Evidence of market manipulation on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange?
vanityfair.com
vanityfair.com
I'm not saying Trump, his reptilian cronies, and liked-minded types wouldn't be capable of imaging gross schemes like this, but this article goes almost nowhere in proving it. As someone else points out, it also conflates all sorts of events (IGRC, HK, Trump) into a single conspiratory organism. Unlikely.
I'd also say there are myriad examples (some posted here) that indicate insider-trading/tipsterism often is not nearly as profitable as you'd imagine.
Further.... There is an econometrician Phillip Verlegger who, back in the 1990s was doing analysis of futures markets that suggested that Saddam Hussein was using headlines about the UN-Oil-For-Food program to drive oil futures prices (which presumably his cronies exploited). I can no longer remember the details of his analysis, but it was evidence-based rather than the sensationalism this article pumps.
What's the point of going here. There are crooked people of all political ideologies and this offers nothing of substance to the argument.
--- > Trump, ... boasted during the G7 summit that his counterparts in Beijing had come back to the table. Indeed, this single Trump lie briefly inflated domestic markets by hundreds of billions of dollars. “What this describes is, quite literally, market manipulation that constitutes criminal violations ...” commented George Conway, the conservative attorney and Trump critic.
This is just plain bad reporting. Yes, they questioned the expert, and the expert given them politically loaded opinion. For it to be market manipulations, Trump(himself, as mentioned in the article) need to profit from the action, at least.
This is absolutely not true.
You can trade all you want on material non-public information if you're not an insider (or got your info from one under certain circumstances).
Maybe he's just a useful idiot for the real manipulator. Would Trump pick up the phone from a donor who is able to carry out these trades, and be convinced to utter something positive about trade?
It's an easy question to answer if you have the volume data. I don't happen to otherwise i'd run it myself, but the author of this article really should have before publishing this.
Also, it would be great to see how these trades relate to the expected amount of volatility for the weekend (also public).
For funds that don't want to trade out of and in to large positions on Friday and Sunday the e-minis are a great way to hedge your risk especially around high volatility events (of which there have been an increasing amount).
1. Someone who knows what the IGRC is about to do
2. Someone who knows what the Hong Kong government is about to do
3. Someone who knows what Trump is about to do
I guess this would mean that numerous unscrupulous people at different international power centers have all figured out the same thing on their own? Otherwise we're in Thomas Pynchon novel territory.
These trades are fully attributed.
The exchange knows exactly who is trading them, the idea that a market actor would use inside info from many different governmental entities to buy giant blocks at the close for improvements over the next week is idiotic.
Meanwhile a lot of actors hedging positions in ways that hit the hedge is completely normal.
Is there any actual evidence supporting this 9/11 claim? I don't see how they could print this without doing basic fact checking.
The strategy has not been based on expecting the broader economic issues to actually be resolved, but instead: "things are too crazy in US-China/EU-UK/Middle East, good news coming soon, time to buy long" or "things are too calm/optimistic, someone is going to rattle saber soon, time to go short"
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to read the geopolitical mood and the level of bluffing going on, and I'm quite sure if I had more $$ to manage and more time to watch the ticker and newsfeeds, I would have made bigger bets.
that said, someone directly moving markets could do far better.
Sadly a world of more liquid interconnected capital markets seems ripe for abuse by insider political actors operating globally.
Whatever your thoughts on Carter he put his peanut farm in a trust to avoid any semblance of impropriety.
Would anyone be shocked if the article was correct in what it implies?
That is the truly upsetting aspect of our political reality not whether or not the president is responsible for this particular implied malfeasance.
Why should I establish my position in a single huge trade, instead of slow accumulation thru the whole trading session? Do I really want to trigger some alarm in SEC system?