I'm not trying to split hairs here. There's been plenty of weird coincidences and each should be investigated, and on the balance of probability at least one may well be insider trading at the highest echelons. And in any case, in any financial job you need pre clearance for trades, often justifying why you're doing them if they are odd enough. There are minimum holding periods, day trading is not allowed, and the full record auditable by regulators. It is insane to me that politicians are not subject to such rules and it must change.
But to conclude that a weird trading pattern is definitely insider trading is IMO cheap. It's like TV drama where the unemployed, wife-beater-wearing husband definitely killed the wife, end of story.
The real tragedy IMO is that this is really avoidable. It would take very basic, very standard regulation to stamp this out, and we wouldn't be debating this in a technology forum.
$580 billion sales of oil futures and probably similar amount of buys in stock futures means $1T quick trillion move.
Nobody makes half trillion __trades__ for weird reasons and this was too short to be movement of sellers in general.
However as the article notes the time and size of this particular series of trades makes it look suspicious and that’s all one can say with certainty at this point.
How's this a coincidence?
Trump has boasted about this, that's the point we're in.[0]
They're announcing in a newsletter a fund raising where they will share national secrets with donors.[1]
This is literally people paying to get access to privileged information, in a fund raising for what?
Like it's openly being said that if you pay enough money, you will make a lot of money, this is unprecedented.
Trying to normalize it by saying "it's not corruption because it's done out in the open", or to bend reality to make an excuse for this, like it's a coincidence... it's insanity.
This could very well be the end, if the game is rigged at this level - and people trying to get as much out as possible while it lasts, while acting like no one understands what's going on, it's one of the scariest things I've witnessed. It's like we're falling off a cliff and people are shoving money in their pockets while saying "we're not falling, it's just the wind".
Nowhere does [1] say they are going to “share national secrets with donors.” Sure it’s an aggressive fundraising email (which both parties do) but nobody is selling secrets.
Your commentary is both false and inflammatory.
This was 6-8x the size all the existing trades on market combined, with zero other publicly available information early on a Monday morning 15 mins before an announcement that significantly moved the market.
Not even the biggest hedge funds in the world with coked up yolo traders go make 1.5 billion dollar bets like that, it simply doesn't happen.
It's egregious and blatant insider trading. The position got closed not long after the news came out.
Those contracts have between 8-15x leverage depending on margin rules.
This doesn’t remove the corruption problem but it brings the number down into realistic values. And while the volumes were odd for the overnight they aren’t that strange for normal hours trading.
There's no doubt it's very dirty business. I just find it lazy thinking to say, hey this one is very suspicious therefore definitely criminal.
The only problem is in the name. It's clearly just to score political points. I'd be surprised if it gets approved.
The fact that nobody seems particularly surprised by it suggests that the damage is long since done.
The current administration does, however, throw the term around against its political enemies quite a bit, as have people in general pretty much throughout history.
How about when combined with all the tariffs, which seem designed to be market levers and/or just vindictive acts?
Pushing businesses to the edge, plunging people into poverty, so your cronies and you can drain money from the stock market?
Or taking bribes using crypto? Or ...
They all seem treasonous - actively harming your own country to enrich yourself.
Even if you don't find them treasonous, you have to admit they're in contravention to the emoluments clause; so Congress should still impeach the evil bastard.
And we haven't even started on his crimes beyond the simple financial ones from the last year!
Even if they found the culprits, what's a judge's verdict against a presidential pardon?
This is bad logic. A presidential pardon at least exposes the corruption, and exposing the corruption is more important than a prison sentence.
We've very little doubt its happening, and it does us no good if there arent actions taken against it.
Flynn just got large payout as reward for breaking the law for Trump.
That is why.
The question is not if it can be investigated it’s if it will be and what will happen with the findings.
The first thing the Trump admin did in its second term was gut the anticorruption offices and the cftc.
This is actually not new in this administration. Last year the president posted on social media telling people to buy stocks a few hours before he announced tariffs (https://apnews.com/article/trump-truth-social-djt-tesla-musk...).
The bigger problem isn't whether or not it can be traced, or if it should be traced. It can and it should. The central issue at stake here is the sale of government secrets to private and (presently) anonymous groups for profit. The author is stating that since we don't know who the trader of that commodity is, and because that commodity's price is tightly coupled to actions related to the war, that trader could be helping enemies of the U.S. Without the knowledge of who the person is, or how they knew to make such a huge market movement, a claim of treason can be argued.
The biggest problem is the intelligence community is heavily rooted in trust. Movements like these signal there's an intelligence leak to the general public, or more appropriately, someone with $580 million lying around. An intelligence leak reduces trust; allies are less likely to share information if it's leaked. Conversely, trust is returned when the leaks are found and plugged, and measures put in place to prevent those leaks in the future. The author is stating that these leaks are unlikely to be plugged, which will reduce trust in American intelligence. After all, as the president said, "Let's say I was gonna do it or let's say I wasn't gonna do it, why would I tell you?" (https://www.bbc.com/news/live/c4gqjyk0vx3t)
Except he is telling someone, and that someone is making a lot of money.
"US SEC's ex-enforcement chief clashed with bosses over Trump cases before leaving, sources say":
* https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/us-secs-ex-enforcem...
"SEC enforcement director quits":
* https://www.cfodive.com/news/sec-enforcement-director-abrupt...
The head of the SEC didn't want the SEC's investigation division to investigate (certain things).
There's a reason we have banned and prosecuted any hint of insider trading or match fixing for centuries. Yet we play dumb on way more serious risks, allowing betting on whether a country will attack another and labeling it "information hedging and price discovery".
I can't but look at the modern world with worry. We live in increasingly Orwellian and dystopic times. The world has never been so rich and evolved, yet, as a society, we're increasingly unhappy, alone and void of purposes that aren't greed and selfishness related.
We're looking at the decadence of a civilization and all we can do, at best, is post about it over the internet, and that's when we're in the aware crowd not falling for bitter insulting and fighting because somebody else holds different ideas.
I would really want to know what can we do, as average Joes, when the most powerful people in the world fall in line and are terrorized to speak their mind. And that's when they're not actively contributing to the very same decadence.
See how many vile, empathy-void sociopaths are elected across the world because they have the political skills required to make things happen.
What I try in practice is to lead by example, and be a good neighbor/citizen. In my village, 90% of the people would rather bitch about the mayor or public services not cleaning up the park for months or years, when you can simply grab few plastic bags and clean most of it in few hours. I'm glad my initiative has pushed more citizens to actively care and take matters in their hands.
Yet the scope of degeneracy and risks are now at the global stage and I don't think I can do much when people with the wrong incentives are elected in office, if there's elections at all.
He should have traded on his bet against the internet.
Wti is much easier. Lots of real economic actors that produce or consume oil are active in those markets.
Even when you are a passive investor you lose. You essentially buy shares at random points in time. When that point happens to fall between the trading of an insider and the public disclosure of the insider information you will get a worse price for that trade.
It isn't even relevant whether the insider buys stocks or other securities directly or trades in futures instead. All information you enter into the market through trades permeates the whole market through arbitrage regardless of where you enter that information.
LadyCailin•1h ago
lapcat•53m ago
Not to mention 49.8% of 64.1% turnout is only 31.9% of eligible voters. The US has a political duopoly in which both parties are widely disliked, as well as minority rule.
Speaking of financial corruption, the political duopoly is enforced by the pay-to-play nature of the system, where political campaigns are privately funded. The only third-party Presidential candidate to break though in recent times was billionaire Ross Perot, who self-funded his own TV informercials to spread his message. Politicians need massive advertising budgets.