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A 'Trump And Dump' Stock Bot Is Cashing In On POTUS' Tweets -- For Animals

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In the fine tradition of turning lemons into lemonade or dead horses* into dog chow, an Austin firm has found a way to grind something positive from the commander in chief's more negative words for business.

When President Donald Trump blasts businesses on Twitter, millions may pay attention, but the "Trump and Dump Bot" can turn a profit in under a second. Built by Texas ad agency T3, the piece of AI assesses the president's tweets for market impact from the moment they hit the web, and performs quick stock maneuvers based on those comments before they've even sunk in.

As T3 presient Ben Gaddis explained for NPR, the process relies on a "sentiment analysis" that the algorithm performs with each of President Trump's statements online. If the bot detects that Trump has tweeted about a publicly traded company, it then hunts within for telling terms like "big problems" and "caused by" and calculates a sentiment rating based on its findings. The more negative the comment, the lower Trump and Dump's rating will be--and if you're looking to short-sell those companies' stocks, the lower, the better.

See also: DeepDrumpf Is An Uncanny Twitterbot That's Fundraising For Girls In STEM

Once a sufficiently dismal sentiment is confirmed, the bot borrows stock in the unlucky company in question and sells it again within nanoseconds, before prices can begin to dip. When they do, the bot finishes its transaction by buying back those shares at a lower price and finally notifying humans of its deeds via Slack.

Any profits from the bot's rapid-fire trades are then donated to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), according to the company. "President Trump tweets something negative, we save a puppy," Gaddis told NPR. "That's something I think everybody can get behind."

It's also an idea that seems to be working. In the case of Trump's recent tweet assailing Delta Airlines (among others) for airport holdups in the aftermath of his immigration and travel ban, the company's stock fell within hours, and Trump and Dump cleared a neat 4.47% on its investment.

(Image credit: T3 via YouTube)

NPR notes that while T3 is speaking openly about using AI to play the market, numerous other stock bots may already be doing similar work behind Wall Street's closed doors. The agency's website points out, too, "While the concept is funny, it’s actually a complex technical solve: Twitter monitoring, sentiment analysis, complex algorithms, real-time stock trades—all in a matter of seconds."

Presumably it's all the same from a puppy's perspective, though, so long as food's involved at the end of the day.

[h/t NPR]

*naturally, peacefully