$70M in 60 Seconds: How Insider Info Helped Someone 28x Their Money • Hacker News Board

Re: $70M in 60 Seconds: How Insider Info Helped Someone 28x Their Money

#51

Post by LeafItAlone » Sat, Apr 12, 2025, 6:49 AM UTC

nramanand wrote: post #13

A relevant aside: surely insider trading is happening all the time? There are so many daily market-shifting events involving so many privy parties that it seems inevitable to happen every few minutes (not defending the actions in the article). How many physicians have been able to get rich from learning a CEO will be out of commission? In that case, I'm not even sure whether it would be considered insider trading. Ho…

>How many physicians have been able to get rich from learning a CEO will be out of commission?

Do you actually have an answer to that? Or are you just throwing out an unanswerable question as some form of “gotcha”?

Now I’m actually curious. There aren’t _that_ many publicly traded companies; only about 4,000 according to Google. A little over 9,000 IPOs since 1980 [0]. The number of companies where the CEO being “out of commission” on such a short timescale would generate “rich” (to me, in this scenario, >$5 million) levels of ROI has to be pretty low up. Probably not even most of the Fortune 100. Then the number of doctors who have that info and are going to act on it is a smaller fraction. Then the three have to match (command that fits + ill CEO + trading physician). Do you think it’s over 10? 25?

0. https://site.warrington.ufl.edu/ritter/files/IPO-Statistics....

Re: $70M in 60 Seconds: How Insider Info Helped Someone 28x Their Money

#52

Post by scotty79 » Sat, Apr 12, 2025, 6:51 AM UTC

amszmidt wrote: post #42

irrational wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except the military.

Alas, the military answers to the president. Article II Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution, "the President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States." Not that the constitution matters ...

Military answers to whomever it thinks it's best to get paid. If relationship between government and the people fails so hard that collection of taxes to fund the military is threatened then the military sides either with the people and deposes the government or with the government and suppresses the unrest.

Re: $70M in 60 Seconds: How Insider Info Helped Someone 28x Their Money

#53

Post by svg7 » Sat, Apr 12, 2025, 6:53 AM UTC

eru wrote: post #44

svg7 wrote: post #19

While I have no doubt that insider trading happens quite regularly, I would not jump to that conclusion here. IIRC the previous day, big Wall street names were advocating for a pause in tariffs . So a lot of people placed bets accordingly. Also staking 2.5M is "small change" for true insiders.

> Also staking 2.5M is "small change" for true insiders. Why? A secretary or janitor or a intern could also be an insider. Or are they No True Scotsmen?

Yes, in theory, anyone can be an insider. But folks up in the chain are much more likely to be "insiders with information". I should have probably said "very rich insiders" instead of "true insiders."

Re: $70M in 60 Seconds: How Insider Info Helped Someone 28x Their Money

#54

Post by jwilber » Sat, Apr 12, 2025, 6:53 AM UTC

hdevalence wrote: post #3

> We don’t know who placed the trades. We don’t know what they knew. Actually, “we”, collectively, do know, because the SEC maintains an “XKEYSCORE for equities” called CAT. If there was interest, the government could know exactly who placed these trades. But the call (options) are coming from inside the house.

Maybe it's a friend of Trump. Maybe it's a friend of Pelosi. Might even be a member of Congress!

"Rules for thee not for me."

Re: $70M in 60 Seconds: How Insider Info Helped Someone 28x Their Money

#55

Post by kulahan » Sat, Apr 12, 2025, 6:55 AM UTC

amszmidt wrote: post #42

irrational wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except the military.

Alas, the military answers to the president. Article II Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution, "the President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States." Not that the constitution matters ...

The military repeatedly drills into trainees that they serve to defend and uphold the constitution, not the presidential orders. There are all kinds of lessons on when to disobey direct orders, when to speak up, how to speak up, what your protections are, etc. etc.

Re: $70M in 60 Seconds: How Insider Info Helped Someone 28x Their Money

#56

Post by paulgb » Sat, Apr 12, 2025, 6:55 AM UTC

jwilber wrote: post #54

hdevalence wrote: post #3

> We don’t know who placed the trades. We don’t know what they knew. Actually, “we”, collectively, do know, because the SEC maintains an “XKEYSCORE for equities” called CAT. If there was interest, the government could know exactly who placed these trades. But the call (options) are coming from inside the house.

Maybe it's a friend of Trump. Maybe it's a friend of Pelosi. Might even be a member of Congress! "Rules for thee not for me."

Is congress actually apprised of the tariff developments, or do they learn about them from twitter like the rest of us?

Re: $70M in 60 Seconds: How Insider Info Helped Someone 28x Their Money

#57

Post by kilroy123 » Sat, Apr 12, 2025, 6:55 AM UTC

jmyeet wrote: post #27

What's surprising about all this is how quickly, easily and cheaply the republic was dismantled and how little opposition there was from people in power. This culminated in Trump v. United States [1] where unelected partisans simply invented presidential immunity completely out of thin air. That means there are absolutely no possible legal repercussions for any of this. None. And even if there were, the agencies in c…

I agree no one is coming to save anything.

The only people that can save it are regular people standing up and taking action.

Re: $70M in 60 Seconds: How Insider Info Helped Someone 28x Their Money

#58

Post by LeafItAlone » Sat, Apr 12, 2025, 6:55 AM UTC

miohtama wrote: post #36

Inside trading on political information is legal in the US. Nancy Pelosi (Democrat) made this famous in last decade, hitting news headlines with it: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/nancy-pelosi-outperformed-nea... https://nypost.com/2024/09/27/us-news/trump-calls-for-nancy-... Inside trading rules concern only leaking corporate-private insider information.

By Nancy Pelosi, you actually mean her husband.

And if you look at the trades, you’ll learn the biggest secret on Wall Street: make long term bets on tech and you’ll get richer. Don’t tell anyone I told you.

Re: $70M in 60 Seconds: How Insider Info Helped Someone 28x Their Money

#59

Post by svg7 » Sat, Apr 12, 2025, 6:55 AM UTC

huijzer wrote: post #28

Overall the argument by the author is very convincing and well put. One part I don’t fully agree with is > If the trades hadn’t worked out, the losses would have been swift and total. Zero-day options don’t forgive bad timing. The entire $2.5 million could have evaporated by the close of trading. Even with SPY shares, any unexpected reversal would have meant millions in losses. This has exactly been Taleb’s strategy.…

nicely put, but I wonder why you think that similar volume of options would be bought on other days. These days are much more volatile and bets like these love volatility

Re: $70M in 60 Seconds: How Insider Info Helped Someone 28x Their Money

#60

Post by MichaelRo » Sat, Apr 12, 2025, 6:57 AM UTC

dwedge wrote: post #41

huijzer wrote: post #28

Overall the argument by the author is very convincing and well put. One part I don’t fully agree with is > If the trades hadn’t worked out, the losses would have been swift and total. Zero-day options don’t forgive bad timing. The entire $2.5 million could have evaporated by the close of trading. Even with SPY shares, any unexpected reversal would have meant millions in losses. This has exactly been Taleb’s strategy.…

Unless I'm totally misreading this, it wasn't a 2.5m trade, it was 80c per option at 30,000 of them, less than $30k The option to buy at 2.5m was not an obligation to do so

Yes you are misreading because options have a contract size of 100. So you can't buy "one option", only a contract of 100 options at minimum. Which means 80 cents x 100 = 80 bucks per contract. Multiply by 30,000 and you get =~ $2.5 million.

And it's bullshit that you can reliably make money of such low probability options. Even if you do, you never put $2.5 million on something with a huge probability of ending in a complete loss, these deep out of the money options are essentially lottery tickets.

I do buy slightly OTM options and it's barely profitable and even so I think mostly out of pure luck. No way would someone have done this trade without inside info.