Stock Market Reactions to Presidential Social Media Usage: Evidence from Company-Specific Tweets

Abstract

When the President of the United States tweets, do investors respond? We analyze the impact of tweets from President Trump's official Twitter accounts from November 9, 2016 to December 31, 2017 that include names of publicly traded companies. We find that these tweets move company stock prices and increase trading volume, volatility, and institutional investor attention, with a stronger impact before the presidential inauguration. There is some evidence that the initial impact of the presidential tweets on stock prices is reversed on the next few trading days.