President Donald Trump is NOT happy with the impeachment imbroglio that’s consuming Washington—who knew?
In a set of increasingly angry tweets Wednesday (one with profanity) the nation’s chief executive railed against #DONOTHINGDEMS, “Sick” Adam Schiff and the “Coup” currently taking place.
Worries about an economic slowdown pushed the Dow Jones Industrial Average down 550 points by midday, putting it on track for its worst second-quarter start since 2008.
But Trump attributed the drop to the current controversy, and took to the social media platform to vent:
“All of this impeachment nonsense, which is going nowhere, is driving the Stock Market, and your 401K’s, down. But that is exactly what the Democrats want to do. They are willing to hurt the Country, with only the 2020 Election in mind!”
All of this impeachment nonsense, which is going nowhere, is driving the Stock Market, and your 401K’s, down. But that is exactly what the Democrats want to do. They are willing to hurt the Country, with only the 2020 Election in mind!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 2, 2019
Trump routinely tweets about 401ks as a proxy for overall economic health, and as recently as August told an audience in New Hampshire:
“If for some reason I wouldn’t have won the [2016] election, these markets would have crashed. That’ll happen even more so in 2020. See, the bottom line is… You have no choice but to vote for me because your 401k, everything is going to be down the tubes. So, whether you love me or hate me, you’ve got to vote for me.”
Market impact
To quantify the market impact of the president’s social media musings, J.P. Morgan released the Volfefe Index on September 9, based on the quizzical interest generated by his famous “covfefe” comment in the spring of 2017.
“…much of the president’s tweets have been focused on the Federal Reserve, and as trade tensions are broadly seen as, first and foremost, impactful on near-term economic performance and, likewise, the Fed’s reaction to such developments,” the authors of the J.P. Morgan report wrote.
They noted that since his election in 2016, Trump has averaged more than 10 tweets a day to his nearly 64 million followers. CNBC found roughly 14,000 in total over that period associated with his personal account, of which more than 10,000 occurred after the 2017 inauguration.
However, out of about 4,000 non-retweets occurring during market hours from 2018 to the present, only 146 moved the market.
SEE ALSO: How Trump’s 401k Performance Compares to Presidential Predecessors
With more than 20 years serving financial markets, John Sullivan is the former editor-in-chief of Investment Advisor magazine and retirement editor of ThinkAdvisor.com. Sullivan is also the former editor of Boomer Market Advisor and Bank Advisor magazines, and has a background in the insurance and investment industries in addition to his journalism roots.
