Gasp0deTreason in the Futures Markets
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/treason-in-the-futures-markets
While I agree it is very suspicious, needs investigating and far, far greater oversight in general, I'm not sure there is enough to conclude this definitely is insider trading. Markets are weird. People trade for weird reasons, sometimes gently and in small size, sometimes aggressively and all at once. We're zooming in at a short window just before the tweet. If you look at random windows you'll find these too. 6.49 am is around lunchtime in Europe, and people exist there too. Crude oil liquidity isnt at its peak at that time but certainly not "thin". It's really not that uncommon for traders to accidentally send a "fat finger" trade, much bigger in size than intended or appropriate for the market conditions.
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.
Maybe a naive question: those transactions are traceable. But we assume this admin will not turn itself in. However, such transactions in other nations would be investigated. Are there cases of similar transactions before the US presidents tweets in i.e. Europe?
There's plenty of very suspicious trades in US politics, and presumably European ones too. Actually on both sides of the aisle. Senators putting trades in sectors that overlap with their committee memberships, or these trades appearing in their "blind trusts", with "no input" from the senators. There is so much of it that I am sure there is plenty of insider trading. On average, if you blindly follow their trades, will you make money? The evidence is mixed, and made worse by the fact that the disclosures can be made on paper (pen and paper is allowed!) and the records not all electronified. You can imagine the juiciest trades are probably "disclosed" on a napkin if at all.
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.