Donald Trump doesn’t move markets with his social media presence the way he used to.
Numbed by months of posting sprees about everything from tariffs to the Fed to the Iran war, the market’s risk of seeing major swings after Trump posts has declined markedly, Morgan Stanley said on Thursday.
“One investor question we’ve received increasingly in recent weeks is whether more frequent social media posts from President Trump on policy going into the elections could potentially have an effect on asset markets,” Morgan Stanley equity strategist Ariana Salvatore wrote. “For equities, headline risks from social media posts are becoming less important outside of possible intraday trading.”
It’s true that Trump’s posts and endorsements have boosted individual stocks. He has praised Dell, both on social media and in press briefings, sending the stock up, while also shouting out others like Micron and Palantir.
But in Morgan Stanley’s view, the broader market has moved on from Trump’s social media views, likely because investors have grown accustomed to the cadence and style of Trump’s online decrees since the Liberation Day sell-off of April 2025. Bond markets, meanwhile, only move “if a clear policy shift is implied.”
Morgan Stanley
Salvatore’s team maintains that for this reason, investors should instead focus on actual policy changes with implications for markets as the midterms approach.
“Tariff/geopolitical uncertainty is likely to persist throughout the remainder of President Trump’s term, but investors may find it more productive to focus on plausible policy changes and durable policy themes,” she said.
Since Trump returned to the White House, economic uncertainty has been high, driven by volatility in global trade and rising geopolitical tensions that have manifested into a war with Iran. Some finance pros have raised the possibility of investors simply opting to not take Trump seriously as a result of his unpredictable nature.
As Salvatore highlighted, uncertainty isn’t likely to ease during Trump’s presidency, regardless of the midterm outcomes. No matter which party controls the Senate or House, policy developments are more predictable than Trump’s posts.
“We are not saying that midterms are not important—but focusing on the tangible policy outcomes from Congress, even if limited, is a more reliable indicator of market performance vs. individual social media posts,” Salvatore added.
To that end, laid out a handful of possible policy outcomes investors to keep track of heading toward November.
- “The Republican agenda items that can still move ahead regardless of election outcomes”
- “The policy areas that could find support given growing bipartisan consensus (i.e., some form of China & industrial policy, AI power de-bottlenecking)”
- “Potential compromise areas, which can emerge if Democrats can garner a sufficient consensus on some issues and use that leverage to extract concessions from Republicans in Congress”
