In one of his last interviews in October 2018, former Fed giant Paul Volcker warned that money was corrupting politics, policy, and so-called free markets, and that “better, stronger supervisory powers” are needed.
One area of interest is a trail of lucrative trades placed before statements and ‘official’ announcements are released to the public. Those closely watching markets note suspicious market activity on a near-daily basis. To date, there has been little investigation or regulatory response.
Vanity Fair highlights just a few examples in “There is Definite hanky-panky going on.” The Fantastically Profitable Mystery of the Trump chaos trades:
“…given how fishy and coincidental the trading in e-minis seems to be these days, the SEC or CFTC would be doing a great service (and their job) for the American people by investigating who is behind these lucrative trades, and what they knew before they placed them. At the moment, what we’re getting from them is an indifferent shrug.
Federal regulators might start here: In the last 10 minutes of trading on Friday, August 23, as the markets were roiling in the face of more bad trade news, someone bought 386,000 September e-minis. Three days later, Trump lied about getting a call from China to restart the trade talks, and the S&P 500 index shot up nearly 80 points. The potential profit on the trade was more than $1.5 billion.”
;
