Shares in firms with links to Trump rise ahead of mid-term vote      

Former president Donald Trump speaks at an election rally in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, on Saturday, November 5.

Shares of Digital World Acquisition Corporation, or Dwac, the company looking to take Donald Trump's social media venture public, rallied over the former president's possible run for the 2024 presidential election.

Mr Trump is considering launching a third bid for the White House this month, three of his advisers said last week, while media reports over the weekend pointed to a campaign starting before the end of November.

Shares in Digital World Acquisition jumped more than 24% at one stage and were set for their best day in nearly a year, bringing down year-to-date losses to 58%.

"The prospect of Donald Trump seizing the political spotlight again appears to have put a rocket under the share price of Dwac amid expectation there could be a sharp increase in users on the former president's highly controversial social media platform," said Susannah Streeter, senior investment and markets analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown.

The rally in Dwac, which was also the fifth most trending ticker on retail investor focused social media forum Stocktwits, helped lift shares of other Trump-linked companies.

Dwac last week extended the deadline to November22. for investors' approval to complete its merger deal with Trump Media and Technology Group. This move comes as Americans prepare to vote in the US midterm elections, with analysts expecting Republicans to win control of Congress.

Software developer Phunware, which was hired by Mr Trump's 2020 presidential re-election campaign to build a phone app, jumped by over 18%. 

Rumble, a Canadian video platform popular with conservatives, however, slipped 3.5%. Mr Trump's social media venture Truth Social announced in August it would join Rumble's new ad platform as its first publisher in August.

Artificial intelligence solutions company Remark Holdings, which has been linked to the former president on social media sites, gained 8.6%. Reuters could not independently verify the link between Mr Trump and Remark. 

Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs's top economist said there’s still a “very plausible” path for the US economy to avoid a recession despite the US Federal Reserve’s aggressive hiking of interest rates and geopolitical uncertainties. 

Reuters