https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...-as-trump-economic-adviser-amid-trade-dispute Gary Cohn is resigning as President Donald Trump’s top economic adviser, leaving his post as the administration prepares to impose steep tariffs on steel and aluminum that Cohn has opposed. “It has been an honor to serve my country and enact pro-growth economic policies to benefit the American people, in particular the passage of historic tax reform,” Cohn said in a statement released by the White House on Tuesday. “I am grateful to the president for giving me this opportunity and wish him and the administration great success in the future.” --------------------------------------------- S&P 500 futures down -1.12% afterhours on the news.
If you would have anticipated this, you would have made a bundle in the market...put options. To loosely paraphrase James Gandolfini in the movie The Taking of Pelham 123 [2009] describing what John Travolta caused and banked in the NYC terror subway plot.
It would be completely naive to think no one knew about this in advance and profited in some way. The SEC only touches the tip of the iceberg of insider trading and other weird and questionable and shady dealings. Evil generally wins and prevails. Feel-good stories and righteousness mainly exists for movies.
Actually that's not hard to imagine at all. At least we know now why the ES weakened early into a nice rally after being down for the day. The news was out for the select few and there was re-positioning going on.
One less voice of reason in the White House - remember, the market rallied 40% since Trump was elected not based an actual results (earnings/GDP/US household wage growth), but based on the expectation that those things were coming soon. If the people working on those pro-growth agendas suddenly leave....well that's a problem.