The investment bot, known as Trump2Cash, analyzes the President’s tweets to determine whether they will have a positive or negative effect on the share price of publicly traded companies. The bot then automatically buys or shorts shares of those companies to profit from the resulting impact of Trump’s sentiments.
The software does not have a perfect success rate, however capital markets are as unpredictable as Trump himself, and so far, the fund has an annualized return of nearly 60 percent since its inception.
Braun, head of software with Google X in the Robotics Division, created the bot during a single flight to Europe. He used GitHub to create it and has invited users to modify or improve it by making the code available to edit.
In an interview posted on Medium.com, Braun wrote “Our new President really likes to use Twitter. He uses it to express strong opinions about all sorts of things. Occasionally, those opinions are targeted at publicly traded companies. “
Recent prominent examples of tweets from Trump which have significantly affected a publically traded company’s performance include comments relating to major manufacturing corporations, Boeing, Toyota and General Motors, among others. The president criticized Boeing for the cost of building Air Force One and Toyota for building vehicles in Mexico.
Braun himself will not be profiting personally from the initiative, choosing to donate any profits to three charities: the American Civil Liberties Union, Planned Parenthood and the National Resources Defense.
You can find Braun’s code from Trump2Cash on GitHub.