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

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

#151

Post by immibis »

kulahan wrote: post #55
amszmidt wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's what they tell them, yes. Do their actions align with their words?

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

#152

Post by dragonwriter »

maxbond wrote: post #105
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.

Is this really SEC's bailiwick? Aren't options commodities (and so regulated by CFTC)?

No, options are derivatives and are, in the US, generally regulated by the body regulating the underlying asset; stock/index options are regulated by the SEC, commodities options by the CFTC.

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

#153

Post by koolba »

mattkevan wrote: post #140
eru wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With a bit of luck, you only have to wait for 2 years, when Congress changes hands.

Bold to assume there are going to be elections. All it needs is some kind of emergency, genuine, imaginary or self-inflicted, and ‘Oh no, we can’t possibly hold elections until our time of national crisis is over.’

You mean like Ukraine?

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

#154

Post by immibis »

mattkevan wrote: post #140
eru wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With a bit of luck, you only have to wait for 2 years, when Congress changes hands.

Bold to assume there are going to be elections. All it needs is some kind of emergency, genuine, imaginary or self-inflicted, and ‘Oh no, we can’t possibly hold elections until our time of national crisis is over.’

Congress already ruled that time isn't passing, allowing a temporary state of national emergency to become permanent. There's no reason to think they won't find some asinine excuse to deny elections or defer them indefinitely.

They might not even need an excuse. They could just not hold elections and say "what are you going to do about it?"

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

#155

Post by olelele »

urbandw311er wrote: post #89
NKosmatos wrote: post #85

Whenever I see similar articles I get reminded that all these are worthless paperless money, exchanging hands and playing a game. Futures, options, securities (and all the rest financial jargon) proves that there is a very big economic game at play in a global scale. No wonder the whole planet owes some trillions (to whom?) :-) There is no need for scientists to prove we’re living inside a simulation, this whole glob…

I take a different view. These moments when the mask briefly slips are a chance to remember that we are controlled by a greedy elite and only given the illusion of choice and prosperity.

The amount of people in the startup world infected by the American Dream-Logic of privatization and Anarcho-capitalism always astounds me.

All I know and have in my life is thanks to public funding. Social Democracy works and is good for business too. A state with little financial regulation in the end also has less power and control sum total.

Since the southern US basically survives off slave laborers with no paperwork and giving any normal human decency to those people would probably lower the Murican standard of living I have low hopes for change. Here in the EU we screwed ourselves too haha. No one really looks out for the little guy anymore.

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

#156

Post by koolba »

w10-1 wrote: post #137
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.

> So a lot of people placed bets accordingly But why not earlier in the day? Why this unique volume spike then? The one $2.5M is just a sample trade, part of a historic spike. No one's jumping to conclusions, but it should trigger an investigation.

Has it even been confirmed that all the trades are the same entity? Or is it the usual momentum play?

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

#157

Post by koolba »

procaryote wrote: post #143
edweis wrote: post #102

Who lost money during this deal? Or generally who indirectly paid these lucky gamblers?

The people holding the ETF and selling the option. If they had not sold the option, they would have benefited from the value rising, now they instead got (collectively) $2.5M. If the price had stayed flat or dropped, they would of course still have the $2.5M. The precision makes it look a lot like a crime, as trading on information that's not publicly available is illegal.

Note that you don’t need to own the underlying equity to write an option contract. You only own the stock as a hedge.

Owning the stock is a specific lower risk strategy called a covered call.

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

#158

Post by multjoy »

koolba wrote: post #153
mattkevan wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bold to assume there are going to be elections. All it needs is some kind of emergency, genuine, imaginary or self-inflicted, and ‘Oh no, we can’t possibly hold elections until our time of national crisis is over.’

You mean like Ukraine?

They’re literally fighting for their lives. Nobody wants elections in wartime, not least because polling stations become targets.

You need to lay off the MAGA talking points.

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

#159

Post by closewith »

johanvts wrote: post #111
delusional wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It'll get a lot worse before it gets better. Importantly, there's no guarantee it's actually going to get better. We like to pretend that human existence has some trajectory towards "justice" or "prosperity". I don't think that impulse does us justice. Stalin/Lenin could have won. Hitler could have won, Napoleon could have conquered and held. It could just get worse.

Oppression and corruption is expensive. Systems based on them are not going to be competitive in the long run.

That's a very optimistic belief, not any kind of axiom, but even if we accept it, the long run could easily extend past the lifetimes of every loving person today. It could last generations or much longer.

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

#160

Post by tirant »

w10-1 wrote: post #129
ctippett wrote: post #37

404 Media reported a story on Monday[1] about a news outlet that claimed there'd be a 90-day break on tariffs for all countries besides China. This was published a few days before the official announcement. So someone, somewhere, knew something before everyone else. [1] https://www.404media.co/benzinga-news-service-that-falsely-r...

Good cover: publicly release a rumor via a random tiny outlet (along with a flurry of other rumors). Then if questioned, just say you heard it there.

Benzinga is not a tiny outlet at all. There’s quite some trading platforms that distribute their news to their customers, like Interactive Brokers.
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