How Wall Street bots are reaping profits from Donald Trump's posts on Truth Social
Traders using automated systems are ready to pay for ultra-fast access to the president's posts. At least five companies have already signed up for the service.
US President Donald Trump's social network, Truth Social, has begun selling capital market traders ultra-fast access to the posts he publishes. However, on Wall Street, this practice has long since become the norm.
According to traders, many large investment firms have developed automated systems that monitor publications on the Truth network, identify important keywords, and execute actions within a fraction of a second, such as opening or closing positions in various stocks.
An examination of trading data conducted by The Wall Street Journal reveals how quickly some traders react to the president's posts. According to data from the research firm DTN, in the minute following the publication of two posts by Donald Trump on the subject of Iran last month, more than 2 million shares were traded. These transactions led to fluctuations of more than 2% in nearly 24 stocks in the energy and industrial sectors.
The new product, Truth API, from the Trump Media & Technology Group, will allow firms to pay for even faster access to the president's posts. According to sources familiar with the matter, the company plans to charge between $60,000 and $100,000 per month for those who commit to a multi-year subscription. These are amounts that most private investors, who presumably follow Donald Trump's social media posts closely, cannot afford.
Trump Media stated in response to questions that "Truth API is intended to deliver posts the moment they become public for everyone, and not before."
On June 9, at 12:38 PM, the president published a post in which he wrote that Iran had shot down an Apache helicopter patrolling the skies over the Strait of Hormuz, and noted:
"The United States must, by necessity, respond to this attack."
According to trading data examined by The Wall Street Journal, trading in energy stocks surged almost immediately following the post's publication, leading to gains across the market.
Two days later, the president announced that he was canceling the strikes planned for that evening because negotiations with Iran were progressing. He even hinted that a long-term peace agreement was within reach: "The time and place for the signing will be announced soon," he wrote. This time, the immediate reaction in the markets was a sharp decline in energy and defense-related stocks.
Nanoseconds before competitors — a significant advantage
Sources familiar with the matter stated that Trump Media executives—Chief Technology Officer Vladimir Novitsky, Chief Revenue Officer Paul Bremer, and Head of Strategic Initiatives Mateus Wagner—are conducting talks with trading firms to market the paid feed delivery service. The service will include access to posts from the most senior accounts on the platform. President Donald Trump has the largest number of followers, about 13 million users, and his sons and Vice President J.D. Vance also enjoy a large number of followers.
According to one of the sources, among the companies that have already signed up for the service are five that specialize in High-Frequency Trading. These firms attempt to profit from tiny and short-term price gaps between assets, and therefore reaction speed is a critical factor for them. In this field, receiving information even a few nanoseconds before competitors can provide a significant advantage.
Firms specializing in high-frequency trading attempt to gain an advantage in many ways, including placing their servers as close as possible to the computers operating exchanges like NASDAQ or the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). According to Eric Budish, a professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, who has researched the field, some firms even place servers in the Washington area to get as close as possible to the government's economic data release hubs.
Acquiring access to a fast data feed is another tool in their arsenal. For example, if a trading firm had placed buy orders for oil futures and then received via the new service a post from Donald Trump announcing that the war with Iran had ended, it could immediately cancel the buy orders and switch to a short position on oil, as explained by Joe Saluzzi, co-founder of the brokerage firm Themis Trading. All this could happen even before other investors have time to see the post.
"They have to be the fastest, so they build systems of all kinds around it," said Saluzzi. "This was probably the missing piece of the setup."
Will the service become a must-have tool for industry players?
Wall Street markets currently react more moderately to the president's social media posts than at the beginning of his term. However, fast traders can still exploit the fluctuations he creates in individual stocks and the market as a whole.
Trading firms already automatically scan his feed in search of mentions of companies or phrases like "Thank you for your attention to this matter," which may indicate that it is a message of special importance. Other keywords might be "ceasefire" or "Iran." Some firms even use artificial intelligence agents to quickly assess the possible impact of his words on the markets.
Sometimes, even without mentioning a specific company, Donald Trump's statements can affect specific stocks in a short time. For example, on January 7 of this year, he published that he was working to ban large institutional investors from purchasing additional single-family homes, writing that "people live in homes, not corporations." Following the publication, the shares of companies like Blackstone and Invitation Homes, which operate in this field, recorded sharp declines.
According to some traders, the Truth Social fast feed service is expected to become a must-have tool in the industry. "It's an expense designed to protect you from lagging behind competitors, not necessarily to gain an advantage in trading," said David Ball, a manager at the options brokerage firm Bakerst.
Many private investors also seek to act on Donald Trump's social media posts, but they cannot react at a speed that approaches that of a trading algorithm. "Private investors simply have no chance to react fast enough for it to matter," said Ball.
The Truth Social real-time data feed service has drawn criticism from members of the Democratic Party, including Senator Mark Warner, who argued that it is a conflict of interest on the part of the president and that the service "will create a two-tiered system of access to government information and undermine the credibility of US capital markets."
A Trump Media spokesperson stated in this regard that certain politicians are falsely accusing the company of "conduct contrary to free-market principles, while simultaneously pressuring companies to boycott its product, as part of a coordinated effort to harm a public company."
