Trump’s Terrifying Influence: How a Single Tweet Can Cost Billions of Dollars

In the latest of terrifying tech stories in 2016, President-Elect Donald Trump now has the ability to plummet the stock value of enormous corporations just by tweeting about them.

Last week this tweet, sent last week about Air Force One manufacturer Boeing, made 94,827,196* impressions and sent stock prices tumbling almost immediately.

Boeing is building a brand new 747 Air Force One for future presidents, but costs are out of control, more than $4 billion. Cancel order!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 6, 2016

A week later on Monday morning he made negative comments about the F-35 fighter jet programme, gaining 29,434,688* impressions as $3.5bn was reportedly wiped off Lockheed Martin’s stock value.

The F-35 program and cost is out of control. Billions of dollars can and will be saved on military (and other) purchases after January 20th.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 12, 2016

It’s the kind of influence that’s both unprecedented and slightly horrifying. The Brandwatch React team were intrigued.

*impression numbers correct at time of writing.

Internet influence, real-world consequences

Twitter influencers having an effect on market value isn’t exactly new.

In 2015 Harry Styles tweeted nonchalantly about Monopoly and we noticed the RRP of One Direction’s official Monopoly game sky-rocket by 125%.

Forbes estimates that Kim Kardashian West has made $51m from her enormous social media following through sponsorship deals. She is quoted: “There’s a lot of value in social media, and people really get that.” We tend to agree, Kim.

But what about when influencers turn on your brand?

The “all publicity is good publicity” mantra probably doesn’t work when the President-Elect of the United States is tweeting about canceling an order from your company worth millions of dollars.

We’re living in unprecedented times with an unprecedented President-Elect.

Twitter to predict stock market changes?

The idea that Twitter data, specifically sentiment analysis, might be able to predict changes in stock prices has been around for a while.

Your rate of accurate prediction probably becomes a lot stronger when you just examine the tweets of the President-Elect (who is likely to have real-world power).

As the above examples prove, if you’re employed at a publicly traded company that pops up in a Trump Twitter rant things could look very bad very quickly.

David Shulman, senior economist for the forecasting program at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, told the Los Angeles Times, “What’s really unprecedented is that he’s not even president yet… If this becomes a weekly event, it’s going to have a negative impact on the business climate.”