Allegations of insider trading are not the same as convictions of insider trading. No publication should be in the business of allocating criminal responsibility in advance of legal proceedings. If a crime is suspected then it should be reported to the authorities.
I don't understand this response. Certainly they shouldn't say "Mr. John Smith is guilty" if a court hasn't found that. But there's nobody in particular being named here, just clear evidence that someone must have done it. If the police find a dead body, should newspapers pretend the victim might be alive somehow to avoid allocating criminal responsibility for murder?
> just clear evidence that someone must have done it
I would love to hear more about this clear evidence. There is smoke, sure, but clear evidence, I would love to hear more on your investigation.
I've been algorithmically trading for several years now, collecting data, running machine learning prediction algorithms and whatnot. Anyway, I made 4500% off a high risk 1 DTE options play between Thursday/Friday. This trade was put in right before the geopolitical announcements sent the Russell 2000 into Captain Insano mode overnight. This isn't the first time I've done this - it's a valid trading strategy with the continuous drama/volatility that Mr DJT brings to the markets. I'm sure if there are any insider trading flags I set them off on Friday, and for people who have no idea how markets work and what volume normally looks like, it would definitely look like an insider.
I realized long ago that to make money doing this, all bias/emotions need removed and the only thing that can be relied on is math. Have you ever considered that some of the bigger prop shop trading firms with a lot of buying power are just extremely good at what they do?
The source article details multiple cases where trading volume spiked 15 minutes before a market-moving Trump announcement. I don't think it's plausible that prop shops have such good math that they can predict Trump's announcements so precisely.
There are a slew of things that were going on that make it much more probable than you might realize. One non-mathematical factor was that oil was already spiked, the perfect time to short is when it's on the rise, especially with intent of a mean reversion trade. You don't short oil on the trough's, you short on the spikes - the probability of a short working that day was much higher than average.
Next, there are definitely ML algorithms running in prop shops as we speak that are trained on the probability of DJT and media announcements, especially in volatile weeks like we've had. I cannot post the data here, but there is an article on Axios that shows this:
https://www.axios.com/2017/12/15/how-and-when-trump-tweets-1...
So not only was a mean reversion probability high, but there were probably prop shop ML algo green lights going off for the probability of an announcement that would give the mean reversion some more fuel. Regular algorithmic trading shops probably added to this volume when their programs saw larger orders coming in, which made the volume spike even larger.
Lastly, Nick Marsh is a journalist, not a professional trader or a professional in algorithmic trading. If he was, he wouldn't be making shock and awe articles for the BBC. For one low hanging fruit, why did he not pull historical data on oil futures - including other derivatives (not only Brent)? He would have needed to pull at least several years of data to understand if this was an actual outlier spike or not. If you have ever even remotely paid attention to the oil futures markets, you would know there tends to be higher volume spikes at any given time, especially after the futures market closes and re-opens between 5 and 6pm, and especially during volatile times like the last couple months.
This article isn't the full picture at all whatsoever and comes from someone who has an elementary understanding of the equity and futures markets. But it served its purpose, which was triggering an easily triggered society. Surely there has been some DJT-linked insider trading, but I personally cannot jump on board until there is more evidence - AKA the scientific method.
By researching, writing and publishing this article both the reporter and the news org believe there is significant public value in publishing this information.
But it is a higher and more restricted standard to say a crime has been committed. Journalists can uncover and publish evidence that a crime has been likely committed.
Journalists cannot make a legal determination that a crime has or has not been committed. This is left for courts.
If I have evidence that a crime has been committed based on my layperson understanding of the law, I will surely inform others before the case is even brought to courts. Journalists can and should do the same.
By your logic, reporting based on evidence provided by whistleblowers shouldn't exist. Things like Watergate would likely have never happened.
Journalists shouldn't accuse anyone of committing a crime, and goes without saying that facts shouldn't be fabricated, which is unfortunately common nowadays as well, but they should report events that happened based on the information they have, whether these happen to be related to crimes or not.
>If I have evidence that a crime has been committed based on my layperson understanding of the law, I will surely inform others before the case is even brought to courts. Journalists can and should do the same.
In the US, careful journalistic organizations follow ethical and legal guidelines that often split hairs.
Have a look here: New York Times - Ethical Journalism
A Handbook of Values and Practices for the News and Opinion Departments
Reporting based on evidence is definitely allowed in the UK. Any accusation of libel/slander could be defended by producing the evidence and thus proving that the statements were true.
Going beyond the evidence and jumping straight to the crime is where the situation becomes tricky as the defense would be unlikely to prove beyond doubt that the accused person was actually guilty - that's why terms are used such as "alleged child abuser". Alternatively, the evidence/facts can be reported e.g. "Trump featured in many victim reports as an abuser".
Thats the general public that apparently doesn't have any grip. You can do whatever you want if tens of millions of people + the billionaires support you till the end when hundreds of millions are mildly annoyed by you.
In the US, I would imagine a tragedy such as this would be litigated and end in a financial settlement potentially including economic, pain & suffering and punitive damages, well before a decision allocating blame by a jury.
That is pretty typical. You will spend potentially millions in court/lawyer fees going to a jury trial beyond whatever the end verdict is: if you can figure this out without a jury it saves you a lot of costs. Most companies only go to a jury when they really think they will win, or the situation is so complex nobody can figure out what a fair settlement is. (Ford is a famous counter example: they fight everything in front of a jury - they spend more and get larger judgements often but the expense of a jury trial means they are sued less often and so it overall balances out to not be any better for them. I last checked 20 years ago though, maybe they are different today)
It does seem like a lot, but if you look at growth rates, the differences are significant.
Stripe is also doing far more value-added stuff: If all you need is to process credit card Adyen is probably going to outbid Stripe. They almost always did last time I checked. But Stripe is offering a significantly larger product, especially to people running marketplaces. That was always the selling point for the doordashes and deliveroos of the world. Even for Amazon. So I bet that the skinny version that is just a payment processor would be worth a lot less.
They aren't the only ones trying to widen their horizons either: Paypal and Square/Block came up with plenty of plans to try to grow past boring payments. They just didn't execute on those things all that well, and somehow Stripe does.
Adyen is behind Stripe when it comes to small enterprises but ahead on large enterprises and especially global merchants. They also have scaled back on digital merchants which you can lose easily and focus more on unified commerce, their growth is a lot higher quality. They also report growth differently - ex fees to schemes and banks. Stripe will be on the hook if banks and schemes raise their fees. You also dont know what margin stripe has, just say robust which is enough for the crowd on wallstreet of course but I digress. The fact is Stripe is a good company, but its valuation is set in a room while Adyen's valuation is set on the market 80% of which is pods trading back and forth.
They have Their Link.com product which integrates pretty seamlessly. It just doesn't store balances or anything akin to PayPal, Venmo, Cashapp, Apple Pay/Cash, etc.
PayPal is steadily decreasing in share of web payments, with the one redeeming part of their business being Venmo, which appears to be crushing Cash App.
Adyen competes primarily on price with no feature differentiation, and doesn't have the same ease-of-use.
Working at several large companies in payments areas who were Stripe customers, I'll sum up what the competition looks like by paraphrasing one of the executives I reported to: "we go to Adyen when we want to take a competing offer to Stripe for them to match".
This is purely speculation on my end but paypal has too much friction from a consumer standpoint for me.
I pay mostly with credit card (debit really but entering the number etc). When paying with PayPal, I need to click through several screens to even be able to enter my details. They almost always show a login screen, then I have to find the small text at the bottom that says I dont want one. Then by default they want my SEPA details, which Im not going to give them, before allowing me to select Credit Card. Even then I still have to double check that the "Create PayPal Account" checkbox is unchecked before paying.
Stripe immediately shows you a form and doesn't ask any questions.
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