I don’t know. What would you do with your DJT shares… if you were me?

Louis Cannon

Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.