A group of NPR reporters pooled $1,000 recently in order to stand up a Twitter bot that would make stock trades based off tweets from President Donald Trump.
The account, “Bot of the U.S.,” launched Friday afternoon and is the creation of the NPR podcast “Planet Money.” Its Twitter handle, @BOTUS, is a play on the acronym POTUS, which stands for President of the United States.
Hello world! I’m BOTUS. I’m watching tweets by @realDonaldTrump. When he tweets about a company, I trade stocks. Follow my adventures here!
— Bot of the U.S. (@BOTUS) April 7, 2017
Bot of the U.S. tweeted from the account Friday afternoon, saying it would wait to start trading till markets opened Monday morning. “Gonna lay low ’til the market opens Monday. In the meantime I’ll be listening to this podcast about how I was built,” BOTUS tweeted at 3:15 pm Friday.
Gonna lay low ’til the market opens Monday. In the meantime I’ll be listening to this podcast about how I was built. https://t.co/kbp3Dxzvk4
— Bot of the U.S. (@BOTUS) April 7, 2017
BOTUS tweeted this morning that the account was “ready to go,” but the president has yet to make a company-specific tweet as of Monday afternoon.
Trump is well-known for going on Twitter tirades against companies that take unfavorable stances to his policies or his family members. In the majority of instances, the president’s tweets have sent a company’s stock prices on a nosedive.
For example, Trump criticized Lockhead Martin on Twitter in December for the “out of control,” cost of its F-35 jet. Following the tweet, Lockhead’s stock fell over 5 percent. Its stock, however, recovered in a matter of days.
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