How machines can help investors make money from President Trump’s tweets
For investors hoping to cash in on President Donald Trump's market-moving tweets, monitoring his Twitter feed constantly is essential. The slightest delay in reaction could be the difference between making a quick profit and losing money.
Rachel Mayer, a former JPMorgan trader, believes there's an easier way: let software do it.
Her start-up created an app, where an algorithm scans the President's tweets for mentions of specific publicly-traded companies. Whenever Trump tweets about the companies, the app can send push notifications to alert users. These are called 'triggers.'
"It's purely an informational tool," Mayer, who is CEO and co-founder of Trigger, told CNBC's "Squawk Box" on Friday.
The triggers are created based on "if this then that" type of statements and can help to guide investment decisions. For example, if Trump tweets about CNN and his tweet is about a fake news allegation, then a notification can be sent to alert users who own Time Warner - the parent company of CNN - stocks in their portfolios.
If an automatic trigger fails to fire, a support team works "round-the-clock" to push out the alerts.
"Our value proposition is linking different sets of data that the current brokerages don't support," she said, adding it allowed investors to consolidate all available information and manage investment risks.
Trump's tweets, however, do not always correspond to an expected move in the market. Recently, the President criticized retailer Nordstrom's decision to wind down its relationship with the Ivanka Trump brand.
Nordstrom shares initially sold off but then recovered their losses quickly.
"It's still early days for deciding what his tweets mean long term for stocks, but individual investors are using it to stay on top of the trends that he is talking about," said Mayer.
The triggers extend beyond Trump's tweets and include other data sets, including stock prices, movements in indices and currencies and even economic data. Users can create their own triggers or copy from another user.
Mayer has plans to create more triggers based on other tweets, insider filings, weather, company upgrades and more.
"Trigger is not just reliant on President Trump, even though it's put on the map recently for various reasons."