$70M in 60 Seconds: How Insider Info Helped Someone 28x Their Money

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Evidence and pattern of the trades

  • Commenters highlight a huge, time-clustered wave of 0DTE SPY/QQQ call buying minutes before the tariff-pause announcement, at multiple strikes, followed by a market spike that turned ~$2.5M in premiums into tens of millions.
  • Follow-up analysis (linked in the thread) shows coordinated activity across several strikes and ETFs, not just a single lucky bet.
  • Many see this as textbook: concentrated, highly leveraged, very short-dated bets aligned to a precise news window, with no comparable spikes on previous rumor days.

Enforcement, SEC, and executive power

  • Several note that regulators could, in principle, identify the traders via the Consolidated Audit Trail and broker records, though CAT is described as error-prone and partly captured by industry.
  • There is deep pessimism that the SEC/DOJ will investigate, given politicization, executive control over agency leadership, and recent pullbacks in other enforcement areas.
  • Some argue the system has effectively become a kleptocracy: “criminals with root access,” with courts and law enforcement either cowed or co‑opted.

Insider trading law and gray areas

  • Multiple comments clarify that in US law insider trading focuses on breach of fiduciary duty over information, not on equal information for the public.
  • Debate over whether trading on broad policy knowledge (tariffs, Fed moves) or political inside info counts as “insider trading” under current statutes.
  • Past examples of congressional trading and political families’ portfolios are raised as evidence that political insider trading is effectively tolerated and sometimes legal.

Trust, capitalism, and geopolitics

  • Many see this as another step in the US moving from a high‑trust to low‑trust environment, where markets are perceived as rigged and regulations selectively enforced.
  • Concerns that repeated, visible manipulation will erode global confidence in US markets and the dollar’s reserve status, with discussion of BRICS, Pax Americana, and possible power shifts.
  • Some argue capitalism depends on strong, consistently enforced rules; others counter that markets already tolerate extensive “legal” information asymmetry.

Skepticism and alternative explanations

  • A minority caution against jumping to conclusions, noting:
    • 0DTE options are heavily traded around macro events.
    • The same time window included a major Treasury auction and extreme volatility; some trades could be hedges or systematic strategies.
  • They argue more data is needed: who traded, their usual patterns, and whether similar-sized bets frequently expire worthless.