Opposition from all walks of life on Wall Street continues to grow: Trump's social media company plans to launch a paid service for high-speed access to his posts. Industry executives express resistance to the high fees and are worried that the move lurks huge legal risks.
Trump Media Technology Group (TMTG), a Nasdaq-listed company that operates Trump's social platform "Truth Social," launched a new data service last week that can prioritize posts posted by the platform's top accounts at millisecond speeds. According to multiple people familiar with the matter, the service is priced as high as $100,000 per month.
The new business is Trump's latest means to continue generating revenue using his status as president. According to financial filings disclosed last month, his vast business portfolio (covering cryptocurrency, Bible publications, etc.) will generate a total revenue of US$2.2 billion in 2025.
However, this product has also brought a series of legal problems to Wall Street financial institutions: major financial companies and their legal teams are studying and judging the compliance risks of paying to obtain information on the president's policy views in advance. Many lawyers bluntly said that this product is full of legal minefields.
Institutions subscribing to the service would face significant legal risks, said Richard Panter, a professor of corporate law at the University of Minnesota and a former White House ethics adviser in the George W. Bush administration. "If I were the general counsel of any institutional investor, I would make it clear: Never touch this service unless the real social platform can guarantee in writing that it will not leak the content of any posts involving administrative actions of the US government in advance."
A White House spokesman declined to comment, referring inquiries to the Trump Media Group. A spokesman for the group responded: "The Truth API provides customers with the fastest way to obtain public data on real social platforms. Critics have created a new theory of 'insider trading' based on public information out of thin air."
As the current government's policies are full of uncertainty, Trump's real social posts have long been regarded by hedge funds and large institutional investors as key variables affecting stock, foreign exchange, commodity, and bond market fluctuations.
The official press release released by Trump Media Technology Group for the product did not directly mention Trump’s personal posts, but a promotional material for potential customers showed that it listed 10 presidential posts that had caused violent market shocks: Last year, Trump issued a “Liberation Day” tariff post, and the U.S. stock market plummeted 12%; in June this year, he announced that he would carry out a “powerful attack” on Iran, and international oil prices soared in response.
The promotional materials also revealed that some investors had completed large transactions before Trump issued a major policy announcement. For example, on March 23, just before Trump announced that U.S.-Iran negotiations had made positive progress and oil prices plummeted, short bets worth US$580 million appeared in the market.
Trump Media Group said last week that several organizations have signed up to purchase the service, but since the product was released, the Trump account has not posted any content that significantly disturbed the market. Trump launched a new tariff plan on Monday and did not officially announce it through his real social account.
Even so, lawyers still warn that there are legal risks in subscription: Trump holds a US$1.1 billion stake in the company, and conflicts of interest are difficult to avoid.
James Cox, a professor of corporate and securities law at Duke University, pointed out that Trump and his White House team "have no right to commercialize and profit from information generated by official duties." This paid service for early access to posts is essentially Trump's use of government information to obtain private profits.
A lawyer analyzed that financial institutions may not violate federal regulations, but state attorneys general can independently conduct investigations, which is a more imminent legal risk: "State regulatory agencies have other law enforcement tools that can initiate accountability for such behavior."
The service is most valuable to high-frequency trading institutions - just a few milliseconds of information advantage over other counterparties can lead to huge profits.
A macro hedge fund executive said bluntly: "His posts influence the market trend, and we can only pay for it. This is so outrageous that I am no longer surprised."
Another macro hedge fund executive dismissed it as "scandalous," but said some hedge funds had to subscribe out of fiduciary duty to clients to avoid falling behind in industry competition.
A cryptocurrency trader commented: "This is a complete abuse of public power. It has a very bad impression and lacks the neutral and fair attitude that the president should have."
Some institutions also stated that their trading strategies do not rely on preemptively obtaining Trump’s posts within milliseconds. A third hedge fund executive said: "It's just a few milliseconds, and that's the key point for them to take advantage of. For institutions that don't do extreme high-speed trading, this information advantage doesn't matter at all."