Pirate-clad Canadian pastor directs flock to snap up Trump Media shares

A part-time pastor who can't even vote in November's election helped boost stock prices for Donald Trump's tech company.

Chad Nedohin, a huge fan of the former president who invested in a publicly traded shell company after it announced plans to merge with Trump Media more than two years ago, donned a pirate costume and invited his 1,400 online followers to snap up shares as soon as the company went public last month, reported the New York Times.

“Faith comes from hearing — that is, hearing the good news about Christ,” said Nedohin on his livestream hosted on the right-wing video site Rumble.

The 40-year-old Nedohin started buying shares in Digital World Acquisition Corporation in late 2021, after the shell company announced plans to merge with the former president's tech company, and those original shares were converted into Trump Media stock under the ticker DJT after the merger last month.

Nedohin is among hundreds of thousands of amateur investors who bought shares of Trump Media to show support for the former president, putting themselves at odds with professional short sellers who are betting on the stocks to fail, and that dynamic – coupled with frenzied day trading – has made the share values swing wildly.

"A meme stock on steroids," one analyst recently said about the company.

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Nedohin, who lives in Edmonton, Alberta, prefers to call the shares a “populist retail investment," rather than a "meme stock," and he believes in the long-term prospects of the company and its Truth Social network.

“As a Christian, I don’t believe in shorting,” Nedohin said. “I believe in only building for the positive.”

Trump Media is not very successful by traditional measures, with a reported $4 million in revenue last year and $58 million in losses, and Truth Social has a tiny audience – 1.5 million visitors last month – compared to 75 million for X, but loyal investors like Nedohin are keeping share values to around the same price of established companies such as Wendy’s and Western Union while they await what they're sure will be a big payday.

“Trump always wins in the long run," Nedohin said.