“What would you think if you heard that companies are paying $16 million a month to receive a president’s posts a few milliseconds earlier than other investors?”
Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), which operates President Donald Trump’s social media platform Truth Social, launched the “Truth API” on August 1.
It provides real-time posts from influential accounts in a machine-readable format.
The service costs between $60,000 and $100,000 per month. That may sound expensive, but the story changes when the information has the potential to move financial markets.
🤔 Why Has This Become an Investment Issue Overseas?
Trump’s posts can include policy announcements about tariffs, foreign relations, and other issues that can move financial markets. That is why simply receiving the information before everyone else can have a monetary value.
More than 10 companies have reportedly already signed up in the United States. Democratic lawmakers have also asked the SEC to investigate the service, while The Intercept and the Freedom of the Press Foundation filed a lawsuit on August 12.
The issue is not simply “Trump has started another business.”
The bigger question is whether the president’s communications, financial markets, and private business interests are becoming too closely connected.
Trump himself has also been reported to own about 41% of TMTG. That means it is difficult to say that the president’s own financial interests are completely unrelated to a company handling information that could potentially move markets.
This is one reason why the issue has become such a major controversy overseas.
😟 Why Is Japan Treating This Mainly as a Scandal?
In Japan, the story may be consumed mainly as news about “Trump starting another business.”
But for investors, Trump’s business itself is not the most important point.
Information has a price, and speed has a price.
That is the real meaning of the Truth API.
Receiving information one second earlier, then 100 milliseconds earlier, and eventually one millisecond earlier can allow an algorithm to place an order before other market participants.
This is a completely different game from the world where a human reads the news and then decides what to do.
For individual investors in Japan, the idea of paying $16 million a month may sound absurd. But if more than 10 companies are willing to pay for the service, it shows that information speed has real economic value.
Perhaps one reason this story has not received as much attention in Japan is that many people still think of investing mainly as buying stocks and waiting for their prices to rise. The idea that information itself can be traded for an advantage in the market may still feel distant.
🤔 The Information Moves Before the Chart
I actually covered the Truth API about a month ago.
Even then, I felt that this was not simply a story about Trump’s new business or a political scandal.
It is a story about how much value information can have in financial markets.
Of course, chart analysis is also important. Overbought and oversold conditions, trendlines, support and resistance, and many other chart signals can provide useful clues for deciding when to trade.
But what causes the chart to move significantly in the first place?
A major trend can suddenly develop, or the previous market direction can change completely. Behind these moves are often “information” such as government policy, economic data, statements from political leaders, wars, and diplomatic developments.
In other words, information comes first, and the chart moves as a result.
😮 The Fact That Companies Pay Million a Month
When you look only at a chart, you can see that the market went up or down. But when you also look at the information that caused the move, you can get closer to understanding why it happened.
That is exactly what the Truth API demonstrates.
Information that can move the market has value. And there are companies willing to pay $16 million a month to obtain that information even slightly faster.
This does not mean that chart analysis is unimportant.
Rather, understanding the information first and then analyzing the chart may become increasingly important for traders.
The Truth API is not only about the ethical questions surrounding Trump.
It demonstrates a much bigger reality of modern financial markets:
Getting information faster can itself become a huge business.
For traders, that may be the more important news.
