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Under his thumb the effect of president Donald Trump’s Twitter messages on the US stock market

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  • Heleen Brans
  • Bert Scholtens

Abstract

Does president Trump’s use of Twitter affect financial markets? The president frequently mentions companies in his tweets and, as such, tries to gain leverage over their behavior. We analyze the effect of president Trump’s Twitter messages that specifically mention a company name on its stock market returns. We find that tweets from the president which reveal strong negative sentiment are followed by reduced market value of the company mentioned, whereas supportive tweets do not render a significant effect. Our methodology does not allow us to conclude about the exact mechanism behind these findings and can only be used to investigate short-term effects.

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  • Heleen Brans & Bert Scholtens, 2020. "Under his thumb the effect of president Donald Trump’s Twitter messages on the US stock market," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(3), pages 1-11, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0229931
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0229931
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    Cited by:

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    2. Ante, Lennart, 2023. "How Elon Musk's Twitter activity moves cryptocurrency markets," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 186(PA).
    3. Marinč, Matej & Massoud, Nadia & Ichev, Riste & Valentinčič, Aljoša, 2021. "Presidential candidates linguistic tone: The impact on the financial markets," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 204(C).
    4. Ito, Asei & Lim, Jaehwan & Zhang, Hongyong, 2023. "Catching the political leader's signal: Economic policy uncertainty and firm investment in China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    5. Vijay S. Sampath & Arthur J. O’Connor & Calvester Legister, 2022. "Moral leadership and investor attention: An empirical assessment of the potus’s tweets on firms’ market returns," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 58(3), pages 881-910, April.

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