"THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!" screamed the president on Truth Social yesterday.
Hours later — what a totally random coincidence! — he slashed tariffs to 10% for everyone except China. The market rocketed immediately.
The market equivalent of a smoke signal went up yesterday when SPY call options — basically lottery tickets betting the market would surge — jumped 10x their normal volume ten minutes before Trump announced his tariff reversal. Picture a Vegas sports book suddenly getting flooded with bets on the same team 10 minutes before a "surprise" announcement that their star player was actually fine to play. These financial fortune tellers somehow just knew Trump was about to do his tariff two-step, turning the S&P 500 into their personal ATM. When the totally-not-coordinated announcement dropped, the market rocketed up $4.7 trillion in under an hour.
Martha Stewart must be rage-baking in her kitchen right now, wondering why she didn't have the foresight to just become president before doing her insider trading.
ABC News reports that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent tried spinning this as part of some master plan, claiming 75 countries called to negotiate. Sure, and my Canadian girlfriend totally exists — she just goes to another school.
Trump later admitted he wrote the policy "from our hearts" that morning without lawyers. Because nothing says responsible governance like crafting international trade policy with the same careful consideration as a 3 AM tweet about hamburders.
Senators Schiff and Gallego are now demanding answers about who knew what and when. But tracking insider trading in this administration is like trying to find a specific rat in a landfill — technically possible but why bother when the whole thing's already trash?
Vice President Vance was unavailable for comment. His spokesperson said he's busy writing his next book: "Hillbilly Elegy 2: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Grift."
