Why Trump Media's sale of fast access to market-moving social posts is controversial

When Donald Trump speaks, financial traders are among the keenest listeners.

From trade wars to military wars, anything the US president says can shift markets, and so teams of traders - as well as a host of automated computer systems - monitor his statements to perform trades within seconds.

Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) now wants to charge for such market-moving information put out on its Truth Social platform. It has launched a paid service to give Wall Street firms and institutional investors the "fastest access" to the social media site's most influential accounts.

TMTG has not directly said the service includes the account of the president himself, but with some 13 million followers - the most on the site - it's fair to say that his posts would be among, if not the, most influential.

However, the move has prompted a series of legal questions and ethical musings, including whether it is right that a company - of which the president's family remains the majority shareholder - stands to profit from his own public statements.

The service launched by TMTG is called Truth API. It is a new data feed that provides real-time access to posts in "milliseconds" from the "highest-ranking Truth Social accounts".

The service was anticipated to become available to institutional customers on 1 August. The Financial Times reported , external that customers could be charged as much as $100,000 a month for high-speed access, but TMTG has not confirmed the figure.

TMTG says it expects it to create a steady source of new revenue for the firm, which is currently loss-making.