#wall-street — Trump Fail

Trump's Media Company — Which He Owns Nearly 60% Of — Will Sell Wall Street a Millisecond Head Start on His Own Market-Moving Truth Social Posts for Up to $100,000 a Month, Letting High-Frequency Traders Trade on Presidential Announcements Before the Public Even Sees Them

Trump Media & Technology Group unveiled "Truth API," a paid, licensed data feed that gives banks and high-frequency trading firms "the fastest" access to posts from the 10 most influential Truth Social accounts — Trump's being "by far the most prominent" — delivering them to paying clients up to a thousandth of a second before the public gets them. The fee runs up to $100,000 per month, or $60,000 a month on a three-year plan. It launches August 1, 2026, and the company says it has already signed up customers, including high-frequency trading firms and financial news organizations. The value is obvious and specific: Trump's posts routinely move markets. On April 2, 2025, his "Liberation Day" tariff post helped send stocks down nearly 5%; days later, "THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!" — announcing a 90-day tariff pause — sent them up 9.5%, adding $4 trillion to the S&P 500; his June 2025 "THE CEASEFIRE IS NOW IN EFFECT" post instantly moved oil. Selling a head start on those announcements to the fastest traders is, in effect, monetizing advance access to U.S. government policy. Ordinary conflict-of-interest law would bar a federal official from owning a company that profits off his office — but the president and vice president are explicitly exempt from that provision, and Trump owns roughly 60% of Trump Media (a stake worth about $2 billion on paper, held in a revocable trust controlled by Donald Trump Jr.). Ethics experts were blunt. Kathleen Clark of Washington University: "He's selling expedited, privileged access to information about what he is doing as president... yet more brazen corruption, an improper exploitation of government power to enrich himself." The Project on Government Oversight's Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette: "It's odious, selling access to the highest bidders." The move comes as Trump Media flails — DJT stock is down roughly 70% since he took office, closing around $9.66 against a pre-inauguration price near $40, with losses topping $1 billion — making the one asset that still reliably prints money the presidency itself.

$580M in Oil Trades Minutes Before Trump's Iran Post — "Mind-Blowing Corruption"

6,200 oil futures contracts ($580M) traded in a single minute, 15 minutes before Trump reversed his Iran stance on Truth Social. $1.5B in S&P futures were bought 5 minutes before. A Nobel laureate called it "treason."