[sonzohan]

It's not that it can't be traced, the author is stating it won't be traced because high-ranking government officials are selling those secrets.

This is actually not new in this administration. Last year the president posted on social media telling people to buy stocks a few hours before he announced tariffs (https://apnews.com/article/trump-truth-social-djt-tesla-musk...).

The bigger problem isn't whether or not it can be traced, or if it should be traced. It can and it should. The central issue at stake here is the sale of government secrets to private and (presently) anonymous groups for profit. The author is stating that since we don't know who the trader of that commodity is, and because that commodity's price is tightly coupled to actions related to the war, that trader could be helping enemies of the U.S. Without the knowledge of who the person is, or how they knew to make such a huge market movement, a claim of treason can be argued.

The biggest problem is the intelligence community is heavily rooted in trust. Movements like these signal there's an intelligence leak to the general public, or more appropriately, someone with $580 million lying around. An intelligence leak reduces trust; allies are less likely to share information if it's leaked. Conversely, trust is returned when the leaks are found and plugged, and measures put in place to prevent those leaks in the future. The author is stating that these leaks are unlikely to be plugged, which will reduce trust in American intelligence. After all, as the president said, "Let's say I was gonna do it or let's say I wasn't gonna do it, why would I tell you?" (https://www.bbc.com/news/live/c4gqjyk0vx3t)

Except he is telling someone, and that someone is making a lot of money.

[throw0101c]

> It's not that it can't be traced, the author is stating it won't be traced because high-ranking government officials are selling those secrets.

"US SEC's ex-enforcement chief clashed with bosses over Trump cases before leaving, sources say":

* https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/us-secs-ex-enforcem...

"SEC enforcement director quits":

* https://www.cfodive.com/news/sec-enforcement-director-abrupt...

The head of the SEC didn't want the SEC's investigation division to investigate (certain things).

[the_gipsy]

I should have been clearer, why can't this be publicly traced?

[sonzohan]

1. Brokerages, banking, and the financial sector in the U.S. is tightly regulated. Personal financial information is very private, and financial data breaches are treated seriously (See: Equifax). You shouldn't be able to publicly trace it. It won't be disclosed unless the owner of the account consents (like a credit check), or a subpoena is issued. If the trader isn't suspected of a crime, there's no reason for others to know who placed those contracts.

2. Crypto is a unique and new player in banking and securities. Specifically, the ledger is open to all and very transparent. In order to know which wallet owns what and how much, you need to be able to look at the ledger to confirm. This design is intended to prevent fraudulent transactions. Banks and brokerages don't keep an open ledger, they keep an extremely private and heavily secured database.

3. People are heavily disincentivized to disclose this information. See: Epstein, and the people and companies that did financial business with him. Openly telling the public you sold stock to someone who trafficked underage girls isn't good for your reputation.

4. Futures in this case are similar to stocks. It's literally a market: You put in a bid to buy or sell something, someone else accepts, and both parties agree to a contract. Digital trading systems match buyers to sellers, and does so on behalf of both parties. If you trade using Fidelity and place a bid for 1,000 units of Corn at $500/unit, you might end up buying from Chase. Even if the transaction is in-person, the trader may be acting on behalf of someone else. In the case of the $580 million deal, it was spread over 6,200 contracts.

5. The STOCK Act of 2012 was supposed to prevent this, at least for members of Congress. The PELOSI Act that's currently introduced for voting is supposed to further prevent this.

6. To my original point: the problem isn't that these trades occurred. The problem isn't even that it's almost certainly insider trading. The problem is that government secrets are being leaked. The authors argument is that it almost certainly won't be investigated and any attempt at investigation will be blocked, because the level of corruption in the current administration is such that the sale of state secrets for others to profit off of is permissible. In fact, they can brazenly do it in the open while still ensuring that their privacy will be kept because of #1.

[the_gipsy]

Thank you for the detailed answer!

Very interesting. I wonder how much good a publicly transparent trading system would do. And what downsides there are, of course.

[kasey_junk]

Unfortunately it’s mostly wrong. And the reason it’s not public is much simpler. These markets are both standard contracts on CME matching engines.

The CME uses a system where orders (and fills) are entered via a direct TCP/IP connection between the trading system and the exchange. There is no opportunity for any system besides the trading systems (computers, switches, etc) on each side to see the order.

The CME then distributes the market data to a variety of paths in the form of price updates to an order book. That is the price and quantity of buy and sell orders at each price point. While these data feeds aren’t public, the cme gets paid for the data, it is widely disseminated, but it’s had the trading system identification removed. This whole story comes from people with market data contracts observing these feeds.

There are other exchanges that provide more information about who is entering orders but infrequent but large participants don’t like this because it allows the market makers an information advantage against them. And large block participants tend to correlate with real economic activity (oil producers and consumers for instance).

If a market maker knows an order is for one of these participants they can presume the size is going to be bigger and thus charge more for liquidity (in the form of of widening the price on their bid/ask spread offerings). Half the job of a modern HFT is predicting this sort of thing.

So the cme keeps it this way so one set of their market will keep using them. It’s part of the balancing act a two sided exchange has to navigate.