A man who made over 100 million yen in less than an hour just as the Trump administration announced the temporary suspension of tariffs is making headlines, with some pointing out that he engaged in insider trading.
$70 Million in 60 Seconds: How Insider Information Helped Someone 28x Their Money
https://www.dataandpolitics.net/70-million-in-60-seconds-how-insider-information-helped-someone-28x-their-money/
SPY call options give the buyer the right to buy SPY at $509 (approximately 73,000 yen) per share. SPY call options are zero-day options that expire within 24 hours of purchase, so they are high-risk but low-priced. If the market does not move, they will expire worthless, but if the market turns around, there is a possibility of making a huge profit. However, it is necessary to accurately grasp both the direction and timing of buying and selling.
On April 9, 2025, just before the Trump administration announced the suspension of mutual tariffs (around 13:01 on April 9, 2025 local time), someone invested $2.5 million in SPY call options. President Trump then announced the suspension of mutual tariffs on his social media account, Truth Social (around 13:30 on April 9, 2025 local time). As a result, the price of SPY call options, which was 85 cents (about 120 yen), soared to more than $25 (about 3,600 yen) in less than an hour. The value of the SPY call options, totaling about 30,000 shares, purchased by someone quickly ballooned from $2.5 million to more than $70 million.
Data And Politics notes that such deals were rare before the Trump administration announced the suspension of reciprocal tariffs, making them 'clearly unusual.'
In addition, at the time when SPY call options were purchased in large quantities (around 13:01 on April 9, 2025 local time), the trading volume of SPY itself also increased sharply, with approximately 2.75 million shares being bought in just one minute. Since the closing price of SPY on April 9 was $533.94 (approximately 76,000 yen), if the buyer had sold SPY at this price, he would have made a profit of more than $36 (approximately 5,100 yen) per share. Regarding this, Data And Politics pointed out that 'In other words, in 60 seconds, more than $100 million (approximately 14 billion yen) would have been made.'
Trading volume remained at a high level for the next 15 minutes. If the same trading pace continued, more than 41 million shares would have been traded during this time alone. Moreover, at this point, the Trump administration had not yet announced the suspension of mutual tariffs, so no one understood why the market was moving.
Data And Politics said, 'We don't know who made the trades or what they knew. But what's certain is that if the trades were based on guesses, they were better guesses than almost anyone in the history of modern markets. If they weren't guesses, someone made a lot of money off information the public didn't already know.'
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in Note, Posted by logu_ii