Someone Is Front-Running Trump's Trade Announcements

By Thomas Neuburger

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).

Front-Running Trump’s Brazil Tariff Announcement

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. And there's more here.