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- Manlobbi
Halls of Shrewd'm / US Policy
No. of Recommendations: 7
Trump the Most Perfect and Brilliant, is "pausing" the Navy escort mission in the Strait. This makes me wonder if Trump the Conqueror was lying about saying the Iranians were lying about hitting a US Navy ship.
I don't believe the "great progress", because the Omani mediator said, in February, they were making good progress, before Trump launched his sneak attack.
May 5 20267:06 PM EDT
Trump pauses U.S. bid to guide ships out of Strait of Hormuz, cites Iran deal progress
President Donald Trump said Tuesday he is pausing “Project Freedom,” the U.S. military’s effort to guide commercial ships out of the Strait of Hormuz, one day after the operation began.
Trump, in a Truth Social post, said the decision was based in part on “the fact that Great Progress has been made toward a Complete and Final Agreement” with Iran.https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/05/trump-iran-deal-pr...Steve
No. of Recommendations: 6
Ben Meiselas having a field day: Kegsbreath and Rubio declaring victory this morning, only to have Trump the Conqueror cave in the evening. The clip of the Fox Noise talking head trying to spin the latest TACO is hilarious.
Trump FOLDS and GIVES HORMUZ to IRAN!!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1dDxgnOO98Thing is, none of them are saying out loud, what the 17D chess play is: stalemate, with the Strait closed, for the profit of USian big oil.
Steve
No. of Recommendations: 6
Trump, in a Truth Social post, said the decision was based in part on “the fact that Great Progress has been made toward a Complete and Final Agreement” with Iran.
From Iran: Iranian state media celebrated what one outlet described as a “US failure.” …
Iran’s foreign minister said cooperation between his country and China “will be stronger than ever,” Iranian state-affiliated media reported after he held discussions with his Chinese counterpart in Beijing.
The ‚winning‘ is merciless.
No. of Recommendations: 5
Iran’s foreign minister said cooperation between his country and China “will be stronger than ever,” Iranian state-affiliated media reported after he held discussions with his Chinese counterpart in Beijing.
And that, MAGA friends, is how Trump plays 4D chess.
This is good, right Dope?
No. of Recommendations: 6
And that, MAGA friends, is how Trump plays 4D chess.
This morning, the markets fly, and oil crashes, on the latest "peace is at hand" pronouncement, while Trump, again, threatened utter devastation if Iran does not submit.
wash, rinse, repeat.
Steve
No. of Recommendations: 8
This morning, the markets fly, and oil crashes, on the latest "peace is at hand" pronouncement, while Trump, again, threatened utter devastation if Iran does not submit.Another Ben Meiselas piece. The interesting bit is at the 9:45 mark: massive short positions, nearly $1B, taken on oil this morning, minutes before Trump the Magnificent made his latest "peace is at hand" claim. Pull up a chart of WTI and you will see a big spike down, much lower than what the quote was during most of the day. Then, after the loot was made, Trump the Conqueror starts walking his claim back.
Trump SURFACES after SURRENDER and FACES INSTANT REJECTION!!!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IltDSUO2NwASteve
No. of Recommendations: 27
The interesting bit ius at the 9:45 mark: massive short positions, nearly $1B, taken on oil thismorning, minutes before Trump the Magnificent made hislatest “pace is at hand” claim”
Taken from Facebook
I have three monitors on my desk. The left one shows the order book. The middle one shows Truth Social. The right one shows the investigation queue.
On April 21st, the left screen moved first.
I am a Senior Surveillance Analyst at a commodities exchange. I have held this position for nineteen years. My job is to monitor trading activity for suspicious patterns and generate compliance reports. I am employee of the quarter. I have a mug.
At 19:54 GMT on April 21st, someone placed 4,260 sell orders on Brent crude futures. They did this during post-settlement. The window after the market closes when daily volume is typically in the dozens. Sometimes single digits. Sometimes I watch the screen and nothing happens for forty minutes and I think about whether my daughter is happy.
On April 21st, someone placed $430 million in directional bets in 120 seconds during that window. One hundred and twenty seconds. I timed it on my watch because the system clock rounds to the nearest minute and I have found, in nineteen years, that precision matters to no one but me.
At 20:10 GMT, the President posted on Truth Social that he was extending the Iran ceasefire.
Brent dropped from $100.91 to $96.83.
I flagged the trade. I flag a lot of trades. I want to tell you what happens to my flags.
My flags go into a system called TRACE. Trade Review and Compliance Evaluation. I did not name it. The system generates a report. The report goes to a committee. The committee has a name I am not allowed to share but I can tell you it meets quarterly and the conference room has a credenza with bottled water that is sparkling because someone once put still water in the room and a managing director sent an email about it that was longer than most of my surveillance reports.
The committee reviews my flags. The committee has reviewed all of my flags. Here is the complete record of actions taken on my flags in 2026:
Reviewed.
That's it. "Reviewed" is a status. In compliance, a status is the absence of an action that has been given a name so it looks like one.
Let me show you my flags.
March 9th. Someone bet millions on oil falling at 18:29 GMT. Forty-seven minutes later, a CBS reporter posted that the President said the Iran war was "very complete, pretty much." Oil dropped 25%. Forty-seven minutes. I flagged it.
March 23rd. Someone sold 5,100 lots of Brent and WTI crude futures between 10:49 and 10:50 GMT. Fourteen minutes later, the President posted on Truth Social about a "COMPLETE AND TOTAL RESOLUTION" to hostilities. Oil dropped 11%. Over 13,000 contracts traded in sixty seconds after the post. Fourteen minutes. I flagged it.
April 7th. Someone established a $950 million short position in oil futures at 19:45 GMT. Three hours later, the President declared a two-week ceasefire. Nine hundred and fifty million dollars. I flagged it.
April 17th. Someone placed $760 million in bearish bets twenty minutes before Iran's foreign minister confirmed the Strait of Hormuz would reopen. Seven hundred and sixty million. I flagged it.
April 21st. The $430 million. Fifteen minutes. I flagged it.
That is $2.1 billion in directional oil bets in April alone. Every one of them landed on the correct side of a presidential announcement. Every one of them was placed in a window so narrow you could measure it in bathroom breaks. I flagged every single one.
The CFTC chair told a Congressional committee that his organization has "zero tolerance" for fraud and insider trading. I wrote that quote on a Post-it note and stuck it to my right monitor. The one that shows the investigation queue. The investigation queue has not moved since March.
Zero tolerance. Zero staff. Zero budget. Zero prosecutions under the STOCK Act since it was signed in 2012.
Fourteen years. The law has existed for fourteen years and has been enforced zero times. In compliance, we call that a compliance rate of one hundred percent. No cases filed means no cases lost. You cannot fail an audit you never conduct. We call that excellence.
Last month the White House sent an internal email to staff. I was not on the distribution list but I have read reporting on it and I need you to sit with what I am about to say. The email instructed White House staff not to use insider information to place bets on prediction markets.
The White House had to send a memo telling its own employees not to insider-trade.
I want you to read that sentence again. Not because the instruction was unclear. Because the instruction was necessary. Because someone in the building looked at the same pattern I have been flagging for months on my three monitors and decided the appropriate response was an email.
The President's son sits on the advisory board of Kalshi. He is an investor in Polymarket. Both are prediction markets. Both saw accounts created days before U.S. military action.
One account. I cannot stop thinking about this account. It was called "Burdensome-Mix." It was created in December. On January 2nd, it placed $32,500 on Venezuela's president being removed from power. On January 3rd, Maduro was seized by U.S. special forces. Burdensome-Mix collected $436,000. Then it changed its username. Then it disappeared.
One account is a coincidence. But there were six.
Six accounts were created on Polymarket in February. All bet on U.S. strikes on Iran by the 28th. When the President confirmed the strikes, the six accounts collected $1.2 million between them. Five of the six never placed another bet. The sixth went on to correctly predict the ceasefire date and made another $163,000.
My surveillance system logged all of this. My system logs everything. My system does not have opinions and neither do I. I generate reports. The reports go to committees. The committees meet quarterly. Between meetings, the windows get shorter and the bets get larger.
March 9th: 47 minutes. March 23rd: 14 minutes. April 17th: 20 minutes. April 21st: 15 minutes.
The window is compressing. In March, you had time to make coffee between the trade and the announcement. By April, you had time to send a text. By summer, at this rate, the trade and the announcement will be the same event.
The spokesman said any implication that administration officials are engaged in insider trading is "baseless and irresponsible reporting."
Then the White House sent the email again.
I have been in compliance for nineteen years. I have seen insider trading run out of strip mall offices by men who could not spell "derivative." I have seen pump-and-dump schemes coordinated over WhatsApp by people who used their real names. I have seen a man try to manipulate soybean futures from a Panera Bread.
I have never seen $2.1 billion in perfectly timed trades across five presidential announcements in a single month go uninvestigated.
But I have also never seen a compliance system work this beautifully. Every trade flagged. Every report filed. Every committee briefed. Every quarterly meeting attended. Bottled water: sparkling. Minutes: distributed.
Zero prosecutions.
As long as the flags go up and the cases don't, my performance review says I am meeting expectations.
I am meeting expectations. The system is meeting expectations. The $2.1 billion is meeting expectations. The fourteen-year-old law with zero prosecutions is meeting expectations.
The left screen moves. The middle screen moves. The right screen stays perfectly, immaculately still.
In my field, we call this price discovery.
No. of Recommendations: 5
What I really worry about is the polymarket disassociation from those who experience consequence. We all know there is insider trading, whether it is the vulgar volume and frequency seen now which go unchecked, or whether we put Martha Stewart in jail for fairly paltry things.
The moral hazard of the polymarket stuff is that, mostly in a DoD scenario, some choad in the administration (or who knows, maybe even a Cabinet appointee) knows something will happen or not happen and bets on it. Then it happens or doesn't happen but in this case not only do they get a payoff, but people might bleed.
And the worst scenario is when someone causes a low likelihood thing to happen, but that causes people to bleed. And they don't care because they got paid. And it didn't need to happen because American interests and world safety and blah blah blah were not on the line. But someone bleeds.
No. of Recommendations: 3
its clear trump and his insider MAGA family have discovered the size of the futures mkt grift, relative to the liquidity of the markets, means not a single gop voter cares.
i would be the least surprised if trump & family have made more here than all past decades of every scam, including iran, combined.
why even bother running djt, crypto, startups, stealing from taxpayers, or anything else at all?
No. of Recommendations: 3
And the worst scenario is when someone causes a low likelihood thing to happen, but that causes people to bleed. And they don't care because they got paid. And it didn't need to happen because American interests and world safety and blah blah blah were not on the line. But someone bleeds. Exactly right. Because, to "JCs", we Proles are nothing but expendable meat.
why even bother running djt, crypto, startups, stealing from taxpayers, or anything else at all?To launder the money from the futures trades?
Think this will result in anyone being perp-walked? Only if they catch someone who is not on the "privileged" list.
DOJ investigating $2.6 billion worth of oil bets placed just before Trump’s Iran war announcements, report says
The Department of Justice and a federal agency that oversees certain betting markets are reportedly probing a series of bets on oil prices that were placed shortly before President Donald Trump and an Iranian official made policy announcements regarding the Iran war.https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/doj-investigatin...Steve
No. of Recommendations: 1
to "JCs", we Proles are nothing but expendable meat.
Rotisserie "JC". Make sure the spit goes all the way through--and tie firmly.
No. of Recommendations: 13
I am a Senior Surveillance Analyst at a commodities exchange. I have held this position for nineteen years. My job is to monitor trading activity for suspicious patterns and generate compliance reports. I am employee of the quarter. I have a mug.
So much corruption!
Clearly what this administration needs to do is to get rid of all the pesky Surveillance Analysts. Better yet, get rid of the SEC entirely!
And the MAGA faithful somehow believe that Trump, his family and cronies, really care about THEM? It's so fucking sad.
