Wow. Stunning overall analysis, leading to an extremely frank conclusion about where we are as a society overall, unsullied by politicized whaddaboutism re: which tribe is doing the most wrongest stuff. Well done. I’m aboard.
This is wrong on a number of fronts. Nothing more than an attempt to justify passing non-public, market making information for a fee. That is the definition of insider trading.
Thank you so much for this piece. I recently watched a lecture on YouTube by David Brooks in Yale. The topic is on how America recovers from where we are (https://youtu.be/rb4jC1AQgcc?si=rBMX0u0XmiHZV6Pz). He believes what eventually saves us will not be politics or economics. It will be values and cultural shifts. It’ll be when people would think “I don’t want this anymore.” I feel what that Freshman said reflects what Brooks is talking about. “Isn’t this just wrong?” When we instinctively feel that something is wrong when we cannot even articulate the reason, that shows what we witnessed truly upsets our moral values.
One more pathetic example of the “new” right’s willingness to surrender all integrity in service to Don. My former party used to claim that character counted. Then again, supposedly so did fiscal discipline, rule of law, free speech, a strong defense, global leadership… I guess the best Chris can muster is a “Billy did it first” whimper that our moms never let us get away with, which is especially absurd given the scale of Don’s corruption.
I wonder how many MAGA/“new” right devotees teach their children to emulate Don?
What would you say if Obama did it? Did Obama profit from his office? How about Biden, or any other President? Maybe you did comment on their corruption and I just missed it.
Gratifying piece to read. High frequency trading has always been a particularly revolting instance of the scourge of Financialization of our economy. All the financial instruments that are non-productive in the real economy ought to be banned in my view. They are all rent-seeking theft of the actual productive economy for the benefit of those who don't need it.
That Trump promotes and profits from this specifically in and because of his role as President is vile. It is impossible to view anything he does through a different lens than the one in which he calculates that he personally benefits. That benefit could be financial or it could be psychological but nearly every action he takes can be clearly understood as personally benefiting him, even when he makes colossal blunders in that assessment.
Oren touts the virtues of tariffs. In the right context and the right timing and policy mix I think he is correct. His defense of Trump on this issue is radically misplaced because of the above. Trump is not implementing tariffs strategically and in combination with other policy to effectively benefit Americans and re-establish our industrial capacity and independence. He implements them as psychological gratification dictates to his diseased brain.
The transition away from the post WWII Pax Americana burdens has some legitimacy in terms of alleviating and sharing the burdens, yet Trump's aim is satisfying his own sense of grandeur and power. There was zero rationality to shifting the burden by abandoning international leadership and alienating allies. That is so extreme in nature that it's difficult to avoid imagining some serious compromise in Trump's allegiance to America. That possibility rears its head because its so difficult to imagine that this is a result of such immense incompetence. Can someone really be that inept? Can a major political party be so cravenly enabling of a clearly massively corrupt President?
MAGA voters are realizing Trump is not on the side of Average Americans. Trump is on Trump's side, which aligns with the financial elite. I've said it before and I'll keep saying it...Commonplace needs to separate itself from Trump and MAGA. They are so far from principled conservatism they might as well be space aliens.
Core problem is that the majority of US politicians are focused on the Golden Age Of Graft (GAG). Until there are certain negative consequences the GAG outrages will continue to escalate.
Joe Biden issued press announcements that were published digitally and picked up by the NYT and WSJ anyone who subscribed to the White House's website API. Donald Trump issues press announcements that are also released through the White House API.
Obama, Biden and Trump have all also made statements on social media. The former 2 used Twitter and Facebook; the latter uses Truth; Newsome or AOC in 2028 will probably use BlueSky. All of these have APIs.
I fail to see what the problem is here. there's no "non-public" information. In all cases, the API is entirely optional. These news organizations and investment bankers could just check the websites themselves. They subscribe purely because they want to be first. That's their prerogative. For me, it makes no difference, so I'm not paying the fees to subscribe.
Did you miss the point about how those who pay get early access, or are you pretending not to understand what that means?
Sure, an investment banker could "choose" not to pay for early access to market moving information... they could also choose to come to work not wearing pants. The career effects would be roughly the same. Do you not know how markets work?
If the President was still tweeting, would you be equally upset that Twitter charges for API access? That Elon Musk was profiting off Trump's presence on his platform?
I do recognize that Trump being the the primary investor in Truth Social complicates this equation; however, what he's doing here is SOP for the industry.
In short, of all the things wrong with Trump and all the corruption present in his administration, this one just doesn't rank to me.
Read this slowly because it seems you might need a few cracks at more challenging material:
If the President of the United States makes an announcement, it should be available to everyone, for free, at the same time. That’s literally his job.
Read it again: Making policy announcements PUBLICLY is literally his job. (that’s why they call it “public policy”).
It would be very bad if he had a deal where Elon Musk could charge for early access to Trump tweets.. that would be a stupendous favour that Trump was doing for Musk. The fact that Trump himself owns the platform is just icing on the cake.
So if the President, or a major media figure, or the CEO of a company, or anyone else that might affect investment markets makes a tweet, those who pay to subscribe to the API will get it first. it may only be by milliseconds -- and Truth's API works the same way -- but it's still first, and if you run a high-volume trading algorithm, those few milliseconds may matter to you.
I've worked in Silicon Valley, in this field. This is SOP for the industry. There is absolutely nothing unusual about any of it. The only thing that concerns me is that the President is using a platform he owns to do it and likely profiting (slightly) from the office. However, there's so much profiting off of public offices in Washington that this seems like pretty small potatoes.
Wow. Stunning overall analysis, leading to an extremely frank conclusion about where we are as a society overall, unsullied by politicized whaddaboutism re: which tribe is doing the most wrongest stuff. Well done. I’m aboard.
Classic anti anti defense, ‘look at how bad all of you made us, Trump HAD to do it’. Remove any agency from Trump and republican law makers.
This is wrong on a number of fronts. Nothing more than an attempt to justify passing non-public, market making information for a fee. That is the definition of insider trading.
Thank you so much for this piece. I recently watched a lecture on YouTube by David Brooks in Yale. The topic is on how America recovers from where we are (https://youtu.be/rb4jC1AQgcc?si=rBMX0u0XmiHZV6Pz). He believes what eventually saves us will not be politics or economics. It will be values and cultural shifts. It’ll be when people would think “I don’t want this anymore.” I feel what that Freshman said reflects what Brooks is talking about. “Isn’t this just wrong?” When we instinctively feel that something is wrong when we cannot even articulate the reason, that shows what we witnessed truly upsets our moral values.
One more pathetic example of the “new” right’s willingness to surrender all integrity in service to Don. My former party used to claim that character counted. Then again, supposedly so did fiscal discipline, rule of law, free speech, a strong defense, global leadership… I guess the best Chris can muster is a “Billy did it first” whimper that our moms never let us get away with, which is especially absurd given the scale of Don’s corruption.
I wonder how many MAGA/“new” right devotees teach their children to emulate Don?
This is the type of content that keeps me reading Commonplace and coming back for more.
Hurrah for saying this -- very well put.
Is Trump trying to make money or create outrage about high frequency trading? Or both? Motive matters and I don't know.
What would you say if Obama did it? Did Obama profit from his office? How about Biden, or any other President? Maybe you did comment on their corruption and I just missed it.
Gratifying piece to read. High frequency trading has always been a particularly revolting instance of the scourge of Financialization of our economy. All the financial instruments that are non-productive in the real economy ought to be banned in my view. They are all rent-seeking theft of the actual productive economy for the benefit of those who don't need it.
That Trump promotes and profits from this specifically in and because of his role as President is vile. It is impossible to view anything he does through a different lens than the one in which he calculates that he personally benefits. That benefit could be financial or it could be psychological but nearly every action he takes can be clearly understood as personally benefiting him, even when he makes colossal blunders in that assessment.
Oren touts the virtues of tariffs. In the right context and the right timing and policy mix I think he is correct. His defense of Trump on this issue is radically misplaced because of the above. Trump is not implementing tariffs strategically and in combination with other policy to effectively benefit Americans and re-establish our industrial capacity and independence. He implements them as psychological gratification dictates to his diseased brain.
The transition away from the post WWII Pax Americana burdens has some legitimacy in terms of alleviating and sharing the burdens, yet Trump's aim is satisfying his own sense of grandeur and power. There was zero rationality to shifting the burden by abandoning international leadership and alienating allies. That is so extreme in nature that it's difficult to avoid imagining some serious compromise in Trump's allegiance to America. That possibility rears its head because its so difficult to imagine that this is a result of such immense incompetence. Can someone really be that inept? Can a major political party be so cravenly enabling of a clearly massively corrupt President?
MAGA voters are realizing Trump is not on the side of Average Americans. Trump is on Trump's side, which aligns with the financial elite. I've said it before and I'll keep saying it...Commonplace needs to separate itself from Trump and MAGA. They are so far from principled conservatism they might as well be space aliens.
Core problem is that the majority of US politicians are focused on the Golden Age Of Graft (GAG). Until there are certain negative consequences the GAG outrages will continue to escalate.
Joe Biden issued press announcements that were published digitally and picked up by the NYT and WSJ anyone who subscribed to the White House's website API. Donald Trump issues press announcements that are also released through the White House API.
Obama, Biden and Trump have all also made statements on social media. The former 2 used Twitter and Facebook; the latter uses Truth; Newsome or AOC in 2028 will probably use BlueSky. All of these have APIs.
I fail to see what the problem is here. there's no "non-public" information. In all cases, the API is entirely optional. These news organizations and investment bankers could just check the websites themselves. They subscribe purely because they want to be first. That's their prerogative. For me, it makes no difference, so I'm not paying the fees to subscribe.
"I fail to see what the problem is here. "
Surely you are not this obtuse?
Did you miss the point about how those who pay get early access, or are you pretending not to understand what that means?
Sure, an investment banker could "choose" not to pay for early access to market moving information... they could also choose to come to work not wearing pants. The career effects would be roughly the same. Do you not know how markets work?
If the President was still tweeting, would you be equally upset that Twitter charges for API access? That Elon Musk was profiting off Trump's presence on his platform?
I do recognize that Trump being the the primary investor in Truth Social complicates this equation; however, what he's doing here is SOP for the industry.
In short, of all the things wrong with Trump and all the corruption present in his administration, this one just doesn't rank to me.
"I do recognize that Trump being the ... primary investor in Truth Social complicates this"
No shit, Sherlock.
Read this slowly because it seems you might need a few cracks at more challenging material:
If the President of the United States makes an announcement, it should be available to everyone, for free, at the same time. That’s literally his job.
Read it again: Making policy announcements PUBLICLY is literally his job. (that’s why they call it “public policy”).
It would be very bad if he had a deal where Elon Musk could charge for early access to Trump tweets.. that would be a stupendous favour that Trump was doing for Musk. The fact that Trump himself owns the platform is just icing on the cake.
Twitter charges for API access:
https://opentweet.io/how-to/x-api-pay-per-use-explained
So if the President, or a major media figure, or the CEO of a company, or anyone else that might affect investment markets makes a tweet, those who pay to subscribe to the API will get it first. it may only be by milliseconds -- and Truth's API works the same way -- but it's still first, and if you run a high-volume trading algorithm, those few milliseconds may matter to you.
I've worked in Silicon Valley, in this field. This is SOP for the industry. There is absolutely nothing unusual about any of it. The only thing that concerns me is that the President is using a platform he owns to do it and likely profiting (slightly) from the office. However, there's so much profiting off of public offices in Washington that this seems like pretty small potatoes.