Trump’s tweets have more of an effect on market volatility than North Korean missile tests, finds Goldman Sachs

Whether US President Donald Trump is making any headway in his campaign to Make America Great Again is hard to gauge. But there is one area where he is having a quantifiable impact, according to Goldman Sachs: market volatility.

Analysts at the investment bank noted that in a year when volatility seemed stubbornly flat, rare spikes occurred around North Korea’s missile launches.

But rather than corresponding to the actual military activity, it seemed peaks in the Chicago Board of Options’ Volatility Index (Vix) were more closely related to Trump’s consequent tweets.

Read more: Gold, defence firms and the Vix are all up after Donald Trump’s North Korea threats

Goldman in fact found that even if Trump mentioned North Korea in a tweet when there had been no recent missile test, markets showed signs of alarm. Test which did not elicit an impact from the president, on the other had, seemed to cause little concern.

“Tweets matter, testing does not. Indeed, from a statistical perspective, testing does not appear to matter at all unless President Trump tweets about it,” stated a note on the research written by Charles Himmelberg and James Weldon.

Never mind artificial intelligence – it seems that social media is one step closer to controlling our lives.

Read more: Gold prices approach the key $1,300 mark after Donald Trump sparks a dollar sell-off