JPMorgan has developed a new index to track the impact that President Trump's tweets have on the market. The so-called Volfefe Index will specifically examine how the president's tweets affect U.S. Treasury yields and comes as more and more White House policies have been announced via Trump's Twitter account.
The index's name presumably stems from Trump's infamous — and still unexplained — tweet in 2017 that included the nonsensical word "covfefe." Trump quickly deleted the post after the internet and news media erupted with speculation. In a later tweet, he urged his followers to discover the true meaning of the word.
The Volfefe Index, however, is more focused on words like "China," "Billion," "Dollars," and "Tariffs," among several others that JPMorgan analysts have determined move markets when included in a presidential tweet.
"A broad swath of assets from single-name stocks to macro products have found their price dynamics increasingly beholden to a handful of tweets from the commander in chief," JPMorgan's report on the index said.
Just last month, for instance, Trump sent markets plummeting after he announced on Twitter that the U.S. would levy tariffs on nearly all Chinese imports. Trump has also has repeatedly created volatility in the financial market after attacking the Federal Reserve and its chairman, Jerome Powell, on Twitter.
"Trade and monetary policy have become an increasing focus for the executive branch, and everything from casual sentiments to seemingly formal policy intentions have been disseminated, globally and instantaneously, via this carefully scrutinized social media platform," JPMorgan analysts found.
JPMorgan's analysis also found Trump's most significant market-moving tweets are usually posted between noon and 2:00 pm — "a time fortuitously coterminous with some of the best intraday liquidity in U.S. rates."
Analysts found, moreover, that Trump's Twitter activity has substantially increased since 2018, and has, in fact, been at its apex in recent months. The president also posted his highest volume of market-moving tweets just last month, which included tweets escalating trade tensions with China and publicly pressuring the Fed to lower interest rates.
Regardless of the topic or the type of impact a tweet has on Treasury yields, JPMorgan stressed that Trump's behavior online offers an extraordinary case study into the government's economic influence.
"Such a high volume of policy developments made available instantaneously to financial participants en masse thus provides an unprecedented look into how markets could react to the inner workings of the executive branch," the company's report stated.
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