As an ex-derivatives trader, the Vanity Fair article leaves me short of evidence for anything nefarious.
First of all, Trump tweets a lot. You wonder if he does anything else.
Second, the market trades a lot. S&P minis are possibly the most liquid market anyone can think of (10yr future? Dunno).
Third, a lot of derivs trades are misunderstood. For example, when I was running a fund someone sent me an article suggesting China had abandoned capitalism. Their evidence was a massive open interest in some S&P put strike. Turned out it was just a big box trade, which by its nature can take up a lot more contracts than risky bets.
My main thought about these big trades is they might well be hedges. Perhaps someone running an ETF or other index linked product managed to land some customers and needed to match the exposure.
In any case, I doubt it's insider trading. The regulators are very good at finding even very small cases. You read about it now and again that someone who isn't even in the US got busted making themselves a few hundred grand.
> I doubt it's insider trading. The regulators are very good at finding even very small cases.
I am not a trader, but I have anecdotally come across many instances where minutes or hours before a company releases big stock-moving news, the stock price creeps up or down in the direction that the news will eventually move the stock. It seems like insider trading is rampant.
>> I have anecdotally come across many instances where minutes or hours before a company releases big stock-moving news
> That’s not insider trading, thats market sentiment being correct.
In the instances I have seen, the news that came out was not expected to come out at the time it did. It was not a scheduled quarterly report or public filing: these were surprise announcements. The market moving up or down before-hand seemed like pretty obvious proof of insider trading.
First of all, Trump tweets a lot. You wonder if he does anything else.
Second, the market trades a lot. S&P minis are possibly the most liquid market anyone can think of (10yr future? Dunno).
Third, a lot of derivs trades are misunderstood. For example, when I was running a fund someone sent me an article suggesting China had abandoned capitalism. Their evidence was a massive open interest in some S&P put strike. Turned out it was just a big box trade, which by its nature can take up a lot more contracts than risky bets.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Box_spread_(options)
My main thought about these big trades is they might well be hedges. Perhaps someone running an ETF or other index linked product managed to land some customers and needed to match the exposure.
In any case, I doubt it's insider trading. The regulators are very good at finding even very small cases. You read about it now and again that someone who isn't even in the US got busted making themselves a few hundred grand.