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bhouston

If anyone had advanced warning, you could have made a fortune today:

https://www.marketwatch.com/livecoverage/stock-market-today-...

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Like if the president had posted that “now is a great time to buy DJT” 15 minutes before announcing the pause?

Spy went from 497 to 505 by 1:05pm (announcement was later at 1:18pm). Then onwards to 530+.

Clearly some listened or simply had knowledge the announcement was coming.

Regardless of whatever happened today, it's never a good time to buy $DJT because 1) it's not profitable and 2) holders are slowly continually liquidating in a complicated manner explained by past Money Stuff articles.

The actual quote is "THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT", which makes DJT either a signature and a call to buy the market if he can form a valid sentence, or a call to buy NASDAQ:DJT if he can't form a valid sentence. Take your pick. It's market manipulation either way.

On DJT: Donald John Trump.

I'm sure this will be a talking point for the next couple years. "I caused the biggest surge in the stock market in 5 years."

I think he prefers a phrase "in American history ever".

Lots of stocks are up 10-15% instantly after this announcement. Curious if we'll get reports of suspicious options volume capitalizing on this information.

why do people still trust stock markets if manipulating them is that easy?

As easy as winning the presidency and having enough loyalty within your base to say "I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose voters." then win reelection just 8 years later?

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/donald-trump-fifth-avenue-...

Because even with crises, over the long term the only direction is up.

Its probably not so much that people trust it but either you invest broadly (index funds) and trust long historical data that the likely direction is up or you think you have more information than other people and can beat the market.

> over the long term the only direction is up.

Only if you look at American stock market data. And that's extreme cherry-picking, because the American stock market is by far the best performing over the last century. What are the chances the American stock market will be the best performing next century?

The US stock market is exceptional, but that doesn't mean other markets don't grow. The global expected returns are around 4% annually.

The standard claim is that "even if you bought at the absolute worst time, if you held for 10 years you would have been positive after inflation". This statement is true for the US stock market, but not true for many other stock markets.

There's "lost decade" periods in the US market as well, that's why you shouldn't invest in a single market, and should apply unit cost averaging instead of dumping all your money at once.

In nominal terms it always goes up. In real terms, like priced in gold, DJIA is cheaper today than in 1929. (13 ounces of gold today vs. 14 ounces of gold in 1929).

But how often is that true? Gold prices doubled in the past 5 years, with 10% of that coming in the past few months, after declining for most of the 2010s.

Because you don't have to play this game. If you buy and hold long term you could ignore every news article this year and you'd be fine.

To be clear, here, this form of "manipulation" is kind of impossible to really deal with? Or do you have something in mind that should be able to more smoothly work with this?

SEC has reversed suspicious trades in the past.

From the president of the united states? Especially knowing that controlling tariffs and such are easily argued to be in his core powers, in the current setting, what authority would they possibly have to do something on this?

they can reverse the options trades that look like they had insider info. This is a thing that the SEC does.

But they would have to prove insider info? Which would require discovery against communications to/from the president. Which you know they would argue against.

So, let me rephrase, do you think it is likely that they would do anything?

> easily argued to be in his core powers

I'd say arguably. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariffs_in_the_second_Trump_ad...

Any action they are taking around deciding whether or not there is a national security interest in managing tariffs is easily covered by everyone's understanding of what is in the presidential duties. As such, it is fully off limits for any review, per last year's immunity ruling. No?

Now, congress can take away that delegation. They could also cancel any declarations. But actions taken by the admin in pursuing this will almost certainly be seen as core duties by the supreme court. As such, I don't see any real opening for review in this?

I trust the stock market only after at least 5 years have passed, preferably 10. Short term (less than that) the stock market has always been about popularity, but long term the most profitable companies always rise to the top.

Your question presupposes something I think that most people do not believe.

I don't think they do and you have to be president or Elon to do it.

Because everything other investment is worse?

Traditionally US stockmarkets are not that easily manipulated. This type of blatent grift and insider trading was for banana republics, and that's why stock markets in those places aren't serious.

Who would report it?

Wouldn't be too suspicious, since Trump people told people to buy into the stock market before announcing this.

https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1143082727259...

Do you really think he didn't tell his friends to buy options an hour before the tweet?

Of course not, he told them to trust/act on his tweets. That way they are acting on public info

Do you have any evidence that he did?

https://bsky.app/profile/unusualwhales.bsky.social/post/3lmf...

Well I bought this morning (not a large trade), based not on insider information but on the obvious outcome. Also the dynamic signal that Trump spent 2h spewing utter nonsense at a donor dinner last night, but the market didn't go down this morning. Signaling that something was in the works one way or another.

Edit: best to note that Trump is still doing plenty to destroy the US economy, so be careful out there.

Yesterday the indexes started up 3-4% and finished down at least as much. Risky move but congrats.

Frankly, everything is “obvious” in retrospect. I assumed Trump would triple down regardless of the consequences. My only conclusion is that the fluctuations of the market are going to be completely arbitrary during this administration.

Probably lots of happy white house staffers and congressmen today.

Notably, there was a headline that went viral on Twitter earlier this week that the White House was considering this, but after they denied it it was widely understood at the time to be fake news. How many of the people spreading it, I wonder, knew it was really true?

Remember how every other President put their assets into a blind trust?

Shit like this is why! It deterred them from firebombing the entire goddamn economy to make a buck for their friends and followers!

I remember how Jimmy Carter had to sell the family farm because it was viewed as a potential conflict of interest and how Mitt Romney's father, when making his run, when asked for a single year of tax returns made them all public, arguing that a single year could easily be manipulated to show anything, and that only by seeing the entirety of multiple years could an accurate evaluation be made.

>I remember how Jimmy Carter had to sell the family farm because it was viewed as a potential conflict of interest ...

Are you sure you remember that? Jimmy Carter put his farm in a blind trust, he didn't sell it.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2023/02/24/fac...

Fair.

https://www.tastingtable.com/1204239/why-president-jimmy-car...

notes:

>Carter sold all his personal stocks, and he put his interest in Carter Warehouse and Carter Farms into a blind trust.

I remember when presidents used to divest themselves of their private holdings. That went out the window in 2017

Jimmy Carter's peanut farm remembers.

Trump is already a billionaire and is in his 70s. No explanation of his behavior in terms of gaining money makes sense.

You do not become a billionaire unless you have a pathological obsession with obtaining wealth. They have structured their entire lives, often at the expense of everything else, to increase their wealth. It isn't a goal, its a lifestyle. There is no number that is "enough".

Indeed. But the path he chose since 2016 is a bit suboptimal for making money. Don’t you think? Or do you think the long con was to become president for this week?

I’m not trying to ascribe moral character either. Power, status, fame, etc are just so much more compelling.

Didn't his first term get his son in law a multi billion dollar deal with the Saudis? Along with all the other bullshit like getting paid because the secret service has to stay at his properties. This isn't the long con, this is just a continuation. He's a lot more organized this time around.

I agree, which is why I used "wealth" and not "money", since power/status/fame is just another form of wealth. Trump seems to be a special mix of rich kid who didn't get hugged enough as a child.

Now that contradicts the narrative that the stock market thing is a ploy to make money.

That is easily disproved. A good counterexample is in the book Copy This by Paul Orfalea. He had trouble in school and couldn't hold a job so he started a copy place. This became Kinko's after his nickname and grew large in part because of his systematic way of having employees and customers all treated with respect. When he got tired of the business he sold it to FedEx and shared he five billion with his family.

We need to do something about out of control inequality, such as in the past when we had strong regulations on industry, high taxes on the rich, and pervasive union membership, but lying about what is going on helps no one.

Im sure there are counter examples, of course.

I’m trying to address the narrative I’ve seen a bunch lately that billionaires in this administration already have enough, so we can trust that they wont be financially motivated.

he just wants more social media followers. So people feel like they're not missing out next time he posts something like this.

This is honestly more believable to me than money.

By the same token, 24 hours and a tweet can have it all come crashing down once again. Nothing is real anymore.

Learn about limit and stop loss orders, come in handy in times of high volatility I am finding :)

I bought VOO and AMZN yesterday. First time buying an individual stock since pandemic. Kicking myself for not buying more. Still waiting a week to possibly buy more if there's another shock, but if the market's up, I'll buy less.

That's stock speculation for you, everything you do is wrong in retrospect

Feels equally plausible that there would have been an across the board increase in tariffs just to look tough. There is no logical analysis of the current situation.

I just buy during big fucking crises, either individual stocks or index funds. Front page of the NYT type shit, "existential threats" to 100+ year old concerns. Boeing, Toyota, pandemic. Such opportunities only come up every 2-3 years or so. Sell after 1-2 years to get the lower tax rate.

DCA and time in market beat trying to time the market. If you're doing nothing all day but refreshing Twitter and Robinhood maybe there's some alpha but that's too much involvement for me.

The first sentence is a thought-terminating cliche and is not true. Correctly guessing the shape of the Trump tariff crash was worth an entire year in the market. Crashes that don't instantly reverse themselves tend to be more like ten years.

yes but unfortunately for me, I don't have insider information or a time machine. If you had $10,000 today, where would you put it?

VOO, QQQM, AMZN. Value cost averaging. Put more in as it drops, less if it increases.

Not America any more. That Ponzi scheme has just been popped.

Be careful with Amazon, the algos seem to have not realized China is still being tariffed.*

* Observation valid for the next 30 seconds. Certain restrictions apply.

https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1143082727259...

> THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!

- @realDonaldTrump today at 6:37 AM PST

How is this legal??

It’s not.

> For my friends, anything. For my enemies, the law.

- Oscar Benavidez, Peruvian dictator

Doesn't matter if it is, he would just pardon himself.

Edit: On second thought, he wouldn't even have to, since he already has immunity anyways.

Using a personal account to post comments to social media is not an official act.

The entire concept of "official act" does not actually exist. It wasn't defined in the Constitution, and neither was it defined by the Supreme Court when they invented it from whole cloth.

Courts have already determined it's an official act by Congressman and Senators to shield them from defamation lawsuits.

How sure are you that the supreme court agrees with you?

Dumbasses spent 50 years voting for Republican politicians who refused to hold their own accountable for things like outright fraud and crime.

Who would stop them? Certainly not their voters.

Because US is not a democracy anymore. Checks and balances are gone.

Out of curiosity, on what basis would this be illegal? Given that it was posted publicly and all.

The first order fraud would be market manipulation run by the commander in chief.

The second order play would be for Trump to tip his associates off that he was going to do this and let them profit handsomely from the bump. Congratulations Mr President: your lackies love you because they profited from fraud but moreover you now have grade A kompromat on all of them in the form of your Signal chat records showing they were complicit in market fraud!

Actually you did have advance warning because there has been several days of wall-to-wall finance bro and republican heads on TV saying the tariffs were batshit crazy. Under those conditions there are only two outcomes: 1. the tariffs were rolled back or 2. Trump is removed from office (and the tariffs rolled back).

Those aren't guaranteed. I do believe Trump is in danger of being removed if the economic damage of the tariffs becomes too great since the one thing truly sacrosanct in America is the economy.

But the timeline would hardly be immediate. We'd have to go through considerable pain before the government would act.

> Those aren't guaranteed.

Yeah, if we lived in that world, Trump would have been removed from office during his first term for all the crimes.

It's worth noting that impeaching and removing Trump from office now would actually take fewer votes than the business of overriding the import taxes he's trying to impose with "Canadian fentanyl is scary" emergency powers.

As a big bonus, voting to remove him entirely leaves everyone far safer. He's gonna have a guaranteed tantrum of scorched-earth revenge no matter what you do, but this way he won't have official power to do it with.

3. Carve outs are made for high dollar donors like AAPL (which went up with everything else even though it is now subject to an even more terrific tariff)

Trump's whole schtick was that #1 - - get countries to negotiate.

Except China. The USA gets 25% of it's bandages from there, and that's no way to prepare to defend Taiwan.

when the market dropped 1100 points in a day was the time to buy. Buy the DIP!!!

Always buy the dip. Because if the dip keeps dipping long enough you got other problems to deal with.

Catch the falling knife!

Uh if tariffs weren't paused it would have kept dipping.

Learned their lesson and formed a whole new Signal group.

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