Cost and a noisy signal outweigh speed, as just 7.5% of managers would consider paying $100,000 a month for faster access to Trump’s market-moving posts.

Hedge fund managers have shown little appetite for Trump Media and Technology Group’s Truth API, a service selling faster access to posts on the platform the president uses to make policy announcements.

In a Hedgeweek poll of 50 hedge fund managers, just 7.5% said their fund would consider subscribing at a price of $100,000 a month. Two respondents (5%) said they would absolutely subscribe and one more said they could consider it.

The rest were firmly against. More than half (52.5%) answered “absolutely not” without further explanation. Among those who gave a reason, cost was the most common: 15% said the price did not justify the edge. A further 12.5% cited reputational or compliance concerns, and 10% said the signal was too noisy or unreliable to trade on.

The strength of feeling is striking. More than half of all respondents dismissed the idea outright, without needing to give a reason, and more than three times as many cited cost or signal quality as said they would consider subscribing.

Regulatory cloud

The product has drawn political scrutiny since its launch earlier this year. It sells accelerated access to posts from Truth Social’s 10 most popular trending accounts. Democratic lawmakers have asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to examine whether it breaches federal securities laws. They argue that paying for early sight of the president’s market-moving posts amounts to insider trading.

Speaking at an Axios event in New York last week, TMTG chief executive Kevin McGurn declined to address the inquiries, saying “some of these investigations are ongoing”. He described the API as cash-positive and said high-frequency trading firms had been asking about such a feed for around 18 months. He also argued that the technology is no different from data products offered by other social media platforms.

A narrow constituency

That last point may explain the gap between TMTG’s account of demand and the response from hedge funds. A latency-driven feed is most valuable to firms that trade in milliseconds, a small part of the hedge fund universe. For discretionary managers, a few seconds’ head start on a post is worth little against $1.2m a year in fees.

The relatively low share citing compliance concerns is also notable. Only one in eight managers named reputational or regulatory risk as their reason, despite the political controversy. That suggests the product is being judged mainly on economics. Should the SEC take a view, however, the compliance question could quickly become the deciding one.

For now, the verdict from managers is clear. The president’s posts move markets, but most funds are not prepared to pay a premium to see them first.

Hedgeweek surveyed 50 hedge fund managers in October 2026.