For decades, U.S. markets have sold themselves to the world on a simple promise: Though investors may not be equal in size, they get the same core facts. But two new developments are testing how much that transparency promise still holds.
President Donald Trump’s media company announced on Thursday that it would sell millisecond-faster access to potentially market-moving Truth Social posts to investors. The product, Truth API, is arriving just as the SEC considers letting companies move from quarterly to semiannual disclosures, raising concerns that U.S. markets could become more dependent on private, paid information streams while offering ordinary investors fewer regular public filings.
“Markets already move on Truth Social posts,” said Kevin McGurn, Interim Chief Executive Officer of Truth Social’s parent company TMTG, in a statement.
At risk here, three securities law experts told Fortune, is whether the key markers of a fair market, like transparent, timely, and comparable information, are being chipped away.
“Milliseconds matter in modern markets, and the president’s social media posts move markets,” Tyler Gellasch, CEO of Healthy Markets Association and former SEC counsel, told Fortune. While the statement did not specifically mention whether the president’s posts will be included, it did make reference to top social posts. With 12.9 million followers, the president is the most popular user of Truth Social. His sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, and the White House also have several million followers.
