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This is wrong. It's not insider trading. Lutnick didn't have inside information. His son just had a brain. Anyone who read the case knew which way the court was
by danielmarkbruce 7mo ago
This is wrong. It's not insider trading. Lutnick didn't have inside information. His son just had a brain. Anyone who read the case knew which way the court was going, it was the least surprising decision ever. Perhaps the only surprising thing is that the court ever heard it.
- seydor 7mo agois it not a conflict of interest if you facilitate the legislation of tarrifs that you knew are illegal?
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- danielmarkbruce 7mo agoNo, it's not a conflict of interest. It's perhaps dumb, or morally bad, or several other things.
- rayiner 7mo ago[flagged]
- leviathant 7mo agoYou're upsetting the kind of people who leave their shopping carts in the parking lot instead of putting them away when they're done.
- reskewed 7mo ago[dead]
- cj 7mo ago> dumb, or morally bad This is easy to say in hindsight. There was a non-zero chance the decision could have went the other way. Also, companies aren't stupid. They don't buy insurance against things that are impossible. And the supreme court doesn't hear cases that are 100% obviously illegal.
- danielmarkbruce 7mo agoIt was non-zero but close to zero. Companies don't want to deal with the headache for many things. It's not a given over what time horizon and how much work is involved to get the refund. It's totally sensible to sell the claim for 70 cents on the dollar for example. The supreme court absolutely hears cases that are obvious. They do it for several reasons - to create clarity, to narrow scope, to set a very clear precedent, and other reasons.
- rayiner 7mo agoIt wasn’t “close to zero.” The Supreme Court split 6-3, with two Trump appointees voting against him. And the Federal Circuit, which is the most boring appellate court and not political at all, split 7-4, with two democratic appointees and two republican appointees voting to uphold the tariffs. This was a case that split both the liberal and conservative blocs. Obama’s former SG, Neal Katyal, went up there and argued for limiting presidential power over the economy. One of the justices quipped about the irony of Katyal’s major contribution to jurisprudence being revitalization of non-delegation doctrine, which has always been a conservative focus.
- danielmarkbruce 7mo agoDid you read the ruling? Read Clarence Thomas's dissent. It's not clear if he actually thinks what he wrote, or he just voted that way so he could write a dissent and make a strange legal point which probably doesn't carry water but sort of maybe could one day maybe. If it were close, I think he would have voted the other way. The folks on the court appear extremely inclined to take the other side on things just as a mental exercise, or to be able to write something on the record that they find interesting. It was close to zero.
- rayiner 7mo ago[flagged]
- 7mo ago
- gruez 7mo ago>if you facilitate the legislation of tarrifs that you knew are illegal? Did they know it was illegal? Any more than say, the Biden administration "knew" that forgiving student loans were illegal?
- anon7000 7mo agoThey literally spent a decent chunk of money spinning up a line of business that could only make money if the tariffs were illegal.
- hammock 7mo ago[flagged]
- PaulDavisThe1st 7mo agoInsurance company deal: if you pay us $X now, and then Y happens, we will make you whole, even though that cost may very well exceed $X. Lutnick deal: we pay you $X' now, and if Y' happens, we collect everything which will substantively exceed $X'. This is not insurance, its closer to shorting stocks. Oh, one other thing: the insurance company has essentially nothing to do with Y at all, in the sense that they have no control over Y and generally speaking no involvement in it (think: accidents, floods, storms, fires). By contrast Lutnick is the Secretary of Commerce of the United States of America.
- hammock 7mo agoLutnick deal: if we pay you $X now, and then Y happens, you will make us the whole refund, even though that windfall may very well exceed $X. Insurance company deal: you pay us $X' now, and if Y' happens, we pay for everything which may substantively exceed $X'.
- PaulDavisThe1st 7mo agoI have no idea what the point of this is, since it just restates what I wrote, and reinforces the point that the Lutnick deal is nothing like "insurance".
- philipov 7mo agoIn the business, even the appearance of impropriety is damaging. People who work in finance aren't allowed to trade the same stocks as their company is trading, whether they have any inside info or not. The assumption is that simply by being close to a source of information, you are compromised. The same restrictions should apply to those close to government. By being family, he is compromised by default.
- lenerdenator 7mo ago> In the business, even the appearance of impropriety is damaging. It was damaging. In 2015. And then for a bit between 2021 and 2024. Now it's not again. You have to enforce these sorts of gentlemen's agreements. Just saying "it's damaging" isn't enough to actually make it damaging.
- danielmarkbruce 7mo agoWrong. People who work in finance (I spent years there) are allowed to trade stocks their company is trading. There is a process to get approval. The equities division at an IB might be trading every single name in the S&P500. If you sit in the investment banking division and that division isn't doing anything related to a name, you are likely to get approval. In this case, the idea that Cantor can't do something because the former head is now in a government job is crazy. No one "in the business" thinks Cantor is suddenly hobbled.
- Ajakks 7mo agoOh - so the kid went out and he got permission to do this? Where is that? Who approved his request?
- Calavar 7mo ago> In this case, the idea that Cantor can't do something because the former head is now in a government job is crazy. No one "in the business" thinks Cantor is suddenly hobbled. That's not the idea, and it almost seems like a straw man to be honest. The actual idea is that the current head of Cantor can't do something because he's a direct relative of a high ranking government official whose powers and job duties present a conflict of interest for this specific set of transactions.
- thisisit 7mo agoYou mean the guy who kept talking about bringing back jobs to US - jobs requiring Americans to screw iPhone parts - wasn't debating in bad faith, like you are doing here? I am shocked, I tell you. I am really shocked.
- raincole 7mo agoIt's not insider trading, but surely it's a conflict of interesting? If you ignore all the specific name calling, isn't it still quite wrong that one minister can financially bet against the administration?
- rayiner 7mo agoWhat’s happening is that the deal stinks, and people aren’t precisely analyzing exactly why it stinks so they’re just using it to confirm their priors. The deal stinks because Cantor bet against the administration that its former head is a part of, and against the signature policy of the president its former head serves.
- burkaman 7mo agoHe presumably did not have access to the court's opinion before it was released, but he did have access to internal White House legal opinions before the tariffs were announced ("Mr. President this is illegal and very likely to be overturned by the courts"), and he obviously had access to the entire federal legal team during the court cases. I can't prove that there was any White House advisory memo before the tariffs were announced, but hypothetically, would this not be considered material nonpublic information? It seems the same as a corporate insider dumping stock because a company lawyer privately told them "we're definitely going to lose this case".
- danielmarkbruce 7mo agoWhite House legal opinions aren't any better than other legal opinions. Opinions are not "information".
- dboreham 7mo agoThe Lebowski conjecture.
- burkaman 7mo agoI understand your position but I disagree. If I were trying to predict whether the government is going to win in court, I think reading what the government's own lawyers think about the case would be valuable. If it were possible to pay for this I think people would, that's why I think it is material. Some random person's opinion is not relevant information, but the opinion of people directly involved in a case is.
- insane_dreamer 7mo agoTechnically it might not be "insider trading" since most information (we assume) was public knowledge. But members of the government being able to trade on matters of government policy is exactly how government corruption works. Previous administrations understood this was important to prevent (Carter putting his peanut farm in a blind trust, the Bush's did the same) but now Trump has made clear corruption is just totally fine (why else become president or a government official).
- reactordev 7mo agoDivestiture applies to the household.
- khy 7mo agoCould this open Cantor Fitzgerald up to class action law suits from consumers who ultimately paid the refunded tariffs?
- dboreham 7mo agoDoubtful since any sane person knew the tariffs were not legal and would eventually be overturned.
- hedora 7mo agoI'd imagine it'd open the federal government to such a suit. It stole money from consumers in the form of illegal tariffs, then refunded the money to people with no obvious relationship to the victims.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- jstummbillig 7mo agoCool! How much money did you yourself make on this (given that it was entirely obvious, and not leveraging knowledge seems silly)?
- vntok 7mo agoWhy would you assume the parent would have both a betting addiction and enough side money available to make it worthwhile?
- danielmarkbruce 7mo agoIt actually wasn't the worst assumption ever...
- danielmarkbruce 7mo agoA lot. If you remember all the tariff announcements in the first months of 2025, the stock market tanked and it was an easy buy. The market then reasonably quickly realized many of these tariffs weren't going to persist. The payoff was fast, and the reason you didn't see a massive uptick in the market when the ruling came out was because it was already priced in at that point. Just because something isn't obvious to you, it doesn't mean it wasn't obvious to a lot of people.
- jstummbillig 7mo agoTo buy after a market dip requires roughly zero specific conviction or insight regarding this supreme court ruling and its consequences.
- danielmarkbruce 7mo agoIf the market dip is directly caused by X, and you think X is going away or misunderstood, it's specific conviction. In this case X was the tariffs. You are out of your depth.
- baq 7mo agosuch hopeful naivety was passable early 2025. having seen 1% of the epstein files, you'd have to be acting in bad faith to say there was no collusion.
- behringer 7mo agoYeah it's not insider trading. It's just that someone on the inside engaged in trade... Cmon guys you know there's a difference!
- loudmax 7mo agoThe mental gymnastics people are performing in order to convince themselves that this isn't the most corrupt administration the US has seen in modern history is staggering. If a fraction of the level of skepticism these people applied to Hunter Biden and Hillary Clinton were applied to Trump and his cronies, they'd be demanding impeachment.
- dashundchen 7mo agoSeriously. These monarchists in this thread contort themselves in every which way to make sure their dear leader is always in the clear. Shall we forget the shitcoin rugpull Trump has used to launder billions from foreign leaders? The transparent bribes he's taken to his political org that have resulted in pardons for smuggler, drug lords and murderers? The $200 million dollar contract Kristi Noem funneled to a company an operative of her for "marketing", formed days before the contract was awarded? The secretary of labor using funds to throw herself a lavish birthday party and travel around the country? Kash Patel flying himself and his girlfriend around on an FBI jet with an expensive security detail so they can party? The fact that insiders are openly insider trading in crypto, the stock market, and these betting markets (both the illegal Venezuela and Iran invasions had huge extremely suspicious bets right before actions were taken). This barely scratched the surface of this term alone. These fascists are so transparently corrupt.
- dav43 7mo agoIf his son had half a brain he wouldn’t be trading in this quasi derivative
- bogtog 7mo ago> This is wrong. It's not insider trading. Lutnick didn't have inside information. His son just had a brain. Anyone who read the case knew which way the court was going, it was the least surprising decision ever. Perhaps the only surprising thing is that the court ever heard it. If this was so obvious, wouldn't there have been more competitors pushing down the value of it?
- danielmarkbruce 7mo agoThink about how to actually pull this trade off. It isn't pushing a button on your trading app. Competitors cant enter this competition easily.
- adampunk 7mo agoI thought his son just had a brain?
- danielmarkbruce 7mo agoAnd a small army of folks to do his bidding. Cantor has over 10k people, he's the chairman.
- hedora 7mo agoThe people selling the debt thought there was a ~ 20% chance the money would be collected. Is there any proof he didn't have insider information? With this administration + court, it's rare when some sort of fraud, bribes, or protection money payments aren't at play.
- seizethecheese 7mo agoPrediction markets were at something like 60% that the court would rule against the tariffs
- apercu 7mo agoOh? You have some sort of insider knowledge here?
- snark_attack 7mo ago[dead]
- bix6 7mo agoNo chance you’d make this trade unless you had some unique insight to even consider setting it up in the first place.
- wetpaws 7mo ago[dead]
- Terr_ 7mo ago> It's not insider trading. One might argue it should fall under a different technical label, but whatever label one uses (A) it stinks of corruption and (B) it's only the tip of the iceberg. People entrusted with government authority to do work for the public shouldn't be personally profiting from how they decide to wield that authority. Imagine a policeman that arrests people while placing bets about how long that person will be jailed, what they'll be charged with, or whether they'll be convicted. The objection that "it's unfair, they know something other bettors don't" occurs first not because it's the biggest issue, but because it's easier to prove. The bigger problem is making improper decisions with their work-powers in order to personally profit, a trust and separation which they've already destroyed by placing the bets in the first place.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]