Someone Is Closely Front-Running Trump's Trade Announcements

Links for Friday, July 11

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I was tempted to write a piece about what I’m grateful to Donald Trump for. The list might be long, including such items as revealing the true nature of the national security state (thugs without conscience, thugs who were never your friend), and unmasking the way U.S. foreign policy is actually conducted (the Bolsonaro-tariffs blackmail would normally be handled off-stage, out of sight of the public).

But I won’t.

Instead, consider the two pieces below. Naked corruption. Feel free to decide for yourself how the perpetrators below got access to minute-by-minute information, and what that implies.

Front-Running Trump’s Brazil Tariff Announcement

Front-running is a trading term. It means using fore-knowledge of an impending trade or price move to engage in a personal or proprietary securities transaction in advance of that trade or move. If you know in advance that a price will move sharply, either up or down, front-running means trading in advance of that move, then getting out after the move is complete.

You can make a lot of money if you know what the market will do. Using advance, non-public knowledge of a market-moving transaction or announcement is usually illegal (unless you’re a member of Congress; I mean that literally).

With that in mind, note this:

This move was executed less than three hours ahead of the announcement. Who has that kind of notice?

Front-Running Trump’s Copper Tariffs

A similar thing seems to have happened with copper:

Prices rise when there’s a large buy and fall on a large sell. Here’s the chart above. Click to see it greatly enlarged.

The spike between 1:56 and 1:57 is clear. Copper rose from a per-pound $5.01 baseline to over $5.60 per pound in less than five minutes.

Sweet money indeed. Who had the knowledge to time a trade so closely? Maybe a dozen or so? Not many more than that.

Update: Spencer Hakimian just found another one here.

Music

What better choice for today than Dire Straits’ “Money for Nothing.” This is a concert version with Eric Clapton.

A little background on the lyrics, courtesy of Mark Knopfler. Similar to “Sultans of Swing,” the song is written as spoken by a character, in this case, two guys selling home appliances.

The lead character in “Money for Nothing” is a guy who works in the hardware department in a television/custom kitchen/refrigerator/microwave appliance store. He's singing the song. I wrote the song when I was actually in the store. I borrowed a bit of paper and started to write the song down in the store. I wanted to use a lot of the language that the real guy actually used when I heard him, because it was more real. It just went better with the song, it was more muscular. I actually used “little faggot,” [language the character uses] but there are a couple of good “motherfuckers” in there. I wanted to do a second version that way but I never had time. I'd still love to be able to do it. Even if just the band had it, because it would be the real version. I mean that is the way people speak. I think people still get the general idea. You can use other words that will suggest the general feel.

Knopfler seems to have eliminated the “faggot” term from live performances, including the one above. Enjoy.