Political News and Stock Prices: Evidence from Trump’s Trade War
Forthcoming, Applied Economics Letters
6 Pages Posted: 12 Nov 2019
Date Written: October 28, 2019
Abstract
This study investigates the impact of political news on stock price movements. Analyzing more than 3,200 tweets from US President Donald Trump’s Twitter account, we find that tweets related to the US-China trade war negatively predict S&P 500 returns and positively predict VIX. Granger causality estimates indicate that the causal relationship is one-directional – from Trump tweets to returns and VIX. Finally, the results vary across industries depending on their degree of trade intensity with China.
Keywords: Granger causality, Political news, Trump, Twitter, Trade war
JEL Classification: F1, F4, G1
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation