Truth Social launches service to give Wall Street traders an edge with real-time service

Cheng Xin | Getty Images News | Getty Images

The company behind social-media network Truth Social is launching a service that will give paying customers interested in market-moving information "licensed, real-time access" to posts from President Donald Trump and other top accounts, the company said Thursday.

Trump's family is the largest shareholder Trump Media & Technology Group, the public company that operates Truth Social. The president's @realDonaldTrump account is the largest account on Truth Social, according to a 2025 survey by SEO.ai. His account had 12.9 million followers on Thursday morning. Trump regularly posts official communications first on Truth Social, making his account a must-follow for Wall Street firms and news organizations that track the presidency.

Trump Media didn't mention the president in its press release announcing the service, known as an API, or Application Programming Interface. But it nodded to potential interest by Wall Street firms. "Markets already move on Truth Social posts," Kevin McGurn, Trump Media's interim chief executive officer, said in the release.

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The White House didn't respond to an email about the announcement but forwarded CNBC's message to the Trump Organization, which declined to comment.

Trump Media didn't immediately respond to an email with follow-up questions.

"It's a huge conflict of interest," said Virginia Canter, an ethics attorney with Democracy Defenders Fund, a nonprofit organization that has been critical of the Trump administration. "He has an obligation to the American people to convey information to them publicly, and he's now funneling it through a private channel in which he has a private interest as one of its largest shareholders."

Truth Social has "become the de facto presidential press room," Canter said.

Trump Media is following a path blazed by other social networks, which also provide APIs to paying customers. Hedge funds and other Wall Street firms use low-latency feeds to gain an edge on market-moving information posted on social networks. They can use access to post archives to create algorithms that respond to sentiment and emerging trends.

But none of those other social networks are the primary outlet for official posts by the president of the U.S. Trump regularly posts updates on his decisions about the war with Iran and tariffs on Truth Social, among other issues.

Truth Social was launched in 2021 in response to decisions by X and Facebook to ban Trump's account in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. He has since been reinstated to both.

Trump Media went public through a blank-check merger and has traded on the Nasdaq exchange under the ticker DJT since March 26, 2024. Its shares are down 84% since then through Thursday morning, according to FactSet data.

Roughly 114 million shares, now amounting to 42% of Trump Media, were issued to Trump, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings. On winning the presidency, he transferred those shares to a revocable trust in the name of his son Donald Trump Jr.