Spikes in the Chicago E-mini market, and in defense stocks, preceded the announcement of the killing of Qasem Soleimani, not long after Trump reportedly told Mar-a-Lago guests he was working on a “big” response to Iran’s provocations. A coincidence?
about the trading in these same futures contracts, known as e-minis, and about how it sure seemed like some people who were placing the bets on them at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange were benefitting from exquisite timing, putting themselves in a position to reap millions of dollars in profit, assuming they sold when their future contracts were in the money.
This time, the crowd went wild. My tweet about the story garnered nearly 1 million “impressions” and more than 100,000 “total engagements,” which for someone with around 11,000 followers seemed pretty remarkable. Two congressmen asked the FBI, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to investigate the suspicious trading; a group of Democratic senators also asked for an investigation.
Then came the U.S. drone strike that killed Qasem Soleimani at around 1 a.m. local time in Baghdad on Friday, January 3. That was around 5 p.m. in Washington. It took the Pentagon another five hours or so—just before 10 p.m.—before it released its official statement telling the world that Soleimani had been killed. E-minison the CME atabout 4 p.m. New York time each day. There is then an hour of what’s known as aftermarket trading. Then there is a one-hour break in trading.
But then, around 8:30 p.m. ET, or still some 90 minutes before the Pentagon made its announcement, trading picked up considerably. The S&P 500 index was then at 3260. Suddenly, a trader or group of traders—but most likely not a single trade or trader—began making big bets that the S&P index would fall by selling the March 2020 E-mini futures contract. At 8:30 p.m. ET, 2,250 E-mini contracts were sold; at 8:40 p.m.
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