By now you've seen how President Trump can move a market. He sends stocks soaring or sinking depending on what new nuggets his itchy Twitter fingers dash off on any given Saturday morning. That impulsiveness is already forcing bottom line-conscious businesses to kick their brand management into overdrive. Now a new online tool aims to help Wall Street hedge its bets in the face of a new and always unpredictable administration. It's called—yes—Trump Tracker.
Research firm Sentieo built Trump Tracker out of an existing product that enables hedge fund managers to scan public filings and receive instant, automated alerts for keywords. A manager with holdings in Ford, for instance, might want to set alerts for the term "autonomous vehicle" to stay on top of the company's future. Trump Tracker lets anyone---not just Sentieo's existing hedge fund clients---do the same for President Trump, free of charge.
"Stocks have moved big-time under Trump. It’s a combination of hope and hype," says Sentieo co-founder and CEO Alap Shah, himself a former hedge fund manager. Customers have been asking for a tool like this since election day, he says. "We're just beginning to move from that to the execution phase, where he and the Republican Congress need to move on that agenda."
Money managers have until now done their best to predict how Trump's policies will shape up based on his campaign season promises. But after just two months in office, those promises are already diverging from the administration's actual policy proposals. Where candidate Trump promised to insure more people for less money under his Obamacare replacement, the American Healthcare Act would actually shrink the insured pool by an estimated 24 million people. Where President-elect Trump tweeted about Boeing's new Air Force One being too expensive at $4 billion, President Trump has just proposed increasing defense spending by $54 billion.
"It's difficult to reconcile most of what he says," Shah says.
The new tool at least attempts to help fund managers understand how businesses are processing it all. Trump Tracker automatically scans Securities and Exchange Commission filings like the annual Form 10-K for mentions of Trump. Already, Shah says, the tool has revealed a massive uptick in companies listing Trump among their risk factors. "Those things tend to not change frequently," he says. "It's a big deal when you add a new risk factor."
According to Sentieo's findings, President Trump is mentioned in filings about six times more often than President Obama was at the same time during his presidency. Those mentions have risen even more sharply since election day. The industry Trump Tracker shows is most concerned about his presidency? Health care.
"Companies tend to not want to `fess up to these things until it’s actually happening," Shah says. "The fact that this many health care companies are already talking about it is a sign it’s a world-shaking moment."
Political uncertainty and policy change have always moved financial markets. But those markets haven't always had to cope with a president moved to tweet policy changes and wild accusations based on Fox News segments. If the president continues using tech tools to swing stocks, Wall Street will need its own tools to keep ahead of the curve.
