How Trump’s pre-jobs report tweet moved the market By Carleton English June 1, 2018 | 12:09pm | Updated Donald Trump Reuters Only schmucks wait until 8:30 a.m. to trade on monthly jobs figures. Eagle eye traders early on Friday sold their holdings of the US 10-year note after President Donald Trump hinted in a 7:21 a.m. tweet that the May jobs report would be better than expected. “Looking forward to seeing the employment numbers at 8:30 this morning,” Trump tweeted — a full 69 minutes before the Labor Department released its jobs report. Moments later, the sell-off began, pushing the yield on the 10-year note from 2.8876 at the time of Trump’s tweet to 2.8913 at 7:24 as traders left their safe haven play in favor of riskier assets such as stocks — which also moved upward. “That tweet suggested this was going to be a strong number and the [10-year] yield jumped,” Quincy Krosby, chief market strategist at Prudential Financial, told The Post. By 8:30 a.m., when Labor, indeed, revealed stronger than expected jobs growth in May — 233,000 jobs created compared to estimates of 190,000 — the yield on the 10-year had spiked to 2.9186. Many on Wall Street questioned the appropriateness of the president tweeting market-moving news. Trump, like all presidents, got briefed on the jobs figures Thursday evening. Officials aren’t supposed to comment on the figures until at least an hour after the data has been released. “I don’t think he gave anything away,” Larry Kudlow, director of Trump’s National Economic Council, said in an interview with CNBC. https://nypost.com/2018/06/01/how-trumps-pre-jobs-report-tweet-moved-the-market/ The job gains pushed the unemployment level down to 3.8 percent, its lowest level since April 2000. Wage growth came in strong at 2.7 percent, slightly beating expectations of 2.6 percent. “Having wages inch higher, rather than gallop higher is good for the market,” Krosby said, explaining that modest increases mean that the Federal Reserve won’t have be to aggressive in raising interest rates to tamp down inflation. By 11:00 a.m. the Dow Jones industrial average was up 206.23 points to 24,622.01. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq were up 0.9 percent and 1.3 percent, respectively. “This was another Goldilocks report,” Mona Mahajan, US investment strategist of Allianz Global Investors, told The Post, noting that there was nothing in it “that would alarm the Fed.” Earlier this week bond and equity markets tried to interpret instability in Italy and increased fears of a trade war. Yields on the 10-year note fell as investors piled into safe-haven assets amid worries. “With more signs of stability in Italy and a strong [jobs] figure this morning, the Fed is lock in for a June rate-hike,” Mahajan said.
As long as Trump didn't profit from this via insider trading - which he probably didn't - what he did was legal. Whether it was ethical or not is up to you to decide.