Investors who followed U.S. President Donald Trump’s advice on social media in the past month have enjoyed one of the biggest rallies in the S&P 500 under his leadership.
Having slumped on Trump’s “liberation day” tariff announcement, the benchmark rose 14% in the month after he said it was “a great time to buy” on April 9 — hours before he paused some of the harshest levies in a century. He reiterated that on May 8, telling reporters the economic outlook warranted piling into stocks.
It’s the S&P 500’s best advance under both his presidential terms on a 21-day rolling basis — the number of trading days between the two comments — according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The data exclude COVID-era rebounds.
“It’s clear that the Trump put is back in play,” said Arun Sai, senior multi-asset strategist at Pictet Asset Management. “But we wouldn’t read too much into it. Yes, it’s peculiar in the form that he’s doing it, but ultimately this is the market pricing in a kind of backstop from the White House.”
Days after Trump’s second recommendation to buy stocks, Washington and Beijing said on Monday they would temporarily slash tariffs on each other’s products, unleashing a 4.2% rally in Nasdaq 100 futures. S&P 500 contracts jumped as much as 3.3%.
While it’s unusual for world leaders to issue financial advice on social media platforms, Trump’s first term was also characterized by incessant tweets and threats to slap tariffs and sanctions on key trading partners. His posts became a must-read for investors globally.
This time around, the president has taken to instructing markets just before key policy reversals.
The S&P 500 had plummeted 12% in the four days to April 8 on fears about a global trade war. Trump — who had widely linked his political fortunes to equities in his first term — had repeatedly insisted that his policies wouldn’t be influenced by market moves. However, on April 9, he announced a 90-day reprieve in the harshest tariffs for most countries.
Sagarika Jaisinghani and Jan-Patrick Barnert, Bloomberg News
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