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Traders placed over $1B in perfectly timed bets on the Iran war

theguardian.com

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Re: Traders placed over $1B in perfectly timed bets on the Iran war

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw a tweet about a trader placing an oil bet when they saw two military aircraft turn around on their way to Iran, via transponder. I believe before the deal was announced.

That also sounds easy enough to fake for some plausible deniability.

in fact US army publicly admitting running a disinformation campaign involving flying planes knowing they would be seen by osint in the previous Iran attack from last summer

Re: Traders placed over $1B in perfectly timed bets on the Iran war

#94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw a tweet about a trader placing an oil bet when they saw two military aircraft turn around on their way to Iran, via transponder. I believe before the deal was announced.

That also sounds easy enough to fake for some plausible deniability.

Just as parallel construction [1] is used by law enforcement to conceal methods and practices no reason to not expect the same for financial gain.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction

Re: Traders placed over $1B in perfectly timed bets on the Iran war

#95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

intentionally/unintentionally is not relevant. it's legal to follow FBI cars and see who they raid so as to make trades. you could even have a hedge fund specialized on this. it's called alternative data you can even be a regular employer of a public company and trade based on information sent on internal emails. the only thing illegal is to be a designated insider - typically a restricted group of people with access…

> you can even be a regular employer of a public company and trade based on information sent on internal emails You absolutely cannot.

"cannot" here meaning it's likely to be prosecuted, not that you cannot. You absolutely can.

Re: Traders placed over $1B in perfectly timed bets on the Iran war

#96

Prediction Markets require insider trading to function... how do people not know this? It's a setup from day one. If you have the knowledge, you're going to cash in, if you don't have the knowledge, you are throwing your money away.

>Prediction Markets require insider trading to function.

And yet there are folks like me who have been on them for years before kalshi/polymarket making a very good side income from them without having insider knowledge.

Prediction markets as a whole are very very inefficient. That's not to say that insider trading doesn't exist but you can't claim that they require insider trading to function.

Re: Traders placed over $1B in perfectly timed bets on the Iran war

#97
post #83
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not knowing who are the insiders and who is the dumb flow is like the fundamental problem of hft

In theory that is part of what was supposed to have been solved by CAT.

What is CAT?

Re: Traders placed over $1B in perfectly timed bets on the Iran war

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you can even be a regular employer of a public company and trade based on information sent on internal emails You absolutely cannot.

"cannot" here meaning it's likely to be prosecuted, not that you cannot . You absolutely can.

[deleted]

Re: Traders placed over $1B in perfectly timed bets on the Iran war

#99
post #5

What's the statute of limitations on such things? Because it won't be prosecuted by 2029 but could be afterwards Personally I think it's a bigger problem when the President sues his own government for billions and then orders them to pay it out Because -that- is not an official act. It could be prosecuted but no-one will touch it even after 2029

Given Trump has promised blanket pardons for any illegality from his administration during his term, I think the question will be whether pardons for crimes not yet investigated/charged are covered by the pardon and whether anyone will pursue those investigations and convictions.

Democrats have historically not really been willing to do anything if there's any plausible sounding reason for doing nothing, so I'm guessing they'll jump at the opportunity to wave away the insider trading stuff. Let bygones be bygones, you know, in the spirit of bipartisanship and comity. They slow-rolled prosecuting the crimes of the first Trump administration. So slow that he was re-elected before anything began to happen.

Re: Traders placed over $1B in perfectly timed bets on the Iran war

#100
Say whatever you want about the merits of prediction markets. But I just don't see a way those benefits outweigh the societal dangers of these constant reminders that people in or close to power can freely profit from their positions in the ways the rest of the population can't. There's always talk about the dangers of disincentivizing job creators, but what happens when a society routinely disincentives job havers in this way? We're just getting a constant barrage of information telling us that if we show up to our job and simply work as we're expected that we're stooges who won't get ahead. You'll need to look for your own individual scheme, ethics be damned, if you just want to keep up with the rest of the population. That's not healthy on an individual level or cumulatively at a societal level.
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