Wall Street pays for 'milliseconds': Trump Media to monetise president's market-moving posts

Donald Trump’s media company is launching a high-speed data service that sells the president’s social media posts to Wall Street trading firms ahead of the general public, a move that allows private investors to buy early access to market-moving policy decisions.

The new feed, called the 'Truth API', will deliver posts from Trump and other high-profile Truth Social accounts to paying institutional subscribers. By receiving these statements directly, institutional traders will get a head start of a few milliseconds—a vital advantage for high-frequency trading firms that trade automatically on breaking news.

'Markets already move on Truth Social posts,' said Kevin McGurn, the interim chief executive of Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), who described the feed as a key step in licensing the company's proprietary data.

The service has drawn immediate fire from ethics watchdogs, who point out that the US President is effectively selling early access to official government announcements to the highest bidder. Because

Trump owns roughly 41 per cent of TMTG, the subscription fees paid by Wall Street to access his thoughts directly boost the value of his personal holdings.

'Truth Social has become the primary megaphone for the White House,' said Virginia Canter, an ethics attorney with the Democracy Defenders Fund. 'But instead of releasing information to the public all at once, the president’s company is now charging Wall Street a premium to see those statements first.'

The commercial value of Trump's words is well established. In March of this year, oil prices fell and stock index futures surged just after Trump posted that he had held productive talks regarding tensions with Iran. A subsequent market analysis showed that unknown traders placed massive, leveraged bets worth $580 million on the oil market just 15 minutes before the post went live, walking away with enormous profits.

During his first term in office, individual corporate stocks routinely swung on his comments. In December 2016, Trump posted that Boeing’s contract for a new Air Force One was too expensive and should be cancelled. Boeing's stock dropped instantly, erasing $1.4 billion in market value. Days later, a post criticising Lockheed Martin's F-35 fighter jet programme shaved $4 billion off that company's valuation in a single afternoon.

Under the new system, Wall Street firms will no longer have to wait for the Truth Social app to send public notifications to their screens. Instead, they will pay a direct subscription fee to TMTG for a dedicated data pipeline.

Federal conflict-of-interest laws generally bar government employees from profiting from their official actions, but the president and vice president are legally exempt from these rules. Trump has resisted pressure to divest from TMTG, meaning his personal net worth remains directly tied to the platform's financial success.

TMTG has started signing up institutional clients ahead of the service's planned rollout on August 1.