Built a TACO tracker inside my trading dashboard because TA is useless when the president is live-posting about bombing Iran
u/neo-futurism ·
Reddit — r/algotrading
· March 28, 2026 at 15:46
· ⬆ 97 pts
· 💬 38 comments
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AI Summary
Summary
The post describes a personal tool (TACO tracker) built to monitor U.S. political and geopolitical events (specifically Trump-related activity) that cause sudden market volatility, which the author's ML-based intraday system cannot predict.
The author's thesis is that during periods of high "Trump Activity & Conflict Outlook," avoiding market entries, particularly in SPY options, prevents losses from gap moves driven by non-fundamental news.
Quality assessment: This is a pragmatic case study/anecdote based on personal trading experience. It is not formal due diligence but a logical, event-driven risk management approach shared as an idea.
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I run an ML-based trading system for intraday SPY options. It's been solid on normal days. But I kept getting wrecked on days where a single Truth Social post or executive order gapped the market 1-2% before open, stuff that no technical signal can predict or react to fast enough.
I have cumulatively lost 7K last two weeks due to his tacos, which FORCED me build TACO (Trump Activity & Conflict Outlook) as a dedicated panel inside my trading terminal dashboard.
What I monitor:
* White House schedule (scraped from Factba.se) - flags non-routine events, derives a "Trump active today" signal
* Truth Social posts (via truthbrush, 2-min cache) - live feed of president's social account.
* Geopolitical headlines - Google News RSS filtered by tariff/Iran/Taiwan/oil keywords, severity-classified with icons using regex.
* Iran/Middle East dedicated sub-feed - Hormuz risk premium is real right now.
* Executive orders - Federal Register API, filtered for market-relevant titles.
* Congress activity - Congress.gov API for bills matching market keywords.
If TACO panel shows Trump is live or has posted in the last hour, I sit out until the dust settles.
Been using it for last 2 trade sessions, and I think they did save me entering into a couple of bad entries. Hoping it stays helpful during this whole war regime!
PS
Not selling anything, no affiliate links, no course, nothing. Just a personal tool I built out of frustration. Sharing in case it's useful and someone wants to build their own version using this idea.