The Trade Desk Inc. (NASDAQ:TTD) stock is pulling back in premarket trading on Friday after surging 18.36% to close sharply higher on Thursday.

CEO’s $148 Million Insider Buy Shocks Wall Street

CEO Jeffrey Terry Green disclosed a massive personal stake increase. Between March 2 and March 4, Green accumulated 6,398,089 Class A shares.

Six million shares came through a limited partnership. An additional 398,089 arrived via a restricted stock award.

Weighted-average purchase prices ranged from $23.49 to $25.08. Individual trade prices spanned $22.93 to $25.25. The four transactions totaled approximately $148.1 million.

OpenAI Ad Partnership Talks Fuel Optimism

Simultaneously, The Information reported OpenAI is in early talks with The Trade Desk. The discussion centers on using TTD’s programmatic platform to sell and target ads across OpenAI products.

OpenAI introduced ads on ChatGPT last month. The company is now reportedly eyeing external partners to scale its advertising business.

TTD’s platform helps brands and agencies buy digital ad inventory across channels globally. An OpenAI relationship could add a high-profile, AI-native demand source.

No formal partnership has been announced.

Short Interest Jumps To 10.61%

Short interest rose from 44.13 million to 46.45 million shares last reporting period. That puts 10.61% of publicly available TTD shares sold short.

Based on the average daily volume of 15.82 million shares, short sellers would need nearly three days to exit without moving the stock sharply.

Technical Analysis

Over the past year, The Trade Desk has seen a significant decline of 54.16%, with the stock currently trading 22.1% below its 100-day Simple Moving Average (SMA) and a stark 42.8% below its 200-day SMA.

This positions the stock closer to its 52-week low of $21.08 than its high of $91.45. The RSI stands at 59.88, indicating a neutral market momentum.

TTD Price Action: Trade Desk shares were down 2.65% at $29.00 during premarket trading on Friday, according to Benzinga Pro data.

Photo by Piotr Swat via Shutterstock