Joe Rogan’s podcast future is uncertain, as were the stock values of other MAGA SPACs for a few hours on Monday.
Shares of CF Acquisition Corp VI CFVI,+18.17 percent surged as high as 39.7 percent in late afternoon trading as investors considered the possibility that the controversial comedian would accept an offer to move his show and 11 million listeners away from Spotify SPOT,-1.67 percent — where he has come under fire for sharing COVID misinformation and using racial slurs in the past — and onto online video platform Rumble, which is popular among conservatives loyal to Donald Trump.
Rumble stated in December that it intended to go public through a merger with CFVI in 2022, and retail investors, in particular, looked keen to trade following Monday’s announcement.
The invite, which was tweeted shortly after 11 a.m. Eastern time, appeared to show a letter from Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski to Rogan, offering the embattled host a $100 million contract comparable to the one he currently has at Spotify and promising not to remove his older shows, as Spotify did over the weekend, despite Rogan’s racist language and other issues.
“How about you bring all your shows, old and new, to Rumble for a hundred million dollars over four years?” Pavlovski made the proposal. “This is our window of opportunity to save the world. And yeah, this is 100% legitimate.”
The CFVI stock went up over 11% in the minutes following Rumble’s tweet, and the causation was not lost on anyone.
Retail investors appeared to be a part of a surge into the stock on Reddit in response to Rumble’s offer.
“I’m going to get more tomorrow,” one user posted on the subreddit r/CFVI. “How do you feel?”
“I’ve been heavily invested in cfvi since the spac plummeted, but there are far too many factors to address [right now].” “That being said,” another cautioned, before adding, “if rogan does end up on rumble, we will be able to retire.”
However, CFVI was not the only SPAC that rose in response to the MAGA news. Digital World Acquisition Corp. DWAC, -0.67 percent shares were also up significantly on Monday, surging 14.6 percent by mid-afternoon.
DWAC, which is still in the process of merging with Trump Media & Technology Group, the former president’s new venture, was still riding high on the prospect that TRUTH Social, the long-delayed social-media app that will be TMTG’s first actual product, would debut on Feb. 21.
The Rogan revelation appeared to have little immediate impact on DWAC shares, despite the fact that Rumble has signed on as a future video partner for TMTG, once Trump and his crew really develop a platform.
And, because threes are more “phun,” shares in MAGA-friendly mobile software company Phunware PHUN, +16.54 percent were up over 33% in Monday afternoon trading.
But then something changed, and it was not because investors realised that Rogan — who retains a relatively bipartisan fanbase — was unlikely to forego a lucrative contract with a major content platform in order to politicise himself on a much, much smaller one.
Indeed, about 3 p.m. Monday, the bottom looked to fall out of the Rogan/MAGA trade on reports of another delay to TRUTH Social.
CFVI lost over half of its momentum in the final half hour of trading to close up just over 18 percent, while DWAC fell 12.5 percent in the final half hour of trading to close down 0.7 percent.
However, while TRUTH appears to be postponed until late March, Tuesday presents another opportunity for the MAGA basket to make a run, given on optimistic analysis.
After news leaked that investor Peter Thiel will retire from Meta Platforms (nee Facebook) FB, -5.14 percent’s board of directors in the next weeks, conjecture resurfaced that a prominent person’s manoeuvres were beneficial to the far-right media industry.
Thiel, a vociferous Trump backer and Silicon Valley iconoclast, is said to be devoting more time to Trump’s political agenda during the 2022 midterm election season. The billionaire is also an investor in Rumble, a fact that social media retail investors were well aware of.
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