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Grand Theft Oil Futures: Insider traders keep making a killing at our expense

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Re: Grand Theft Oil Futures: Insider traders keep making a killing at our expense

#221

Post by ericmay »

therobots927 wrote: post #113
ericmay wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Maybe if Iran had a nuke Israel would cut back on sexual torture of detainees and indiscriminate bombing of vast swaths of densely populated land. And maybe the US would think twice about spending $10 trillion fighting pointless wars in the region. I’m in favor of that scenario.

> Maybe if Iran had a nuke Israel would cut back on sexual torture of detainees and indiscriminate bombing of vast swaths of densely populated land.

Aside from the fact that Iran and its proxies do this, you have to remember that Israel very likely has nukes and so if Iran gets a nuke what exactly are they going to do with it in the scenario you described? Nuke Tel Aviv? Israel would just nuke them back.

> And maybe the US would think twice about spending $10 trillion fighting pointless wars in the region.

Idk if your figure is right, seems too high, but you are incorrect here because if Iran had a nuke the US could still invade Iraq or Afghanistan.

And honestly maybe it wasn't worth the money but Iraq is doing much better, has a functioning parliament, &c. Maybe that's the problem - it's like Iran's regime is jealous that people can live in peace and don't have to be whipped up into a fury to go murder other people and Iraq is just showing them how it's done. It reminds me of the former Soviet countries where Russia sees they are doing much better without Russia and gets jealous.

Re: Grand Theft Oil Futures: Insider traders keep making a killing at our expense

#222

Post by k12sosse »

throwtyy wrote: post #173
cbdevidal wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it were that obvious we would have specifically heard it it predicted. Maybe someone did but I didn’t hear it, and I listen to politics daily. Expressing a desire to take Greenland but not actually doing so was a move out of his book Art of the Deal.

The million dollar question is how america occupies Greenland. As always Europe does nothing

America attacks Greenland? Europe liberating bases on their soil would be the obvious response

Re: Grand Theft Oil Futures: Insider traders keep making a killing at our expense

#223

Post by swasheck »

cbdevidal wrote: post #149
marcosdumay wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, more specifically, by 2020 he was sending military boats to attack Iranian targets and trying to force Russia to respond. He only stopped because of COVID.

If it were that obvious we would have specifically heard it it predicted. Maybe someone did but I didn’t hear it, and I listen to politics daily. Expressing a desire to take Greenland but not actually doing so was a move out of his book Art of the Deal.

it was patently obvious. people were just blinded by xenophobia as the primary issue facing the nation and they bought it, peripheral consequences be damned

Re: Grand Theft Oil Futures: Insider traders keep making a killing at our expense

#224

Post by gizajob »

smallmancontrov wrote: post #110
gizajob wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s also funny when you see their performance charted against Warren Buffet’s. Looks like Warren is a rank amateur who knows very little about the markets and buying companies for the right price compared to the likes of Nancy who must be a supreme multitasker and stock picker. People have been strung up for less than what counts as business as usual in contemporary, rotten to the core, American business & politics.

> supreme multitasker and stock picker Not really. Paul Pelosi was a tech investor. If you were heavily concentrated in META, AAPL, AMZN, NFLX, GOOG, etc you should have crushed the S&P and Warren Buffet too. Famously, Warren Buffet's recent outperformance mostly came from AAPL, which was <1% of his positioning when he put it on. Imagine if it had been several percent! Such were the delights of many tech investors ov…

I was picking on her but there are dozens of others who outperform Warren by multiples. And ok he’s pretty conservative but even so this chart is pretty damning.

https://watcher.guru/news/congress-stock-trades-outscores-bu...

Re: Grand Theft Oil Futures: Insider traders keep making a killing at our expense

#225

Post by bluefirebrand »

zzrrt wrote: post #218
bobthepanda wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nonvoters would win the Electoral College if that was a thing.

Hot take: if <80% of eligible voters show up, nobody wins and the same politicians stay in office for another year, even if term limits would normally apply.

How about instead it immediately triggers another new election and the people who ran previously are not eligible to run ever again

Re: Grand Theft Oil Futures: Insider traders keep making a killing at our expense

#226

Post by IOT_Apprentice »

bobthepanda wrote: post #189
philipallstar wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlike Venezuela and Iran, Cuba doesn't really fuel China, so I assume it's not such a priority.

I mean, in that case why rattle about Greenland?

Reportedly, Rare earth minerals.

Re: Grand Theft Oil Futures: Insider traders keep making a killing at our expense

#227

Post by FireBeyond »

mothballed wrote: post #30
LadyCailin wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can’t make millions from shorts unless you’ve already got millions to risk.

Shorts don't cost much to open, just the borrow rate on the shares. As long as it goes straight down you can leverage quite a bit without getting called. Of course, this is the fastest way to lose your shirt and everything you have ever worked for, if there is any uncertainty.

Yes, I'm sure Robinhood or Schwab will allow me to open a $2M short position when my portfolio is $[sufficiently small that I'm debating the costs of a couple of thousand for a helicopter charter].

Re: Grand Theft Oil Futures: Insider traders keep making a killing at our expense

#228

Post by ben_w »

bobthepanda wrote: post #189
philipallstar wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlike Venezuela and Iran, Cuba doesn't really fuel China, so I assume it's not such a priority.

I mean, in that case why rattle about Greenland?

Almost everyone's asking the same question regardless of what they think's going on inside Trump's head. The two most coherent answers I've seen are "to soothe his narcissistic injury from being told he can't" and "feels entitled to it because NATO", you will note neither of these was his stated reason, and all of this is still catastrophically poor judgment on his part.

Re: Grand Theft Oil Futures: Insider traders keep making a killing at our expense

#229

Post by sfink »

gruez wrote: post #26
izacus wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This kind of "well eksuallyyyy" argument isn't very useful or good faith when a systemic harm is highlighted. It's just contrarian muddying of the conversation.

>This kind of "well eksuallyyyy" argument It's not, when the article is specifically arguing that the insider trading is bad beyond just corruption, and barely touches corruption. You don't get to tack on a weak claim on top of a strong claim, and then when the weak claim gets pushback fall back to the strong claim and say everything's fine because you're directionally correct, or claim the person pushing back is wro…

You keep saying this, when it is counter to the actual text of the article.

> Yet aside from the raw corruption, these incidents also raise a larger question....What broader damage does this kind of unchecked insider trading do?

That is what the article is about. It's saying that this is corruption, and discussing what the effect of this corruption is. "Beyond just corruption" is wholly your invention. I don't even know what it would mean?

Corruption is the cause. The article discusses the resulting effect.

Re: Grand Theft Oil Futures: Insider traders keep making a killing at our expense

#230

Post by smallmancontrov »

jstanley wrote: post #162
smallmancontrov wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a tax. I don't know if you specifically are one of the "taxation is theft" types, but it's absolutely wild how many of these are totally cool with the tax if it's funding insider trading payouts but not if it's paying for poor person healthcare or whatever.

In the absence of the insider trader selling you oil futures on the basis of his insider knowledge, what would you do? You'd buy oil futures at broadly the same price from someone else (maybe a worse price! Because the presence of the insider selling is already driving the price down). So how exactly do you lose? The only people who lose out are those whose limit orders don't get filled because the insider outbid the…

This is completely ignorant of market microstructure. For big swaths of the market, most parties interacting with the market do so by trading with a market maker who ensures that everyone's trades clear immediately in exchange for a fee that covers the risk of getting caught offsides. If you're big enough, it makes sense to take that risk in house, but the risk and its very real financial cost remains. In both cases, trades that increase the risk increase the fee. So no, corruption is a tax and everyone pays the tax even though the mechanics have fallen through the rather large cracks in your understanding.

If you think this tax is de minimis, great, glad to hear it, let's put a government tax of similar magnitude in there and resume the peanut butter rations to starving african kids that DOGE cut.

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