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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

#471

Post by 20after4 »

consumer451 wrote: post #334
lazide wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you really think the US is going to just, what, retire all that military equipment you haven’t been paying attention.

Disclaimer: As it turns out, predicting the future is somewhat difficult. However, in isolationist MAGA, the US military is just a jobs program. This is plain facts, is it not? The other major power of the USA, post-WWII, was "soft power." That has now been cancelled. So, I am really not sure what is happening. I once thought that "may you live in interesting times" was a blessing. I now believe that this saying is a…

It was always a curse.

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

#473

Post by Shocka1 »

misja111 wrote: post #307

> And it wasn’t just options. At exactly 1:01 pm EST, trading volume in SPY shares themselves spiked. Nearly 2.75 million shares were bought in that single minute. This is standard practice, it was simply the marketmaker hedging its position after just having sold those $2.5 million call options. The math checks out; at 85 cent per piece, those were 2.94 million call options. At 9 above the spot the delta was less th…

Yeah this whole article is meant to stir outrage - HN is taking the bait, but that's expected. The most proficient people in the world at logic, and they are still culpable to biases. My comment shouldn't be confused though - there is smoke, but none of this is really proof because there isn't enough evidence yet from our perspective.

A lot more details needed: - Is it a fund or individual? - Does the trader make these kind of trades regularly?

I have more questions, but those are the first questions I would start with. I trade 0 and 1 days quite a bit in SPY and have collected a lot of data and performed statistical analysis on them for several years now. I myself sold S&P futures options that morning based off my data.

My theory until proven otherwise - Trader makes smaller trades in 0 days regularly - market volatility and the state of that week gave a much higher probability that there would be an extreme reversal at the first sign of any hint of good news, which was proven by fake news of a tariff lift just a day or two before. The overall bearish sentiment also coiled the market for an extreme move to the upside. Adding even more probability, the market that day was at the same level from Monday, where it showed buyers were foaming at the mouth to buy. Trump tweets just after market open that it was a great time to buy. Probability increases even more...

Similar to a very high probability count in Blackjack, trader puts in a trade at 12 and has an exit plan for 1 or two hours later. Trader determines that worst case 50 to 75% of the trade is lost due to theta decay by 2pm. Maybe they have a stop at 40%? Best case 2 to 10x's their money due to support levels giving a small rally. They've done this before and the wins outweigh the losses. Maybe even a hedge fund or algo trader running an ML model.

In my data I've seen extremely large multi-million dollar call option plays regularly when there is market volatility like this. Until proven otherwise, everyone just needs to stop with the outrage. I'm completely willing to change my mind as more evidence comes out.

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

#474

Post by TheAlchemist »

eru wrote: post #441
TheAlchemist wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2.5M on 0 day options is not small change at all, even for somewhat big players. 0 day - means it's a win big or loose 2.5M on a single day move.

Is it 2.5M notional (that's not necessarily a lot, especially if the options aren't (much) out of the money), or 2.5M premium paid?

2.5M premium paid

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

#475

Post by eru »

EasyMark wrote: post #458
eru wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nobody wants elections in wartime, not least because polling stations become targets. Nobody is a strong word. Lots of people want elections, especially in wartime. And lots of other people don't want elections. But it doesn't matter: the constitution of Ukraine doesn't allow elections during wartime. I think by default constitutional rules should be followed, unless there are very good reasons not to.

Also if the Ukrainians hated it so much they would just side with Russia and form rebel militias all over and apparently that is not happening, I think they know which side has their best interests at heart and which is trying to genocide them.

Well, from 2014 onward there were supposedly rebel militia groups in the south and east. (Most people think they were Russian puppets however.)

> [...] I think they know which side has their best interests at heart and which is trying to genocide them.

Doesn't even need to be their best interest, really. The Ukrainian government had and has its fair share of flaws. (They exist in the real world after all.) But it's enough that they are a lot better than Russia.

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

#476

Post by eru »

sorcerer-mar wrote: post #445
eru wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess unanimous is too high a bar amongst any larger group of people. But I can very well believe that the consensus is virtually unanimous.

The parliament held a vote and it was unanimous. You’re right that parliament isn’t “the government” writ large though.

Thanks for that detail!

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

#477

Post by eru »

Epa095 wrote: post #436
eru wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, that collapse is because of tariffs, not the intricacies of differences in insider trading law.

I was thinking more that these kind of lax laws allowed the rich to get richer, and influence politics in ways which enabled or accelerated the fall. But it it a complicated picture of course, and the further back in the chain of causality we go the harder it it to say anything for real.

> [...] allowed the rich to get richer, and influence politics [...]

That would have been a better world than the one we live in.

I'd rather have Romney and Bloomberg etc than the populists we got.

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

#478

Post by mjd »

tdb7893 wrote: post #350
mjd wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would a final court ruling shield someone from executive power? The court relies on the executive to enforce its decisions. They can find a person in contempt, and order fines or jail time until that person complies, but I believe the orders are then enforced by U.S. Marshals, who are executive appointees. This is a serious question. What have I missed?

I think there's no hard power stopping them but in general they've been reluctant to openly defy courts (they have defied lower courts some while claiming they haven't). I think at least adhering to some pretense of American democracy has so far been important to this administration and if they abandon that pretense carelessly they run a real risk of losing necessary support (popular support, Congressional support, b…

Do you still think so, after seeing them stonewall the courts in the Kilmar Abrego García case? To me it appears they a brazenly flouting the law.

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

#479

Post by methods21 »

How can any trade be made and not know 'who' made the trade? Doesn't every trading account need to be registered/identified in some manner? KYC right? At a minimum the account holder would want to transfer funds to/from account....

I can't even buy sudafed without 3 forms of ID, yet we have 'invisible' traders of millions of dollars?

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