Here’s a little solace when you’re thinking about President Donald Trump’s rampant Twitter habit. Sometimes, those presidential barbs may be helping animals.
Folks at digital marketing company The Think Tank, or T3, noticed that when Trump’s tweets criticize a company — like when he complained about Boeing in a tweet about building a new 747 Air Force One — the company’s stock tends to briefly fall.
So, they created “Trump and Dump,” a bot that picks up when Trump mentions a publicly traded company or brand in a tweet. The bot uses an algorithm to analyze whether the mention is positive or negative, and if it’s sufficiently negative, it immediately short-sells that company’s shares. Here’s a video explaining the bot further.
OK, so how do animals factor into this? During its “Trump and Dump” experiment, T3 is donating its trading profits to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. T3 President Ben Gaddis told The Huffington Post the company selected the ASPCA because it’s a noncontroversial cause and wanted it to be clear that “Trump and Dump” was not “a political statement.”
The ASPCA confirmed to The Washington Post that T3 had indeed donated to the group, but pointed out the organization wasn’t involved with the company or the bot.
Gaddis wouldn’t say how much money his firm has made from “Trump and Dump” trading. But he said it was successful in general.
Besides being good for publicity, “Trump and Dump” is giving T3 some useful information.
“It’s a capability we can apply for our clients — just understanding things that happen in the social realm that can impact our business,” Gaddis said. Next, he said, T3 might examine how Trump’s mention of specific countries might influence trading in currencies.
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