Trump Media to sell instant access to 'market-moving' social posts | Hacker News Reader

Trump Media to sell instant access to 'market-moving' social posts

bbc.com

180 pointsNikxDa118 comments

Yet if the average corporate person does insider trading it comes with a prison sentence not pricing.

It’s wild how banana republic level corrupt the US is all of a sudden. Really went from 0 to 100 in months

> It’s wild how banana republic level corrupt the US is all of a sudden.

It’s wild how utterly predicable this was and yet it was the chosen path.

When you get older, eventually you see the pattern. Political parties, whatever their viewpoints, are tolerated as long as they improve economic outcomes fast enough. When that even just slows down, there is some tolerance, but not much.

Literally the reason people voted for Hitler was that the German economy was in the shitter and he promised to fix it, with promises that made no sense, similar to Trump's.

As always, uneducated ignorant people make life hell for everyone else.

In order for a democracy to function, you need people that are able to evaluate political promises as bullshit or not. If you believe nonsense from grifters, you get either what you described or the current US admin. Or Brexit.

I'm sure there are more examples of this in history.

That's why the right wing always defunds the education system everywhere it gets power, right?

While siphoning the remaining public school funding to private schools [1]:

> ProPublica analyzed data from 13 states of varying sizes that do publish private school directories and offer public funding to these types of schools, and found that at least 1,500 more are listed today than were five years ago — bringing the total to more than 9,600. The numbers provide a rare look into the growth catalyzed by friendly legislatures and government money, while public school districts are losing students and closing schools.

> When public money is available, most private schools take advantage of that funding. In several states, all or nearly all students at some private schools pay tuition with public dollars.

[1] https://www.propublica.org/article/private-schools-vouchers-...

Hitler did create an "economic miracle", which is why he actually went up in popularity, even with the parties he would later ...: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRlbUeji01U

It was all based on a purposefully designed system of lies. Which can work, until someone proves it's a lie to external parties.

I don't know why this is downvoted, this is the entire basis of China being politically stable despite being unfree.

The problem is trying to untangle which are the economic indicators that matter and what the causality is. Despite everything, the stock market is at or near an all time high (mostly due to AI), and that grants Trump a lot of leeway from the money class.

It's also why this matters: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/oil-stocks-us-strate...

Oil prices going up would probably also be extremely unfavourable for the Trump regime. So simply empty the US SPR onto the market to keep prices down and avoid the Iran war having any impact. Should last for the rest of his term.

Predictable? It was a campaign promise. People actively decided this is what they wanted.

> ima tell you like Wu told me: cash rules everything around me, dollar dollar bill yall

been that way since Reagan

Does raise the question of whether this also comes with free immunity from prosecution, or whether the NYAG should just pre-emptively say that anyone signing up for this and trading on the results will be prosecuted under NY state law.

(Critical to the whole thing is unfortunately https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosecution_of_Donald_Trump_in... , where the judge inexplicably decided to waive sentencing for a felony conviction)

that comes with extra donations

If you want law and policing to work, it needs to be very predictable for everyone. So yes, if there is the least bit of doubt, the NYAG should absolutely say, far in advance, that this will happen.

Because if this isn't the case, then people will be forced to compete by "slightly" violating the law, everyone a little bit more, until the law is a total joke. This has happened in history.

Well, maybe information that is for sale on the open market to anybody that's willing to pay is no longer considered 'insider' information? i.e. trader Jane Doe can't complain that trader John Doe has this info - she could have it too if she wanted.

(edit: not defending this, I find it to be deplorable and disgraces the office of president.)

She could only have that info if she has the money to pay for it. In every possible interpretation, this is just discriminating based on wealth. There was no paywall before. Now the rich get direct access to better information and more wealth, everyone else is left in the dust. As if they didn't already have that advantage before.

To me this would be similar to an argument that "one dollar = one vote" is democractic because anyone could hypothetically pay more or just earn more money.

30 to 100 maybe

The difference between a million and a billion is a billion. It's basically 0 to 100.

The system is broken. There is no effective restrict on president's powers. And the president is Trump.

I mean Congress or SCOTUS could restrict his powers but they don't want to. How do you even go about fixing that? And is it really that uncommon when president, congress and supreme court is controlled by same party? I have a feeling the only new element is that the same can be now said for media.

Previous comment: "The system is broken."

Reply: "Congress or SCOTUS could restrict his powers but they don't want to."

Conclusion: the system is broken.

real danger of insider trading is that you can get jailed 20 years in the future for something you did today

Inshallah

yeah ima be doin hookers and blow for the next 20 years, they can jail my 78 year old ass

crypto means they'll never find the money either

Not sure what "average corporate person" means, but if you're just a random dude and you trade on your golf buddies tips, no one is going to throw you in jail. Very few people get charged a year, like dozens. I'm sure >99.9% of get away with it. I think it's often political or targeted.

The weirdness here comes from the president owning a social media company. I think they're playing up how markets move on their posts for obvious reasons. But social media companies likely sell priority access. They're called enterprise licensing deals. Same with news media, like Bloomberg, Dow, Reuters.

This isn't "insider trading" its publicly available information. The idea that the "little guy" is somehow screwed over by this is just silly.

https://www.barrons.com/advisor/articles/insider-trading-fbi...

The algorithmic trading firms were already doing this via scraping. What I’m curious about is if they’re going to also impose a slight delay between when posts show up in the API vs when they’re posted on the website.

> The algorithmic trading firms were already doing this via scraping.

That doesn’t matter. That’s fundamentally different than the president selling access to himself.

thats math bots reading trades and making best guesses.

probably detremental to the market as a whole but not fundamentally illegal -- they're just watching really, really, really closely.

DJT is selling access to stuff that he knows will move the market, and may only be done just to move the market. wholesale graft, and depending on who benefits, possibly treason.

>if they’re going to also impose a slight delay between when posts show up in the API vs when they’re posted on the website. help

Yes, they say it will be a few milliseconds. This service is squarely targeted at algo trading firms.

Definitely not 0->100

Remember companies go bankrupt. Slowly then all of the sudden.

We're in a problem that was made by the Bushs, Clintons, Obama & Biden. And Trump. Those who went before them. And of course the voters who put them in power.

It's kind of what happens when an electorate empowers a pathologically lying corrupt criminal to head of state and gives their craven sycophants legislative majorities.

Generally the SCOTUS majority seems to feel "It's ok if our president does it." when it it comes to most things.

The few times they disagree they let it stand (like tariffs) and allows the government to collect illegal taxes from the people, and then just shrug at the end with "well guess that was wrong"... and the citizens get nothing back.

SCOTUS takes money from them -- it is to be expected

> if the average corporate person does insider trading it comes with a prison sentence not pricing

More like it went from 60 to 100. Laws not applying to very wealthy and connected people is definitely not a new development in the USA. But yes, the trend has been accelerating and become very blatant and in-your-face.

you're about 3 administrations late to the party. The only difference now is that you're paying attention.

I still remember when Obama wearing a tan suit was controversial.

I miss Obama. A president that could actually deliver a decent speech and actually bothered to be a politician.

A politician should do TWO things: get elected, and convince the electorate about a path forward, including any compromises needed. Obama is the last president that actually did that. As we all know. Trump just doesn't even bother. And before anyone else points this out: yes, I kind of agree, Biden didn't either. Democrats are their own worst enemy, just like republicans are.

I really miss Obama.

Your post reminds me of that scene from the West Wing where the president joins a meeting the VP had already started who had opened with:

"Surely our first priority is to figure out a way to work with Congress"

Then the president joins and is caught up by the note taker and embarrasses the VP with

"Our first priority is to work with congress? Surely our first priority is to serve the American people"

Biden did both, at least at first. Age (and refusal to recognize it) hobbled him in the end, but during his term he was one of the more effective presidents of the last several decades. Arguably more effective than Obama, considering the amount accomplished in one term and the far slimmer majorities he had to work with. And I say that as somebody who loves Obama.

Hopefully when Russia is sorted it will be a chance to remember how the Biden administration helped derail "three days to Kyiv" while absolutely embarrassing the Kremlin.

That and letting JPow fix inflation without constantly screeching about needing to lower interest rates.

I know the recent presidency really lowered the bar, but Obama wasn't decent. Sure, he was good at speeches. Yet one of the first things he did was let war criminals off the hook. He went soft on fraudsters at Wall Street after they caused a global financial crisis. He prosecuted more whistleblowers than his predecessors combined. He sent drones to foreign soil and extrajudicially assassinated thousands of people outside of war zones, including many civilians. All of this is insane and did play a role for what came after. The world deserves better.

The audacity to push things called the Affordable Care Act too.

“Rules for thee but not for me” is the narcissist’s core value.

This creates an incentive to post things that cause high volatility (even in the downward direction) as that creates a "subscribe if you want early warning of market dips" pressure factor.

Maybe we can keep going to a point where it's so ridiculous that people realise the financial markets are the useless money laundering loop that they actually are

The supply of capital is absolutely critical to an industrial economy, even if there's a lot of corruption along the way.

The supply of food is absolutely critical to a human population, even if truckloads of fish are left to rot in the sun outside schools?

The supply of mineral and energy resources is absolutely critical to an industrial economy, even if rivers are polluted to the point they catch fire ala the Cuyahoga River Fire of 1969?

I suspect it's worth the effort to minimise and prosecute the corruption, waste, and harmful externalities.

> The supply of food is absolutely critical to a human population, even if truckloads of fish are left to rot in the sun outside schools?

Well, yes, you can't solve this problem by cutting off the supply of food and then declaring that you've ended waste.

> you can't solve this problem

by doing something I did not suggest. Agreed.

What I did suggest is not putting up with corruption, waste, and toxic externalities "just because".

Capital comes through direct investment and public offerings, not the secondary shares market.

It's bonkers that we have a private company that does things for other private companies being somehow the back-bone of every nation on the planet.....

This is already happening, see all of the tariff and Iran tweets. It's just that now there's another layer of insiders.

Crazy times we live in that a president can do this.

There was a long concerted effort to disable all the accountability mechanisms. A massive failure across the board, at every level, in every party.

Now that the entire justice system is broken, the American system is being dismantled and looted.

2024 was fatal. Enjoy the slide into the abyss.

I think we're realizing that the accountability was never there, prior presidents simply had a sense of dignity.

Ultimately only congress and scotus can intervene. But America decided to vote in the January 6 guy and a congress that wouldn't serve as a check on his power.

Yeah, most of the vaunted "checks and balances" in the US constitution either come down to a gentlemen's agreement, or depend on either the nonexistence of political parties, or parties being crosscut by sectional loyalties that haven't really been a factor in US politics for over 100 years.

that a politician tries to be corrupt isn't new.

the crazy times part is that the gun-totin freedom lovin americans refuse to do jack shit about it.

i believe the term is "chickenhawks"

Seriously, there are no limits to his graft. This is commercialisation of insider trading. He is shameless.

Every country gets the government it deserves.

-- Joseph de Maistre, 1811

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_de_Maistre

> Joseph Marie, comte de Maistre[a] (1 April 1753 – 26 February 1821)[1] was a Savoyard lawyer, diplomat, and political philosopher. He is chiefly remembered as one of the intellectual forefathers of modern conservatism.

Sounds like he'd love Trump, then

How do some third graders in Alabama deserve this? How do my 22-year-old waiter friends in rural Texas deserve this?

What exactly did they do to deserve this?

Those third graders didn't vote hard enough.

Be precise: the quote does not say "individual people deserve...", it's talking about the country as a whole. And even then, you don't necessarily have to agree with it.

It's easy to hide a lot of objectionable stuff in metonymy.

It feels reasonable to me to think of a "country" as the people who live there; doubly so when discussing a putative democracy.

But sure, I will entertain the idea that you mean something different that literally every other person I've encountered who has uttered that similar sentiment:

if the claim is that the owning-class of the US are seeing the results of their 400-year-long racist, genocidal campaign to enslave the world and exploit every crevice of the planet come home to roost in the form of a decaying ability to present themselves as ethically okay...

sure I can agree to that.

But honestly, I don't think that's what you're trying to say.

If you pay to have the info a few seconds before everyone else, does this make it insider trading?

You don’t have the info “before everyone else”. You have it after the ones who are guaranteed to benefit from knowing it and/or from disseminating it. Whether you can benefit from it or are the mark is debatable.

The issue is the conflict of interest in POTUS' office. A news agency giving high speed access to news ostensibly just reports news, doesn't make them. The office of the POTUS literally makes the news, even more so today than in the past.

The markets are very headline driven these days because Trump is a prolific poster and is highly unpredictable. This is basically him selling preferential access to market moves that he himself generates.

It's truly an unprecedented level of grifting happening.

Kleptocracy in all its forms.

As this president likes to say,”A disgrace”. And every accusation is a confession.

Elections have consequences.

Insider Trading as a Service.

How could US now be even worse than the spoils system era?

Americans are so proud of their 5th amendment. Yet when their country turns into a kleptocracy, nobody does anything.

Funnily, the 5th is the "right to remain silent." I think you're talking about the 2nd Amendment.

Insider trading as a service. They're not even pretending not to do it, utterly shameless.

New low..

Elon Musk must be rolling in his shallow grave, out of which he climbs at night, for not thinking of this before Trump.

The epstein-guest-pedo-leader of the "claim-to-be-leader-nation" monetize billion in crypto, poorly chineese manufactured phone and sells access to own market-manipulation-intended-texts. It's so much bad stuff that poor people don't even know how to start battling with it...

The music on this sinking ship will keep playing till the very end. It's a decline. There is no observable way up from this point.

> There is no observable way up from this point.

The mid terms?

It's already looking like Putin/Erdogan-style election fixing...

And then what? You get a lame duck, then (if you're really lucky) a 4 year dems gov where they basically do basically nothing expect try to clean (or bury) the most outrageous cases of corruption and then once the MAGAs get elected again you're back at the beginning?

Trump fired all members of the Election Assistance Commission this week. His head of the USPS confirmed they have a proposed rule to not deliver mail-in ballots in select states. Last night, as we approach midterms, Trump gave a speech saying US elections are illegitimate and only he can fix it (by controlling the voting machines and who gets to vote).

I'm really sorry, but it really does look like we may have had our last actual election already.

two aspects

1. The situation I imply is way broader: it includes corporate favoritism, epstein files people not getting cosequences, cricular investment of the hyperscalers, illusion of AI boom where the president is just a cherry on top. Swap the cherries, and next ones will keep doing what current ones showed is possible and brings no consequences. Add money-printing, war which can't be won, debt growth etc etc. So yes, I don't see good way up from this point. Even with completely midterms lost by trump supporters the major block of problems stays on the table.

2. The mid terms may not result in trump weakening. There are number of scenarios where trump's team/supportes keep major control or even expand it (emergency powers, military or federal interference, or good old intimidation).

epstein files people not getting cosequences

France has started a new investigation and will try to extradite Ghislaine Maxwell, since she is a french national and has installed an investigative judge, so maybe some will face consequences.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/1322121619

Formally you're correct. Cudos to France. I think there are also a number of invesitgations started in other european countries. Like Norway or something.

In practice majority of people from the list are americans. The released documents are created by the parts of the american government (we did not see what other organisations know/have) which is literally responsible for enforcing the law. It even have "justice" in their title "Department of Justice". And this is only the visible to us part. They have way more info than they showed... So yeah, no justice is not on the menu today from USA's government.

I'm not sure what the way out here is. Even with both houses (which won't happen) the Supreme Court has declared all independent agencies created by Congress unconstitutional. Funding approved by Congress can basically be line-item vetoed by the executive. And of course the bar for impeachment is simply too high.

Split houses means that anything bad can be blamed on the blue house.

Honestly, if you think the GOP isn't currently serving the country's interests you kinda have to hope they aren't given a scapegoat this fall.

Insider trading as a service. The corruption knows no bounds.

Previously posted topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48935614

Waiting for the Polymarket joint venture...

It looks like Kalshi is currently closer to the topic at hand: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48936529

Insider Trading as a SaaS product? ITaaS?

Wake up America, they're laughing into your face

The grift that keeps on grifting. To put it poetically, everyday discovering something brand new.

This merely "encourages" Trump and team to move the markets even more, to sell more subscriptions ?

He and his staff can plan out specific utterances that are substantial for moving the markets - endless feedback loop ?

> The new commercial data feed, named Truth API, promises to deliver posts to paying institutional clients in "milliseconds".

...

> The company, which launched its social media app in 2022, said some firms have been copying its data for months without permission.

> McGurn warned that Trump Media will soon block these methods, forcing firms to buy the official feed instead.

This looks like it is monetizing and organizing scrapers. Isn't basically everyone doing this with data feeds these days?

At best this just gives a few milliseconds head start to subscribers and cracks down on automation. I would be shocked if NYSE, etc. don't already have premium tiers with faster market data and those feeds are certainly paid APIs. It's known that HFT shops will co-locate, for example, to have low latency.

This looks really bad, but if it were X and not Truth Social, there wouldn't be anything to see. It goes to the underlying issue of Trump owning and trying to profit from Truth Social generally.

There is literally nothing else of value on Truth Social except the president's posts. And those are considered official government communications. There's a legal ruling about that from the time of the first Trump administration.

So the US president has created a wrapper corporation that sells early access to official government communications. It doesn't matter if it's only milliseconds, that's enough for trading systems to make money.

How can any of this be legal in a democracy?

I agree. I think the first part is the surprising part.

The second makes sense for an arms-length news service.

The people voted for a really corrupt guy, so they get tonnes of corruption. That's how.

The grift. It never stops.

The government is one giant taxpayer-funded scam after another. Not that I like Trump in any way, but I’m somewhat thankful that he’s so brazen with the corruption and shedding light on everything.

There’s not a single respectable politician. Obama was worth $1-2M before he became president, and is now worth $70M+.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com