Beating the market is hard. But if youâd followed the missives of President Trump and his team this year, you might have found a cheat code.
On Monday, GameStop ($3.8 billion in revenue) shares opened trading more than 2% from their prior close, more than double the S&P 500âs early gain. The move came after the White House on Sunday shared a GameStop social media post celebrating the âHaloâ series coming to PlayStation for the first time. The official account added a photo of Trump as the gameâs hero and wrote, âPower to the Players.â It wasnât a stock tip, but traders seemed to take it as one.
The same morning, Argentinaâs markets took off following the results of the countryâs midterm elections in which President Javier Milei, a candidate heavily endorsed by Trump, and his Libertarian party expanded its control of Congress. The Global X MSCI Argentina ETF, with about $620 million in assets, jumped 18% in early trading. Throughout October the U.S. Treasury had spent more than $1 billion buying pesos to sure up the South American countryâs notoriously volatile currency.
Neither the GameStop nor the Argentina actions came with explicit endorsements to buy assets, but the effect was the same. Anyone who took the heavy-hint made money in short order. Those moves added to a growing list of rallies that have followed what can be construed as market tips from the Trump administration. Some like touting Teslaâs stock and the President saying it was a good time to buy were direct, raising ethical questions. Others, like GameStop and Argentina, required reading between the lines.
Itâs not unusual for a president to move markets. Theyâre the most powerful person in the world, and policy (or even hints of policy changes) alone can shift trillions. Whatâs less common is doing it through what looks feels like a WallStreetBets post. When the George W. Bush administration took over mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in September 2008 to calm the housing crisis, the S&P 500 jumped nearly 3% at the open of the next trading day.
Thatâs how it usually works. Markets react to policy, not to what stocks a president or cabinet member seems to favor.
In March, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick went on Fox News and told viewers to âbuy Tesla.â The companyâs shares had been cut in half since December after a wave of vandalism and political backlash following Elon Muskâs role in the Trump administrationâs Department of Government Efficiency initiative. The shares have rallied since, climbing about 80% since Lutnickâs interview.
A few weeks later, Trump himself helped move the market. In early April, the President announced sweeping new global tariffs that sent stocks tumbling. A little more than a week later, he posted on Truth Social that it was a âgreat time to buy.â Hours after that, he temporarily paused many of the tariffs. The S&P 500 jumped 9.5% that day, its third biggest single-day gain this century. The sequence drew questions about whether officials had traded ahead of the announcement, though no evidence has surfaced that anyone did.
On October 22, Energy Secretary Chris Wright called oil a bargain. He told Fox News that prices were low and that the U.S. would gradually start rebuilding the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The very next day, the Trump administration rolled out new sanctions against Russian oil companies. Oil prices soared by 5% on the news.
All of this has raised familiar questions about where enthusiasm ends and influence begins. Some ethics experts say none of this meets the definition of insider trading. As Bloombergâs Matt Levine told NPR, the key test is whether someone trades on âmaterial nonpublic informationâ thatâs obtained improperly. Public comments donât qualify. Still, Levine and others noted that while it may not be illegal, itâs hardly routine for government officials to promote private investments.
Whether itâs luck or something more nefarious, the record speaks for itself. The Trump trade has been a winner.
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