(MarketWatch) President Donald Trump has made his frustration with Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell known.
All but one of Trump’s 14 tweets about the man he picked to lead the Fed have been critical. Powell is a “bonehead,” “a terrible communicator” possessing a “horrendous lack of vision,” among other Trump characterizations.
After an academic study suggested those tweets had some impact on the Fed, Goldman Sachs did its own analysis. It looked at futures prices right before a tweet and compared them to prices 30 minutes after.
Those tweets, the Goldman Sachs analysts found, did not move the market in a statistically significant manner.
But that’s not to say the tweeter in chief’s missives had no impact.
Goldman Sachs also looked at Trump’s trade-related tweets, and those did make an impact. Those tweets are statistically significant, moving futures by as much as 14 basis points.
“There are many tweets that garner little reaction, but there are also quite a few trade policy tweets that lead to sizable swings. This is intuitive, as there are clear channels through which tariff escalation can lead to a dimmer economic outlook,” the analysts found.
Short-term bond yields have plunged in reaction to the deteriorating U.S. and global economic outlook. The yield on the 2-year Treasury fell Monday to its fourth-lowest level of the year, to 1.466%, from as high as 2.969% in November.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury has dropped to 1.55% from 3.23% in November.
