I found it interesting that when Trump made his 10% tariff decision on the 9th (04/09/25), he had posted on his social media site that it was a "GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!".
"THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT," he wrote on his social media platform Truth Social at 9:37 a.m.It may be just me but my first thought was insider trading. Not the usual insider trading. This is where an individual in a corporation passes insider information that will affect stock price to an individual outside the corporation that results in windfall gains. The inovation here would be that it's government policy and not corporation information that is involved. Also, it is not being passed to an individual but posted to social media. Not as direct information but as hint, hint, wink, wink, three exclamation marks. Rather than insider trading this is speculated to be market manipulation in this article.
I heard it mentioned that someone quickly pointed out that this was was just Trump doing his job, to encourage the markets. My first thought here was of the Trump v. United States decision. This was that "presidential immunity from criminal prosecution presumptively extends to all of a president's 'official acts' - with absolute immunity". It seemed like someone wanted to remind everyone, before they thought any different, that Trump already held a get out of jail free card from the highest court in the land.
"All of my investments are reported with full transparency," Greene added.There was in fact disclosure made. This details exactly what she bought. This gives me a block of stocks that I can compare and contrast against the stocks mentioned in the first article above. This trading will be discussed more later.
Regarding the above market manipulation article it mentions that at end of day the
possibly Trump related stocks TSLA - Tesla, and DJT - Trump Media & Technology Group, did
better than other stocks. What seemed to me would somewhat confirm if the Trump post had
the effect of mass insider trading would be if there were unusual volume or price changes
between the time of the post, 9:37AM (or right after market open) as shown above, and the time of the tariff 10% pause announcement,
I saw somewhere was around 1PM. For each of
these periods I look at the actual day, the previous day, the days in April before the day,
and the days since the day. All divided the same way. The hours of the day can matter.
From Best Times of the Day, Week, and Month to Trade Stocks
The closest thing to a hard-and-fast rule is that the first hour and last hour of a trading day are the busiest, offering the most prospects, while the middle of the day tends to be the calmest and most stable period of most trading days.Although, I'm not sure it is relevant here, I try to control for what I can and not compare apples to oranges.
I wrote some java for this using Stooq intraday Market Data.
The first thing I did that doesn't really seem to add any useful information was to sort
the average returns from highest to lowest getting this list for the pause day.
(ok, I'm doing some minimal HTML formatting to highlight or illustrate selected parts)
ZVZZT.US: (45.38%). Volume: 11,075
GTI.US: (38.24%). Volume: 12,339,917
PSFE-WS.US: (30.65%). Volume: 33,585
WAI.US: (28%). Volume: 5,097
HAO.US: (27.2%). Volume: 66,810
PL-WS.US: (26.67%). Volume: 5,515
BALY.US: (24.8%). Volume: 13,934
ISPR.US: (24.13%). Volume: 43,429
RTC.US: (19.38%). Volume: 61,141
BDRX.US: (19.14%). Volume: 106,649
These are not major S&P 500 companies, low volume, probably low cost. If you knew they were
going to have this kind of day you could make some money though. These are very good one
day returns. The lists are also
completely different for each time frame. This is where the list of stocks that Marjorie
Taylor Greene bought comes in handy. It provides a better list to compare against. They
are more major stocks and are consistent across all time frames.
The last thing I thought of and did was to check if there were any other April days where
the Tesla and DJT stocks did as well as they did on the day of post and announcement.
TSLA best return % in prior April days 7.24%
TSLA best date 20250402
TSLA number of prior April days better 2
DJT best return % in prior April days 3.83%
DJT best date 20250402
DJT number of prior April days better 0
TSLA best return % in after April days -0.74%
TSLA best date 20250415
TSLA number of after April days better 0
DJT best return % in after April days 4.52%
DJT best date 20250415
DJT number of after April days better 0
Notice that Tesla had two days as good or better during the same time frame as the Trump
Truth Social post. This is about 6 trading days before the post and 6 trading days after.
They have not had a positive day since and DJT had no better days before or after.
The Greene purchases don't seem to make a lot of sense. If you look at most of what she bought. They were down double digits some as high as 20%. They were down on the 8th when she started to buy. If she was aware of the upcoming tariff pause and decided to buy based on that she would be somewhat taking a chance this would flip things to an ongoing bull market. Again, if you look this is not really the case. It is mixed at best. I could maybe see it if the strategy was a Pump and dump where right after the run up the stocks would be sold. But with the disclosures she has to make that doesn't seem like a good idea. Just the buys have gotten her scrutiny. So I guess she just hopes like everyone else that the continuing trade war doesn't keep tanking the economy, including her well timed buys.
Considering again Tesla and DJT Media.
* ------------------------------------------------ *
April prior days during time of Truth Social post...
* ------------------------------------------------ *
*** Stocks mentioned in article
TSLA Per: -14.24% Total volume 284,268,924 Average Volume 47,378,154
DJT Per: -15% Total volume 10,326,791 Average Volume 1,721,131
* ---------------------------------------------- *
The actual day during time of Truth Social post...
* ---------------------------------------------- *
TSLA Price open 224.58 close 232.9 (3.7%) total volume 38,137,830
DJT Price open 16.5 close 17.74 (7.52%) total volume 3,246,390
* ------------------------------------------ *
Days after during time of Truth Social post...
* ------------------------------------------ *
*** Stocks mentioned in article
TSLA Per: -7.47% Total volume 209,978,365 Average Volume 34,996,394
DJT Per: 4.52% Total volume 15,268,630 Average Volume 2,544,771
Tesla seems to have been declining in volume during the month. DJT, on the other hand, shot up to
almost double the volume the day of the post. It also seems to have hung onto and added to
it's gains. Maybe people hoping for more market encouragement from Trump?
I do not believe that both Tesla and DJT Media got boosts from the Trump Truth Social post. For one thing putting these two together is combining apples and oranges. Tesla is a Magnificent 7 stock. It is high volume and high price - currently $240.89. DJT Media is more like the stocks that turned up in the top 10 lists. Lower volume and cost - currently $21.85. So maybe higher cost than most of those. But, also not getting their gains. I think Tesla is too large for a Trump post to move the market on. DJT with a Trump Truth Social post though might be three bears just right.
It's no Tesla. Things, however, have not been going well for Tesla and other than a short term adrenaline shot from the pause announcement this hasn't appeared to change. Also, rockets are hard, so is buying Wisconsin Supreme Court elections. Missing Social Security would be very hard for many of us. Just, don't wear a cheesehead again, unless you go to a Packers game. Then, you might want to make sure it fits.
I think the original main strategy was to give the market a boost. This was following things going really badly. The news was repeatedly how much the major stock indices were losing, how many trillions of dollars of market value were vaporizing. This wasn't just the business channels. It was main stream media, all the news. So the 10% pause was to change the narrative. At least briefly. I don't think it had anything to do with what other counties were doing regarding the tariffs. Who was, or wasn't kissing the, uh, Trump ring. He was losing ratings.
Maybe there could be some secondary benefit to this strategy? If you went back to ancient Rome and asked the emperor, qui bono? who benefits? Do you suppose he might say something like, "Hey, Nero looks out for Nero". Do you suppose Trump owns a fiddle.
Or the old Klingon proverb that the trade war reminded me of sometime ago...
From the original Star Trek episode Day of the DoveOnly a fool fights in a burning house