If you were looking to cash in on Donald Trump’s election, you may have already missed out on one opportunity. Private prison giants GEO Group and CoreCivic and have seen their stocks soar astronomically since Election Day. As of this writing, GEO Group is up 82 percent over the last month, and CoreCivic is up 68 percent. Those prices might be too expensive at this point to win you a windfall.
Still, investors are betting heavily that the Trump administration will sign major contracts with these companies to erect concentration camps for the millions of people they’ve promised to deport.
In an earnings call Thursday, GEO Group Executive Chairman George Zoleysaid the company “was built for this unique moment in our company’s — country’s history and the opportunity that it will bring.”
Brian Evans, GEO Group’s chief executive officer, said on the call, “We’re looking at a theoretical potential doubling of all of our services.”
Now, maybe you’re not the type of person to seek personal profit from a mass deportation program, or maybe you would never invest in an industry of for-profit incarceration even if it wasn’t giddily gearing up to enable a white nationalist wet dream. If so, I get it. You’re not going to cry about being too late to the party.
But there’s a lot of money being made suddenly since bets on Trump paid off. Dogecoin cryptocurrency is up 14 percent over the last month, in part because the DOGE stock symbol is shared with the new Department of Government Efficiency that Trump just announced, which will be headed by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. If Elon Musk now virtually owns the presidency, J.D. Vance super-patron Peter Thiel owns the vice-presidency. He recently sold over $1 billion worth of his Palantir stock, but that was premature. It has risen a further 44 percent since his sale and is up 264 percent year-to-date.
The stock market is booming in general, which was the case even before Trump’s victory, so a correction is surely coming. I think the irrational exuberance may last a while longer, however, at least until Trump is inaugurated and reality begins to set in. His tariff ideas have a real potential to send stocks plummeting. Beyond that, once his deportation program gets up and running, it will create some real turbulence in the economy that could easily spook investors into a big sell-off.
I think a lot of people are getting rich and more will get rich in this narrow window between the excitement over promises of tax breaks and lax regulation and the reality that the stock market is already too high and Trump is going to fuck things up.
So, get in now while the going is good, and then get out quick!