Since the start of the war, trading in the futures markets has been difficult and, at times, chaotic. In terms of their absolute size, the trades that took place immediately before Trump’s announcement last Monday were not out of the public domain. But the number of transactions was unusually large for the time of day: according to data collected and analyzed by Bloomberg, it was almost nine times more than the average number at the same time five days ago. The sudden rise in stock futures was also unusual: until Trump’s post, there was no big news. “The timing and the fact that the two businesses were put up at the same time, it smells like something is over,” Mike Khouw, a veteran trader and portfolio manager who used to run the desk from Cantor Fitzgerald, a Wall Street investment bank, told me.
In futures markets, trades are often placed on a margin with a trading account. Some of these businesses were so large, Khouw said, that whoever set them up would have needed tens of millions of dollars in cash reserves, indicating a high level of financial sophistication and wealth. Khouw said: “You’re not dealing with madness. You’re not dealing with someone whose other job is working at Starbucks.” The funds could have been placed by an institutional trader with a lot of money. At least it can be assumed that the hedge fund read the publicly available runes, concluded that Trump would back down before his forty-eight hour term was up, and decided to create a short position on oil and a long position. in stocks before the US markets open for the new week. Computer-driven trading is also common in futures markets, and the fact that the trade was so close to Trump’s announcement may have been a coincidence, Khouw said and corruption epidemic in the Trump Administration, it also seems plausible that someone, or some organization, was tipped off and put in.
It would not be the first time in recent history that anonymous traders make bank based on their ability to predict the announcements or actions of the President. The day before the war began, six reports on Polymarket, an online prediction site, said that the US would strike Iran within forty-eight hours, making a profit of more than a million dollars. In January, one Polymarket account won big by betting that Nicolás Maduro, the President of Venezuela, would soon be out of power. (On January 3, the US attack captured him and his wife.) But it will be difficult to know who made these wagers: it takes many people to launch a military attack, so the circle of advanced knowledge was really large, and betting on Polymarket is supported by anonymous cryptocurrency accounts, which are difficult to penetrate.
In this case, finding out who posted the correct time tasks should be easy – at least in theory. It seems reasonable to think that the number of people who received the first notice of Trump’s decision to postpone sanctions on power plants was relatively small, and the business was placed in controlled discussions. The regulatory agency primarily responsible for enforcing the rules in the futures market is the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). “What needs to happen is that the CFTC needs to investigate these activities,” said Schiffrin, who now owns Better Markets, a Washington-based public interest group. “They have the power to subpoena business records and get the names of the people who did the business.”
The CFTC did not respond to a question about whether it had opened an investigation. Despite recent staff reductions, the agency’s operations department is still staffed by dedicated professionals. But the CFTC’s leadership doesn’t inspire much confidence. Its current head, Mike Selig, is a thirty-six-year-old lawyer and crypto booster. Last week, Selig announced the creation of a “new task force” focused on three industries in which the Trump family currently has business interests. “The CFTC appears to be focusing more on the development of crypto, prediction markets, and AI than on its core mission: investigating and preventing fraud in the futures markets,” Schiffrin said.
#Won #Markets #Trump #Postponed #Bombing #Iran