President Donald Trump tweeting habits have long been speculated to move the markets, but now there is a way that would supposedly measure it, courtesy of J.P Morgan. And it’s called Volfefe, after the mysterious ‘covfefe.’
The behemoth financial company and the provider of indices of all sorts insists that the US president has increased the number of tweets in the recent months, affecting the markets. His every tweet about Federal Reserve, China and trade tensions, is increasing seen as “impactful on near-term economic performance” wrote the authors of the J.P. Morgan report.
Among JPMorgan’s findings: there’s been an increase in what they call “market-moving tweets” — Trump tweets which are immediately followed by a volatility spike
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— Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla) September 8, 2019
With the new index, named after Trump’s mysterious ‘covfefe’ tweet, the analysts tried to explain and show how the tweets affect 2-year and 5-year treasuries.
The company’s report said some 146 tweets out of 4,000 authentic messages during market hours from 2018 to the present had an impact on markets. Most often they included words such as “China,”“billion” and “products” and got favorable responses.
The report delves into specific details of Trump’s tweeting habits: he has an average of 10 tweets a day and produced more than 10,000 since his 2017 inauguration. Most of tweets come between noon and 2 pm the report says, noting the ones around 3pm can cause trouble for US market rates. The study also assumes that the President is asleep between 5:00am to 10:00am.
Trump has averaged 10+ tweets a day since the start of 2016. “Starting in late 2018, however, activity has picked up substantially. The highest volume of tweets over the past four years has in fact come in recent months.”
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— Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla) September 8, 2019
The markets experienced deep dives in summer as Trump intensified its tariff war with China, yet the Dow is up 42% since the 2016 presidential election. It just remains to be seen if Volfefe Index is effective, or would it go to the category of bizarre indices like the High Heels or Beer Consumption ones.
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