7 ms·
Treason in the Futures Markets
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- LadyCailin 6mo agoNone of this is any surprise to people who had two brain cells to rub together. He showed massive corruption in his first term, and despite being impeached twice, got away with it scot free. Then got a huge mandate from the people to be a shitty person, so yeah, he’s corrupt. The majority of voting Americans don’t really seem to care.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- rich_sasha 6mo agoWhile 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.
- u1hcw9nx 6mo agoThe quantity makes it more than weird. This is not just price change or manipulation. Prices can move big amounts for weird reasons without significant changes in trade volumes. The volume of sales makes it significant. $580 million sales of oil futures and probably similar amount of buys in stock futures means $1T quick billion move. Nobody makes half trillion __trades__ for weird reasons and this was too short to be movement of sellers in general.
- QuadmasterXLII 6mo ago*580 million
- Grimburger 6mo agoThere was equity futures and oil contracts both at the same time. Total risked with zero public news was approx $1.5B
- kasey_junk 6mo agoNotional. Those contracts have between 8-15x leverage. Looking at the CNBC graph linked you can see the volume better (though not the actual lot sizes). The likely at risk dollars was probably closer to 10M across both.
- QuadmasterXLII 6mo agoSure, I believe that. But not 580 Billion. (I sometimes wonder how much damage has been done to the United States political system by naming them million, billion and trillion. Would we all budget carefully and precisely consider the relative impacts of different scales of expenditure if a thousand thousand was a woozle, a thousand woozle added up to a brillig, and a thousand brillig was a fearsome vogon?)
- rich_sasha 6mo agoIt is very weird and suspicious but not out of the realms of possibility. And I don't say it because I'm vouching here for the honesty of this administration. Crude oil contracts (WTI and Brent - both same size) traded roughly 3m contracts that day. 6,200 quoted by FT is about 2% of that. It's a lot - crazy much. But not crazy-crazy-someone-is-defo-a-crook crazy. It's not even a given at this point that all these trades come from one person. In fact I doubt they do - because most brokerages would simply not allow you to put this trade. It could well be a huge trade, but a fraction of the 6200 that changed hands, then HFT algos jumping in in the action. Which is all investigable, and should be investigated.
- cbeach 6mo ago[flagged]
- giaour 6mo agoThe $580MM transaction described in the article is already 1,000 times larger than the alleged congressional insider trading by Paul Pelosi that caused Sen. Hawley to introduce the PELOSI act.
- kubb 6mo agoHonestly the PELOSI act is a step in the right direction, and should be extended to include all kinds of cryptocurrency and real estate. Also the president and his extended family should be included in it. The only problem is in the name. It's clearly just to score political points. I'd be surprised if it gets approved.
- giaour 6mo agoThere are more recent versions with better names, like the Restore Trust in Congress Act[0], and one introduced a few days ago to ban congresspeople and the president (as well as their immediate family members) from betting on prediction markets[1]. I can only imagine the GP mentioned the PELOSI act (which, as I recall, was cosponsored by Nancy Pelosi and blocked by Republicans) because it was designed to be partisan messaging. [0]: https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/5106/text https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/5106... [1]: https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2026/03/25/congress/lawmakers-introduce-bill-to-prohibit-members-of-congress-president-from-prediction-market-trading-00843337 https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2026/03/25/congress/la...
- jfengel 6mo ago"Treason" seems a bit much. We put a very high bar on that term because it comes with the most serious consequences. The fact that nobody seems particularly surprised by it suggests that the damage is long since done.
- technothrasher 6mo agoWe (the US) put a high bar on it because the Crown was using it as a way to attack political enemies and we didn’t want to follow suit. It is such a high bar in this country that it is effectively dead law, as nobody has been tried for it since soon after WWII, and very very few people have been convicted, and of those several had their convictions overturned. 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.
- jfengel 6mo agoThe Constitution put a pretty high bar on a lot of things. They put an enormous thumb on the scale of the status quo, which benefits some and harms a lot of others. Especially since the proponents of the status quo get to now put their hands on their hearts and say "gosh, I'd like to fix that injustice, but the holy Constitution means I just can't."
- -warren 6mo agoAgreed. War Profiteering [0] is probably a better term. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_profiteering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_profiteering
- the_gipsy 6mo agoExcuse my ignorance, but why can't this be traced? It's not crypto wallets, why is there no transparency here?
- stephbook 6mo agoIt can be traced, but the people who could and should be tracing this have been told not to. Even if they found the culprits, what's a judge's verdict against a presidential pardon?
- magpi3 6mo ago> 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.
- yifanl 6mo agoIs there anyone who isnt Trump4Life who still needs to be convinced theres corruption happening very high up in the government? We've very little doubt its happening, and it does us no good if there arent actions taken against it.
- fc417fc802 6mo agoIt still needs to be methodically exposed. The process is important.
- libertine 6mo agoWhat if people don't care because it's their guy?
- fc417fc802 6mo ago... that's the same question I responded to there.
- epolanski 6mo agoAnd very soon, as economics and behavioral sciences suggest, we will have world events directly influenced by people having the incentives to make them happen for financial gains only. 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.
- imafish 6mo agoVote, protest, speak up, go into politics.
- epolanski 6mo agoPolitics require more than good intentions. 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.
- rapnie 6mo agoAnd vote with your wallet. In general, contribute your 2 cents to the good cause. Let your voice be heard, join initiatives that work on solutions. Whatever you do. It does matter.
- anonu 6mo ago"Treason" is a bit hyperbolic. Futures are governed a bit differently around MNPI versus equities - based on CFTC rules. If the MNPI was obtained through a duty breach then it still "might" be illegal. Most futures MNPI enforcements have been around energy data or FOMC announcements. But its usually noticed due to consistent, repeated patterns. A one-off event like this, while egregious, is probably not going to be chased. Not saying thats right... I am just saying the grift will continue...
- protocolture 6mo ago[flagged]
- patall 6mo agoSo, who is paying the bill here? I am assuming the insider trading itself is zero-sum (its obviously different if what's happing happens only to allow insider trading) and while some (like passive investors like me that buy every month) win a bit, others lose a bit, someone loses big on the futures market. Is that the high frequency and quant traders? Because I assume, someone must be really mad? Especially since, and I again 'assume', that there must be easier and less public ways to bribe the admin
- kasey_junk 6mo agoThe losses would be diffuse. In the commodities markets you have a blend of speculative action and real economic activity. The blend is different based on the contract as well. The emini futures are pure financial engineering so it’s harder to track directly to the underlying economic activity. Wti is much easier. Lots of real economic actors that produce or consume oil are active in those markets.
- basilikum 6mo agoIt's you. Every trader who does not have the insider information loses. That's how markets work after all. They collect information by rewarding the use of information. Anyone who has information and uses it is rewarded and anyone who does not is punished. 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.