Finance and Financial Management Commons^™

Do President Trump’S Tweets Increase Uncertainty In The Us Economy?, Michael Simpson

Honors Theses and Capstones

When President Trump tweets, does it change uncertainty in the economy? This study gathers President Trump’s tweets off his twitter accounts from October 2016 to October 2017 and classifies each of them as either negative (expected to increase uncertainty), positive (expected to decrease uncertainty) or neutral (no effect expected on uncertainty). I find that tweets with a negative sentiment were followed by an increase in uncertainty in the VIX and S&P 500 1 and 2 minutes after the tweet. Similar results were found for positive tweets. Non-neutral tweets increase trading volume in the VIX and S&P 500 by up to …