Former President Trump's Truth Social platform is offering stock market traders ultra-fast access to its posts, and Wall Street is already deeply involved in this information game.
According to traders, numerous large investment firms have built automated systems to monitor the Truth Social platform, scanning for key trigger words and often executing trades, such as establishing or liquidating positions, within an extremely short timeframe.
An analysis of trading data shows that some traders are able to capture trading opportunities arising from the President's online statements with remarkable speed. Data from the service DTN indicates that within one minute of two posts by Trump about Iran last month, investors executed trades involving over 2 million shares, causing price swings exceeding 2% in nearly 24 energy and industrial sector stocks.
Trump Media & Technology Group (DJT) has launched a new product called Truth API, which allows institutional clients who pay for it to receive the President's posts even faster. Sources familiar with the matter say the service is priced at $100,000 per month; for trading firms that sign multi-year contracts, the monthly fee can be reduced to $60,000. This cost barrier makes the service unaffordable for the many retail traders who closely follow the President's social media activity.
The White House directed inquiries to Trump Media & Technology Group. A spokesperson for the company responded: "Truth API is designed to deliver content to everyone at the same moment a post is made publicly available. There is no early access to information."
Sources indicate that Trump Media & Technology Group's Chief Technology Officer Vladimir Novachki, Chief Revenue Officer Paul Bremer, and Director of Strategic Initiatives Mateusz Wagner have been in discussions with multiple trading firms, promoting this paid information feed service. The API will provide data on posts from the platform's top accounts. President Trump's account has the largest following, at approximately 13 million; accounts belonging to several of his sons and Vice President J.D. Vance also have substantial follower counts.
One source stated that five high-frequency trading firms have already signed contracts. Such traders profit from fleeting price discrepancies in assets, making ultra-fast response times critical. In this field, gaining a nanosecond advantage in data access over a competitor can create a significant edge. A nanosecond is roughly the time it takes for light to travel one foot.
Eric Budish, a professor at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business who has long studied such trading firms, noted that high-frequency trading companies seek competitive advantages through various means. These include locating their servers adjacent to exchange data centers like those of Nasdaq or the New York Stock Exchange. Some firms also place servers near Washington, D.C., to be as close as possible to the source of government economic data releases.
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