Discussion
Bets on US-Iran ceasefire show signs of insider knowledge, say experts
Insanity: Highly skeptical of using a betting platform as an indication of insider knowledge and something to base your decisions off of. People will bet, and it's a 50/50 decision between "ceasfire yes / no". People vote with their gut.
mothballed: A few major actors in predictions markets(1) Recreational or addicted gamblers(2) Hedging your investments or exposure to an event by betting on it as insurance(3) Insiders(4) Information arbitrage (researchers, etc)Three (3) and Four (4) are probably the most important for conveying useful information in pricing. I see it as a good, not bad thing, they are involved.
Insanity: mh. Guess my view of betting is too naive. I wouldn't have expected anything beyond (1).With my usual addictive behaviour, I think it's prob best I stay away from that though.. :)
petesergeant: I would be interested to know who shorted oil in the hours before the purported negotiations post on Truth Social, and who then went long on it in shortly after the price readjusted and before the Iranians denied these negotiations.
tmnvix: > “For the purposes of this market, an ‘official ceasefire agreement’ requires clear public confirmation from both the United States government and the government of Iran that they have agreed to halt military hostilities against one another.” (by March 31)Seems a rather risky bet considering how deep Israel has ventured into it's war in Lebanon. Very doubtful they will stop anytime soon. Given the leverage Israel has demonstrated over US foreign policy I find it hard to imagine that the US will 'leave them to it'. Likewise, Iran is unlikely to leave Hezbollah's interests out of any negotiations or for that matter to trust that the US isn't asking for negotiations in bad faith. I guess there could be a limited ceasefire agreed between Iran and the US to make room for negotiations but the ceasefire would almost certainly have to occur without the opening of the strait or an end to fighting in Lebanon. This (now regional) war has a long way to go in my opinion.Ultimately, I think this all hinges on whether or not the Iranians feel that they have enough leverage to exercise yet. My feeling is that they will want to continue to the point of destroying Trump's political career - something they could possibly do if this quagmire continues to get worse and closer to the US midterms.
cwillu: (1) provides an incentive for the rest to participate.
standardUser: There's something funny about watching global markets react to Trump's every lazy lie as if Moses himself just passed down orders. Maybe funny is the wrong word. The kicker is that this isn't even Trump's war and he likely lacks the capacity to end it if he wanted to.
Karrot_Kream: Couldn't insiders just trade Brent Crude futures and do the same thing? There's more than enough liquidity in Brent that an insider can make great money.
freejazz: Can anyone point to any instance of anyone benefitting from the information conveyed in these prediction markets?
a_ba: Just because it's a binary choice doesn't make it a 50/50 chance. Flipping a fair coin (50/50) is different from flipping a weighted coin (say 80/20) even though the possible outcomes are the same.
Insanity: No, but I'm just saying, people vote based on feels.
croes: Insiders don‘t and you’re ignoring the reasons why insider trading is suspected.It’s not because they bet, because how and when they bet
gzread: Yes, and they consistently lose money to insiders who vote based on actual knowledge.
bjackman: What signs? This article is absolute slop (not AI, but slop).I do not have any reason to doubt that people are doing insider trading. The US admin is obviously corrupt and the Iran attacks are the most abject symptom of its corruption so far.But you can't just put out a bunch of completely isolated observations with zero analysis and say "that looks like insider trading". There is nothing at all in here that presents an argument for that claim.I am a daily Guardian reader but I stopped paying for it coz there are so many articles like this that are just complete fucking trash. Because I am the target audience (leftist Euro who can easily get riled up by topics like this) it pisses me off.
bjackman: Breakdown of the presented points:> Eight accounts, all newly created around 21 March, bet a total of nearly $70,000 (£52,000) on there being a ceasefire.Is that anomalous? Are these numbers large in context?> They stand to make nearly $820,000 if such a deal is reached before 31 March.Yes that is indeed how prediction markets work for unlikely events?> An account that made the same bet was created shortly before the US struck Iran on 28 February. It also placed a winning bet on those strikes, which raised similar questions around insider trading, and so far has bet on nothing else.Is that anomalous? If I was betting 5 figure sums I would also stick to my areas of expertise. That doesn't mean I'm an insider.> The new accounts all appear to have been created late last week, around the time when the US president, Donald Trump, appeared to first double down on war with Iran, then suggest in an after-markets Truth Social post that he was considering “winding down” military operations.So what??> The wallets “definitely [look like] someone with some degree of inside info”, said Ben Yorke, formerly a researcher with CoinTelegraph, now building an AI trading platform called Starchild."Some random fucking guy said this thing", OK?> But online crypto watchers and experts suggested that the bets bore the signs of insider trading – both because they bought their positions at market price,What the fuck does that even mean?> and because some of the accounts looked like they could belong to a single investor attempting to conceal their identity by splitting their bet between multiple wallets.This is just repeating a former claim that was not backed up with any rationale.> “Typically, when you see wallet-splitting and deliberate attempts to obfuscate identity, it’s one of two scenarios: either a very large investor trying to shield their position from market impact, or insider trading,” said Yorke.But we haven't been presented with any evidence that we're seeing either of those things??> Polymarket’s own rating of the probability of a ceasefire before 31 March increased significantly in the past few days, from 6% on 21 March to 24% by Monday. More than $21m is currently being wagered on this outcome.Again, this is just describing the normal and intended mechanics of the market.
impure: People want to believe this war will end soon.
boramalper: > The wallets “definitely [look like] someone with some degree of inside info”, said Ben Yorke, formerly a researcher with CoinTelegraph, now building an AI trading platform called Starchild.Ben Yorke is the only expert I see mentioned in the article, so it'd be a lot more accurate (and a lot less sensational) if The Guardian changed its title to "... says one expert" (but it wouldn't sound as interesting then, would it?).> Eight accounts, all newly created around 21 March, bet a total of nearly $70,000 (£52,000) on there being a ceasefire. They stand to make nearly $820,000 if such a deal is reached before 31 March.Not to sound privileged but $800k doesn't sound like that much of money for someone that has access to that kind of insider knowledge, especially considering the risks.All things considered, I feel like the same people could make much bigger bets using trad-fi instruments than Polymarket so I don't understand what's so significant about Polymarket "whales".In the end people just betting on TACO.
vkou: > especially considering the risks.What risks?1. This isn't insider trading of securities.2. This administration is laughably corrupt.
TitaRusell: There was an interesting article in a local paper here about non zionist Jews emigrating from Israel.There are no missiles and draft in Western Europe and the shops are open on every holy day.Unfortunately this leaves the holy land to the fanatics.
genxy: Zion for Zionists is always what they have wanted. Originally, it was supposed to be Ashkenazi Jews only.
mikkupikku: If the administration decides to end this stupid war just so they can cash out some profitable bets... I don't even know what I would think. The whole thing is so stupid it makes my head hurt.
jmyeet: It's not really up to them when this war of choice ends anymore. It's up to Iran. And Iran, justifiably, is going to demand their pound of flesh. That could require some combination of ending the (criminal) sanctions, de-militarizing the Gulf and reining in Israel.The problem is all of these things are politically unviable. This is the only reason why I think this war could continue long term because Trump simply cannot back down.I think the recession from this could actually get so bad that there's now a nonzero (but still small) chance Trump gets removed from office, either by impeachment or by being 25A'ed.It is hard to adequately state what a geopolitical disaster this was and it is I think quite easily the biggest mistake by an administration in the entire history of the US. I'm not exaggerating.
delecti: I think the main reason is that they were all too incompetent to realize what the effects of the war would be on the global financial system. The bets were probably just a happy opportunity for corruption.> The whole thing is so stupid it makes my head hurtLook on the bright side, at least the malicious actors aren't able to competently implement their goals.
huijzer: When do we cross the barrier from incompetent to nefarious?
delecti: They're orthogonal, so there's no barrier. They're all nefarious, and most are also incompetent.
idle_zealot: It's not an either-or question; they're very transparently both nefarious and incompetent.
fakedang: Non-zionist Jews have been leaving Israel whenever the opportunity rose. This war was just an accelerant for further emigration.The only ones who choose to stay back are folks fresh into Aliyah, who might've received a lot of incentives from the government to settle in the illegal West Bank settlements. Or those who really believe in Zionism. The former are typically guys who couldn't make the cut even in their home countries, so they're certainly not adequate replacements for the ones leaving.Not to mention, it's mostly the liberal cities like Tel Aviv which have faced the brunt of Iranian barrages. Jerusalem has been barely hit. Folks staying in those cities, working actual jobs contributing to the economy and not Torah studies, are likely the ones leaving - I know many of my acquaintances who've left Tel Aviv for the US or Dubai.
tencentshill: A market with regulations, vs. no regulations.
Karrot_Kream: Right so how are you going to find it and who is going to prosecute the insider trading here?My point isn't that an unregulated prediction market (Polymarket non-US markets are non-CFTC certified) can obscure insider trading. My point is that Brent has enough liquidity that an insider can trade without moving markets. There's plenty of insiders that work on a contract basis and aren't required to disclose trades by STOCK Act provisions for public disclosure.And honestly we aren't even out of the 45 day window around disclosures that would surface and Brent trades for the current Iran conflict that would even surface this kind of thing.
ck2: There's no ceasefire, Iran has no idea what he is making up as always.He's delaying until the Marines get there in a few days.And until the markets close on Friday, notice how he said 5 days on Monday.He's also bombed them the past two times in the middle of negotiations, why stop nowThe man is a proven constant pathological liar since the day he came down the golden escalator 10 years ago, literally every time he speaks it's a lie.
dylan604: As soon as the news hit that the Iranians are claiming they have not negotiated anything while Trump is claiming the supposed negotiations are why he's not bombing Iranian power infrastructure really made wonder who Trump is trying to fool. It reminds me of Musk's tweet about securing financing to go private. Comments like this are meant to move a needle.
mandeepj: Ceasefire alone? Seems like there was insider knowledge even on start of war bidding.
huijzer: And they are not nefarious and competent while pretending to be incompetent?
XorNot: The Nazis were hilariously incompetent, but it didn't make them any less dangerous.
ragebol: Getting yourself installed as president while knowing you are incompetent (I mean, look at all those bankrupt businesses, he should know) is nefarious in itself. His entourage is nefarious for supporting the incompetency for their own gain.
TacticalCoder: > ... I think this all hinges on whether or not the Iranians feel that they have enough leverage to exercise yet.They don't have a navy anymore and they don't have fighter planes anymore. There's only so many missiles they can launch out without revealing where they're launched from. That leaves them with drones: are iranian drones really sufficient to have any leverage?Why "yet"? As time goes on they've got less and less leverage: they're getting bombed daily. It's not as if they were producing military material faster than it's getting destroyed.At this point the islamists in Iran (who doesn't represent all iranian people) are menacing of some kind of scorched earth strategy: where they're saying "if you don't stop destroying every military capacity we have and if you begin to moreover attack our non-military infrastructure, we'll prevent other countries in the region from... Having access to water".I mean: it could be some leverage, but it reeks of desperation to me. They're getting their arses handed to them in this war. "We'll send drones on oil tankers" and "We'll make sure our neighbors, which we already bombed for no reason, now die of thirst" doesn't sound like a genius war strategy to me. Just like hanging iranian athletes publicly doesn't exactly inspire sympathy from the rest of the world and doesn't sound like a sound strategy either: it's obviously to "make a statement" against all the iranians who wish to see the islamists gone and a regime change, but it's not a genius strategy to gain allies among other countries.As to Trump's political career: he's old, he cannot be president three times. He's already done 5 years and 2 months of his 8 years, that's 2/3 of his 8 years. He's seems to give absolutely zero fuck about anything since a bullet missed him: he's got 2 years and 10 months left as president and I don't see him quitting. Maybe he'll die of old age but I don't see him quitting.As a sidenote I think we can all agree that senile-autopen-Biden wasn't exactly fit to rule the country either and yet he stayed until the end of his term, barely able to walk or to look at the correct camera. I mean: so far only one president of the US ever resigned. What are the odds that Trump would be the second one? I don't buy it.And losing the midterms isn't "bringing down a US president": it doesn't mean a new president gets to get elected.
b112: This is very weird.Trump is the ultimate mercurial. At the drop of a hat, he'll change his mind on things. Predicting Trump is a ridiculous proposition, and I'm willing to be most would agree with that.Even Trump doesn't know what Trump will do next!Yet meanwhile, there are people using "insider knowledge" to make decisions? What insider knowledge!! There is none. It's all made up on a day to day basis.
stevenwoo: It could be coincidence but there's a lot of well timed trades just prior to and in aftermath of Trump tweet, article without expert commentary: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/23/volume-in-stock-and-oil-futu...
Aurornis: The bet amounts are small relative to the political scandal that would follow top administration officials.If there is insider trading it's most likely low-level staffers or friends of officials who speak too freely.
fabian2k: What scandal? They're openly corrupt and no consequences have followed so far.
vkou: > The kicker is that this isn't even Trump's warThat's quite possible.> and he likely lacks the capacity to end it if he wanted to.Nah, he could end it any time he wants. Iran will stop bombing its neighbors in a week or so, and things will more or less return to the pre-war status quo.He chooses to not end it, because the one thing that he cannot stand is losing face.
standardUser: Iran will not stop harassing the region, and perhaps not even allow the strait to open, if Israel is still bombing them or fighting a proxy war in Lebanon. So Trump can pack up and head back to this side of the planet, having made our country a few trillion dollars poorer in the process, but the war doesn't ends until Iran and Israel decide it ends.
XorNot: People honestly forget that Iranians aren't stupid. Some of them are crazy, but not stupid. Iran has been doing things like saying you're safe in the Strait as long as you trade oil in Yuan, for example. They know exactly why they're doing that.Now it's not very effective now, but if the US packs up and leaves they can keep doing it. "Trade in Yuan or we drone strike your ships" would lead to every company that operates there doing it provided it actually kept risk and insurance rates down.
irishcoffee: The amount of money to be made on these markets is in the tens of millions at best. This administration doesn’t care about that. I understand why you feel that way, the numbers are just too inconsequential to even move the needle.Bit players with knowledge that have been perennially underpaid by the us govt. however, mortgage-saving money. I don’t blame them. Do you?“I’m aware of a big decision and I can make 23k off of it, probably.” Do it up, congress has been living off insider trading for a century, let the little guy get theirs.Until gambling commercials are banned in the same way cigarette commercials were banned, we’re all just yelling at the wind.
koolala: This is just one market. The other bets are all across the stock market.
vkou: > Iran will not stop harassing the region, and perhaps not even allow the strait to open, if Israel is still bombing them or fighting a proxy war in Lebanon.If Israel is still bombing them? Certainly.This will put incredible international pressure on Israel to stop. It's one thing when the US wrecks the world's economy, and it's hard to push back on. It's an entirely different thing when a country of 10 million people is wrecking the world's economy. International opinion has been turning against it for years, already.I do think it's very unlikely to continue the war if the bombing stopped, and only the proxy war continued.
stevenwoo: Lots of lucky trades timed just prior to and in aftermath of latest Trump social media announcement. It could be coincidence or not.https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/23/volume-in-stock-and-oil-futu...
maxdo: Criminal sanctions??? Iran sponsored so many killers in the region , promised not to build advanced records and they able to attack any place in Europe , and on the edge of bulding nuclear bomb . How is that trying to limit this people is criminal ?
beepbooptheory: [delayed]
input_sh: We've been through this already, someone placed a $30k bet (payout around $400k) that Maduro will leave office by the end of January hours before the US raid took place.Have you noticed any meaningful scandals back then?
munk-a: Probably January 6th 2021
broof: Isn’t one of the points of betting markets is to incentivize this? Now me, as someone who doesn’t have access to insider knowledge, can know that there’s a noticeably increased chance of what’s going to happen. I do think maybe there should be some sort of feature to prevent last minute bets that utilizes insider knowledge, and I do admit there are considerable negative externalities to this system but it’s not clear to me that this is for sure bad.
cj: > Isn’t one of the points of betting markets is to incentivize this?No. It’s an unintended side effect that risks breaking trust in the system by (the majority of) players who don’t have insider knowledge.
phil21: Eh what? It’s literally the only reason for prediction markets to exist. Otherwise they are simple gambling and pointless.The only way you get more wisdom from “the crowd” is if it teases folks who hold non-public (or at least less public) information into the market to refine the odds towards what they should be.Without insider information the entire concept is dead on arrival.Yes randos are gonna gamble because they either don’t understand the game they are playing or are simple degenerate gamblers who want something else to gamble on. Others are going to think they know better or have limited insider information that isn’t worth as much as they think, or is not as accurate as they believe. And the delusional who simply think they know better for no logical reason but have convinced themselves otherwise.
irishcoffee: The order of magnitude of “money to be made” is the same.
eunos: Brent isn't security products so not covered under anti insider trading law right?
varispeed: When the entire US administration is compromised by Russia, why wouldn't they want to milk it.
pjc50: Still nowhere near as bad as the Vietnam war. Arguably not even as big a mistake as the CIA coup against Mossadegh, which is the poisoned tree from which the present situation grows.I wonder how the coup in Cuba will turn out. That has to happen before the midterms, and he's unlikely to wait for Iran to resolve.
jmyeet: I think is a worse disaster than Vietnam. Why? Because the Vietnam War was localized. It was devastating to the people who got drafted and obviously devastating to the Vietnamese as well as the Cambodians that Nixon and Kissinger decidedly to relentless bomb for literally no reason. There was internal dissent but that was, saldy, quashed quite successfully.The US simply doesn't have the military capability to invade Iran. It's surrounded by mountains so there's no land staging area like we had for Iraq in 1991. Am ambphibious landing would have to be on the scale of D-Day. Personnel-wise, the military is a lot smaller than it was in 1991 too.This is why I laugh when people panic "they're going to invade" when 5000 Marines and 2-3 amphibious landing ships are moved to the Gulf. Those are so incredibly irrelevant and wholly insufficient for any kind of ground invasion that the worse they can do is be the Bay of Pigs 2.0.The Iranian national project has been to resist American imperialism for the past almost 50 years. The military is distributed. Lots of it is under mountains or otherwise reinforced from air bombardment and missiles. Drones are incredibly cheap to produce and there's no viable path to stop the production and launch of ballistic missiles and drones.That's how bad a decision this is. There is no viable military path to "victory" (whatever that means here). There is no way to invade, no way to hold the country militarily and no way to manufacture regime change.Other countries in the region are way more vulnerable to loss of infrastructure (eg desalination plants). Iran has desalination plants too but it also gets a lot of drinking water from snowmelt. Many Americans are surprised by that. Iran has ski resorts. That's how mountainous it is.Israel has been begging the US to topple Iran for 40+ years and every president has refused. Because it's completely unviable. Until this one.There are really three wars being fought here and the objectives are different in every case. Israel wants to turn Iran into Somalia, which is to say a fail-state. The US wanted regime change. Iran simply wants to survive. And it will.So this is why you see Israel escalate to drag the US into a war it doesn't really want. And if Israel succeeds and somehow the regime does topple it will create a massive refugee crisis that will likely topple the governments of most of Iran's neighbours. Israel is completely fine with that. The US isn't.Every country in the Gulf had essentially been converted into a US client state other than Iran. We went so far as to put a former al-Qaeda lieutennant in charge of Syria. A likely consequence of this move is US influence in the region is going to massively decrease because the myth of the American security guarantee has been broken.While the war is still poular with Trump's base we'll see how long that lasts when gas hits $8/gallon and food inflation hits 20%.
journal: Trump says something the other side will say is false in one hour. So make all the money before the other side responds and markets correct? What happens when Trump makes the wrong move? Will his family be in debt for eternity?
troyvit: I think it would be fun to discover that there is inside trading going on here, but it's coming from Iranians.
troyvit: > They don't have a navy anymoreI get where you're coming from in a lot of ways, but the straight remains closed, and it's not just a perception issue. From this article [0]:> U.S. officials have previously declared the Iranian Navy to have been rendered combat ineffective, but many of the more than 120 ships it has targeted so far have been larger vessels. Iran has hundreds of fast boats, some of which are armed with short-range anti-ship missiles, as well as artillery rockets and other weapons. They can also be used to lay naval mines. These fleets are inherently harder to find and fix, and do not need large ports to operate from.Maybe that's why very few ships are still getting through. The rest of the article is a fun read about how A-10s are taking out those small boats, but there's still a whole lot of work left to do. I think Iran still has a lot of asymmetric juice left, and at some point the law of diminishing returns will kick in.On the other hand it was a war of choice and the U.S. can make their declaration of victory look like whatever they want it to.[0] https://www.twz.com/air/a-10-warthogs-are-prowling-for-irani...
cosmojg: Also, isn't insider trading the whole point of prediction markets? They were originally conceptualized as information aggregators.
munk-a: If they were then that memo got lost when it reached the general populace that sees them as a gambling vehicle. I think it'd be extremely reasonable if people with qualified access to information like this were banned from leveraging it on prediction markets.If someone has news they want to get out they can just use the media.
bethekidyouwant: Their drones are cheap easy to conceal, and can keep the straight closed indefinitely. And what other leverage do they have them keeping the straight closed?
bethekidyouwant: That’s not true. Consider a jar of jellybeans.
echelon: A "market" is hypothesized to be "efficient" at price discovery.An efficient "prediction market" would more quickly resolve to its expected outcome due to not only skin-in-the-game bets by experts, but also the influence of insiders.Furthermore, bets are likely to shape outcomes. Betting someone will be assassinated (not allowed on Polymarket) would likely increase the probability of that outcome had there been no bet at all.
hatthew: > Otherwise they are simple gamblingmaybe I'm dumb but I thought gambling is the whole point
coevcan: Are you really going to suggest trump cares about an $820k bet? He doesn't even care to collect his presidential salary.I'm sure he exaggerates his wealth, but we know he's at least a billionaire.
Aurornis: Noem was removed from her position recently due to scandal. Weeks ago.
cyanydeez: yarg, its a betting market that takes uncontrolled bets. I dont see how anyone that's not part of the grift economy can claim it's anything but.
bethekidyouwant: You don’t have to be an insider to know that the US wants to broker a peace deal now that they’ve gotten themselves deep in the shit. Also, how could a Washington insider know if a peace deal will actually be brokered they have to negotiate with the other party after all.
munk-a: Or in paying a part of the tariff bill for companies in exchange to an entitlement to the full refund if the tariffs were ruled unconstitutional.
lovich: War is peace.Ignorance is strength.Openly corrupt markets that feature insiders with secret knowledge taking money from gambling addicts and rubes is actually good cause the crowd is now wiser.
broof: Unironically yes. Someone bet a mid sized amount and now we all share in that potential insider knowledge. A small scale example is my spouse said that the election odds from her home country were not realistic because all the westerners were betting a candidate would win but weren’t accounting for corruption that she felt was guaranteed to happen. Turns out she was right.
Aurornis: I had to go check the news to see if I missed news of a ceasefire.This article seems a bit premature. The only evidence in this article:> Eight accounts, all newly created around 21 March, bet a total of nearly $70,000 (£52,000) on there being a ceasefire.So eight new accounts placed bets totaling $70K on something that hasn't happened yet. When I visit Polymarket it shows the volume on the March 31st target date is $22,583K.So the meat of this story is that several new accounts registered and placed bets totalling a negligible amount of the overall volume recently, the event hasn't happened yet, and we're supposed to see this as insider trading?I'm going to snooze this story until after March 31st.
colechristensen: The same logic can be used the opposite way, you can, with large amounts of money, manipulate events or people's responses to them.* you can place large bets on events you have influence on the outcome for and make large amounts of money* you can place large bets on events and then threaten people who have influence with a big stick* you can place large bets expecting to lose money in order to change the outcome or a related outcome expecting people to look at the odds and change their behaviorAnd probably lots of other ways.It corrupts events and on a world stage with unethical government in vogue... it's not impossible for people to manipulate a war in order to make bets go their way.
Lerc: There was recently a story about a reporter who faced threats because their reporting contained a detail that while not significantly impactful (although about a literal impact) in it's own right changed the win conditions on a prediction bet.I think prediction markets worked as an idea to provide a wisdom of the crowd view when they were being used in good faith, but rewards cause people to prioritise winning and gaming the system pays better than playing fairly.
netsharc: Isn't the problem that they can't end the war unilaterally? The Iranian regime is justifiably pissed off and is still flinging drones and rockets towards any viable target, and any ceasefire will be with acceptance of their terms. The Trump/Netanyahu collection of dumb ego won't be able to accept being dictated terms.So like in Game of Thrones, we hope a Jamie Lannister shows up...
hatthew: Not familiar with Brent Crude futures, is it possible to trade them anonymously the way you can on Polymarket?
bethekidyouwant: I’ve heard this assassination thing said, but I don’t see it. Someone still has to kill said person and somehow profit from the unlikelihood of this outcome. I’m not saying it’s impossible but I’m just saying that it’s never happened and maybe never will.
cj: Have you been to a casino?Gambling is a billion dollar business.
871ajh-121: Trump always announces ceasefires, negotiations and "deals" when the other party doesn't even know about it. Or, in the middle of real negotiations, he attacks.This 5 day extension is to replenish US stocks and build up the marines in the region. while Israel continues to attack all the time.The only deal that may have emerged in secret is for Iran not to hit the Dimona nuclear power plant and for Israel/US not to hit the Bushehr nuclear power plant.Of course Trump's cronies will utilize the volatility and insider knowledge. The entire presidency is there to enrich his clan.
netsharc: But surprisingly the market see this bullshit and savors it, they went up, after all..Are they operating on hopes and prayers that Trump isn't lying "this time"? Or does everybody know it's all crap but if everyone else is buying, they don't want to miss the tide?
roadside_picnic: That more-or-less happened over the weekend [0]. Five minutes before Trump's unsurprising TACO announcement an unexpected large number of WTI futures contracts were sold and an even larger amount of S&P 500 futures were purchased.0. https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2026/03/23/volume-in-stock-and-oil-...
netsharc: As Sun Tzu wrote in the Art of War (a much shittier book than Art of the Deal /s), always give your enemy a way out. Otherwise they will fight to their death...
