President Trump has cemented himself in American culture by putting his name on everything from office towers to passports.
Now Mr. Trump’s brand is hitting Wall Street trading floors, too.
The Trump Media & Technology Group, which counts Mr. Trump as the largest shareholder, has introduced exchange-traded investment funds carrying the brand of his social media platform, Truth Social. The company’s goal is to pitch the funds, which are baskets of individual stocks, to investors who share Mr. Trump’s worldview. The funds began rolling out earlier this year.
“We are here to talk about American superiority,” said Steve Neamtz, chief executive of Yorkville America, an investment firm in New Jersey with close ties to Trump Media that is managing the funds.
Mr. Neamtz said the Truth Social funds were focused on companies in sectors critical to the American economy, like energy and security, while avoiding stocks of companies that are seen as promoting social causes at the expense of profits. “We don’t want activism,” he said.
Mr. Neamtz, who joined Yorkville late last year, said his strategy was to be “as apolitical as possible.”
“I am into investment strategy — I am not a politician,” he said.
But the Truth Social basket of E.T.F.s all have a decidedly America First aura. The five newly launched funds have names like Truth Social American Icons, Truth Social American Security & Defense and Truth Social American Energy Security. Companies that the funds own shares in include Home Depot, Uber, Lockheed Martin, CrowdStrike, Exxon Mobil, Walmart and Chevron.
Yorkville recently acquired two older E.T.F.s with a strong conservative bent and rebranded them as Truth Social funds.
One of those is Truth Social America First, which trades under the “MAGA” stock symbol. And the other is Truth Social God Bless America, which trades under the symbol “YALL.”
E.T.F.s, which have been around for decades, are a popular way for investors to get exposure to stocks without having to be their own stock pickers. The funds themselves trade on stock exchanges.
The E.T.F. market is huge, with $24 trillion in assets, and is dominated by big money-management firms like BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street. The Truth Social funds are entering the market with about $150 million in combined assets.
Much of the assets come from the two already established ETFs that Trump Media acquired. The newly-minted Truth Social funds each have fewer than $10 million in assets and generally trade just a few thousand shares a day — an indication of limited demand.
Even with the help of the Trump brand, some market analysts said it might be hard for the new offerings to find buyers. The funds also will be competing for investor dollars with E.T.F.s from Strive Asset Management, a $3 billion investment firm that rose to prominence by claiming its goal was to “depoliticize corporate America” and oppose so-called woke investing. (Strive was co-founded by Vivek Ramaswamy, who is the Republican candidate for governor of Ohio.)
“It’s a challenge to break through when your difference is connected to politics,” said Todd Rosenbluth, who is head of research at TMX VettaFi, a financial data firm, and a longtime analyst of the E.T.F. market. Most investors, he said, tend not to invest based on their political leanings and are mainly looking for funds with a history of generating solid returns.
It is unclear just how much of a revenue maker the seven funds will be for Trump Media, which does not have any role in managing or selecting the stocks. The company is licensing the Truth Social name to Yorkville, which is managing the funds, for an unspecified amount, according to regulatory filings.
Mr. Neamtz and a Trump Media spokesman declined to discuss the licensing arrangement.
Adam Curran, a money manager in Charleston, S.C., said he had merged his God Bless America fund with Truth Social because he had grown weary of having to market the fund, which he founded in 2022.
Mr. Curran said he would continue to manage the E.T.F., which owns shares in companies like Nvidia, Palantir, Tesla and SpaceX, and hoped the Truth Social name would help bring in more investor dollars.
“I sought out Truth Social,” Mr. Curran said. “They have a similar vision.”
Over the past three years, America First fund has had an annualized total return of about 14.8 percent and Mr. Curran’s God Bless America fund has had an annualized return of 19.7 percent, according to ETFdb, a market data firm.
Over the same period, the S&P 500, the broadest stock market index, has had an annualized return of just over 20 percent.
Matthew Tuttle, who has specialized in developing E.T.F.s and is assisting Yorkville, said it was an open question as to how much investor appetite there was for conservative-oriented funds. “Within a year we should know how the market is working,” he said.
The Truth Social funds are just one deal that Yorkville has with Trump Media. In 2024, Trump Media entered into a financing deal with Yorkville in which the investment firm acquired millions of discounted shares from the company in return for a cash infusion. Yorkville also is advising Trump Media on a proposed merger with a TAE Technologies, a fusion energy company.
And Kevin McGurn, the interim chief executive of Trump Media, has been an officer at special-purpose acquisition companies sponsored by Yorkville affiliates.
The Truth Social funds, meanwhile, are hitting the market at a critical time for Trump Media, which has lost money in every quarter since it went public in March 2024.
The company’s stock is trading at about $9, down roughly 80 percent since its debut. The value of Mr. Trump’s stake has tumbled to about $1 billion from $6 billion. And traffic is down sharply this summer on Truth Social.
Recently, Trump Media & Technology Group began selling early access to Mr. Trump’s posts to Wall Street traders in a bid to boost revenue. But the plan has drawn criticism that the company is trying to monetize Mr. Trump’s posts on public policy announcements.
Mr. Neamtz said Yorkville would use podcasts and social media to spread the word about the funds and pitch them to investment advisers at small firms. Yorkville is also promoting the E.T.F.s on Truth Social, where a feed devoted to the E.T.F.s has 120,000 followers. One post reads: “Put your money where your flag is,” over a drawing of an eagle over an American flag.
Susan C. Beachy contributed research.
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