O/T:- Trump Presidency 2.0 [hic sunt dracones]

[drillerpie]

So just to be clear what happened here. A couple of days ago a rumour came out that Trump was considering a 90 day pause. This was picked up and reported and the market went up dramatically. The White House then said the rumour was fake news and the market went back down.

This is how you do securities fraud on a gargantuan scale.

Step 1: You announce enormous tariffs to shake ordinary people out of the market because they can't afford to lose any more money

Step 2: You leak that you might relax tariffs to see how much it affects the market so you know what positions to take for the real thing

Step 3: You deny the rumours as fake news so the market goes back down

Step 4: You give your inner circle 20 minutes prior warning to place counter intuitive bets on a huge upswing during extreme market pessimism, then relax tariffs

Step 5: Collect >100x returns

Step 0 would actually be to make sure you've already decapitated/ installed loyalists in the regulatory bodies meant to stop this kind of thing

A victory for Main Street over Wall Street brought to you by Orange Jesus!

[slack_pie]

I don't buy the idea that he wants to bring manufacturing back to the US. Surely it would still be cheaper for Apple or Nike to make products in Vietnam or China with tariffs than to build factories in the US and employ Americans. Besides, I'd imagine most manufacturing will be automated in the coming years, so any move to onshore that kind of industry seems short-sighted.

The best explanation seems to be that he's using tariffs as a weapon to force other nations into new trade deals, or maybe to create a more free-trade environment. Maybe the stock market was a sort of controlled implosion to force the Federal Reserve to lower rates and load up on equities and crypto before they take off again. Whatever the reason, it's an opportunity for him to appear like the strongman and throw his weight around, which he loves to do.

[drillerpie]

Politicians have been insider trading since forever. There's even a Pelosi Stock Tracker that provides real-time updates on Nancy Pelosi's latest trades, which always seem to be timed perfectly. I'm not condoning it, but it's not something specific to Trump and his cronies.

"Always timed perfectly" is a bit of an exaggeration. If you look at the tracker you can see plenty of losses.

Pelosi is / was privy to a lot of information and I would be an idiot to say she never used it improperly because I don't know, but I do know she made most of her money buying Nvidia and other big tech/AI stocks during a raging tech bull market which was not exactly counter intuitive. Her husband runs a venture capital firm in San Francisco so she will have good advice. I would imagine her portfolio looks the same as a lot of other investors over the past few years (Amazon, Google, Nvidia, Apple, Tesla, Microsoft, Visa, Disney, Netflix)

Completely different to buying with huge volume twenty minutes before a presidential tweet in the middle of an escalating tariff war IMO, but if you're saying that there should be more regulation on politicians trading stocks or even an outright ban then I completely agree with you.

[slack_pie]

"Always timed perfectly" is a bit of an exaggeration. If you look at the tracker you can see plenty of losses.

Pelosi is / was privy to a lot of information and I would be an idiot to say she never used it improperly because I don't know, but I do know she made most of her money buying Nvidia and other big tech/AI stocks during a raging tech bull market which was not exactly counter intuitive. Her husband runs a venture capital firm in San Francisco so she will have good advice. I would imagine her portfolio looks the same as a lot of other investors over the past few years (Amazon, Google, Nvidia, Apple, Tesla, Microsoft, Visa, Disney, Netflix)

Completely different to buying with huge volume twenty minutes before a presidential tweet in the middle of an escalating tariff war IMO, but if you're saying that there should be more regulation on politicians trading stocks or even an outright ban then I completely agree with you.

I said "always seem to be timed perfectly," not "always timed perfectly."

I agree that buying Nvidia stock isn't the same as entering a trade directly before a tweet, but Pelosi has outperformed virtually every hedge fund in the US. It's no coincidence. It's not just what she invests in but the timing of her trades.

https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/nancy-pelo...s-2024-1729906

Ultimately, it's insider trading, however you dress it up. Everyone knows it, but still they get away with it because they are political royalty.

[Jampie]

Ultimately, it's insider trading, however you dress it up. Everyone knows it, but still they get away with it because they are political royalty.

Which is utterly bizarre to me. Can you imagine if NZ or AU pollies did this and the press got hold of it?

[slack_pie]

Which is utterly bizarre to me. Can you imagine if NZ or AU pollies did this and the press got hold of it?

It's crazy! Everyone knows they're up to it, they know that everyone knows they're up to it, but still nobody does anything about it. I think in their world, it probably isn't as controversial as it seems to us. It's just par for the course. One rule for me and another for thee.

[drillerpie]

I said "always seem to be timed perfectly," not "always timed perfectly."

I agree that buying Nvidia stock isn't the same as entering a trade directly before a tweet, but Pelosi has outperformed virtually every hedge fund in the US. It's no coincidence. Ultimately, it's insider trading, however you dress it up. Everyone knows it, but still they get away with it because they are political royalty.

Ok but her trades don't even *seem* to be timed perfectly. On the Pelosi tracker it's easy to find big losses she made on 6 and 7 figure trades.

Hedge funds generally don't make big % profits because they hedge (they will have short and long positions), but the S & P is up 164% since 2014 according to the tracker. Pelosi is up 550% in that time. That means she 5x'd her money in 11 years, great - better than me for sure, but in a massive bull market certainly not exceptional.

Somebody on here once posted they made 400% in a few years on a China ETF. Prolific Reddit traders have done much better than Pelosi over the same period of time. If she's accomplished that by trading on privileged information she's doing an absolutely terrible job.

To use a footballing analogy, Pelosi made some big bets on top 4 teams to win handsomely, and she won more than she lost. What happened yesterday was like betting on Wealdstone to beat Man City with the score 5-0 to City.

[slack_pie]

Ok but her trades don't even *seem* to be timed perfectly. On the Pelosi tracker it's easy to find big losses she made on 6 and 7 figure trades.

Hedge funds generally don't make big % profits because they hedge (they will have short and long positions), but the S & P is up 164% since 2014 according to the tracker. Pelosi is up 550% in that time. That means she 5x'd her money in 11 years, great - better than me for sure, but in a massive bull market certainly not exceptional.

Somebody on here once posted they made 400% in a few years on a China ETF. Prolific Reddit traders have done much better than Pelosi over the same period of time. If she's accomplished that by trading on privileged information she's doing an absolutely terrible job.

To use a footballing analogy, Pelosi made some big bets on top 4 teams to win handsomely, and she won more than she lost. What happened yesterday was like betting on Wealdstone to beat Man City with the score 5-0 to City.

I agree, it's entirely possible to make massive gains by picking winners, but Pelosi has made several high-profile trades directly before news broke that pushed certain stocks higher. Sure, it could just be a coincidence, or it could be that she's using privileged information to time the market. I know which seems more likely.

On this subject, there was another clear example of insider trading a month or so ago. Trump made a bizarre tweet about forming a "strategic crypto reserve" containing several high-profile digital assets and then walked it all back a week or so later in a second tweet. Someone opened a massive multi-million-dollar leveraged long literally minutes before the first tweet and then a similarly large short trade minutes before the second tweet. It's easy when you know how!

[drillerpie]

I agree, it's entirely possible to make massive gains by picking winners, but Pelosi has made several high-profile trades directly before news broke that pushed certain stocks higher. Sure, it could just be a coincidence, or it could be that she's using privileged information to time the market. I know which seems more likely.

On this subject, there was another clear example of insider trading a month or so ago. Trump made a bizarre tweet about forming a "strategic crypto reserve" containing several high-profile digital assets and then walked it all back a week or so later in a second tweet. Someone opened a massive multi-million-dollar leveraged long literally minutes before the first tweet and then a similarly large short trade minutes before the second tweet. It's easy when you know how!

Yeah I read your link about the timings. More smoke than fire i would say for buying 'months before stock splits' - most investors know when a stock gets to 800/900/1000 dollars and are growing fast they will do a split. People openly speculate about it and trade based on that. They usually get a small bump after the split but nothing massive. I would say that's perfectly normal trading.

I can't imagine the government knew the Crowdstrike outage was going to happen in advance, but maybe I'm naive.

Selling stocks of companies before antitrust investigations is the most suspicious of all the examples in that article. Could be genuine, could be dodgy. I'm certainly not going to die on the hill of defending Pelosi for that, but I still think 5x over 11 years with privileged information from the top level of government is far from a smoking gun and way different to what we are witnessing now. I see there has been a bipartisan bill introduced to stop US politicians trading and that can only be a good thing.

[andy6025]

Trump - Guilty!!!

Nancy Pelosi - well, we should give her the benefit of the doubt.

Consistency is a hard trait to come by.