During his first term, Donald Trump’s incessant tweets were a must-read for Wall Street types, whether they liked it or not. He would crow when the stock market went up, blast Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell when it went down (“Where did I find this guy Jerome?”), bully CEOs who irked him and threaten to slap tariffs and sanctions on countries around the world.
Anytime, day or night, policymaking via Twitter – which has been rebranded as X – became the norm, hacked out in staccato bursts to his millions of followers. These musings would often trigger sudden market swings, upending in the process the work and sleep schedules of traders and investors across financial markets.
“I remember being perpetually on edge that something could happen at any time,” said Steve Sosnick, chief strategist at Interactive Brokers, of Trump’s first term.
Now with Trump storming back to reclaim the White House after Tuesday’s vote, Sosnick and the rest of Wall Street are bracing for a redux of it all, with posts on his Truth Social platform and more. That’s because no president in modern history intertwined his fortunes so closely to the financial markets. Nor has any leader of the free world so publicly made rising stock prices such a crucial barometer of his success.
Just on market moves alone, Trump tweeted at least 100 times while in office, including mentions of the “Dow,” “Nasdaq,” “bull run,” “earnings” and “winning streak,” data compiled by Bloomberg show. Joe Biden, in keeping with past presidents, has done the same only a handful of times on the site, including this year when the S&P 500 first crossed 5,000. “We’re basically now going back to a situation where you’re susceptible to hearing almost anything,” Sosnick said.Trump swept to a decisive win this week, spurring more gyrations across asset classes. The S&P 500 vaulted to an all-time high while small caps had their best day in two years. Bond yields and the dollar surged as traders fretted higher tariffs and fiscal spending would revive inflation and snarl trade.Despite their contrasting approaches, returns have differed little across administrations. The S&P 500 rose 64% following Trump’s 2016 win through Biden’s victory in November 2020. Under Biden, the market has risen 69%.
But Trump’s propensity to tweet about markets was a signature of his presidency. In December 2019, when the Dow hit a high, he tweeted that he’d “never get bored of telling you that.” Wall Street is bracing for more.
“It would be hard for that tiger to change his stripes,” said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at B. Riley Wealth. “That’s one of his main transmission vehicles for thoughts he has.”
