Chronicles of 2025

Yes that’s intriguing

The thinking could be: “either make it sound like you think you’re doing it right so stopping once the teacher turns their eyes on you could be taken an admission of guilt, followed by puppy eyes “sowy, won’t do dat again”, or really do think you’re doing it right so there’s no reason to stop”?

I mean, the incentives and motives are all there if a market has a structure that is ripe for manipulation, any good investigator has to follow the money to find out :slight_smile:

Breaking
The love letters begin.

25% for Korea
If Korea retaliates by X%, then it’s 25 + X%

Same for Japan

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The protection money needs to be extorted

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Money Stuff newsletter from today (archive) covers it, and it looks pretty convincing this is regular arbitrage (and given that India is 80% of worldwide equity options being traded, it means it’s 1) a lot of money 2) has lots of arbitrage since retail don’t check the underlying and blindly gamble).

A few quotes:

Compared to other big markets, it is harder to get leverage on cash stock positions or futures in India, or to sell stocks short. […] [S]ome trading strategies that have to be implemented using stocks — like arbitraging options versus the underlying stocks — are harder to do in India, so some arbitrages won’t close and some spreads will be wider.

The intuitive story here is: By buying in the (illiquid) cash market, Jane Street was pushing up the price of the index, which pushed up the prices of index options, which allowed it to sell much more in the (liquid) options market and make a huge but manipulative profit.

The problem with this story is that the options went down. […] From the prices of these options, you can back out an implied price for the underlying index. […] The options implied a price for the Nifty Bank index that was 1.6% higher than the actual price of the index: Retail investors were paying more for stock exposure via options than institutions were paying to buy the actual underlying stocks.

This is a very different story from the one SEBI tells. This does not look like manipulation; it looks like arbitrage . This is: Jane Street came in one Friday morning and noticed that Indian retail traders were buying options on the Nifty Bank index at much higher prices than where the index was actually trading. So Jane Street got to work doing what it does: It sold options to retail traders who wanted them, and bought the underlying stocks to hedge, until the arbitrage closed

So yeah looks like it’s mostly a retail gambling on option issue, that allows people (market makers, brokers, exchanges) making a lot of money at their expense.

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Thanks for sharing. Maybe F&O trading in India can be brought under check if this side of the story checks out.

Funny how 25% seems low to me today. We (I?) get accustomed to this stuff way too easily.

I like this graph from Yahoo Finance. Tariffs are at WWII level.

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This was the whole idea. Flood the zone.

Assuming suppliers cannot absorb 15% costs (unless they were making huge profits to begin with), this should have some sort of price increases locally

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Well, excluding 1950 there have been 5% tariffs for 75 years, so yeah 25% is a lot and it’s not at all great for global commerce. Tariffs and protectionism is absolutely a surefire way to bad stuff for whomever is doing it.

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I am wondering what would happen if no one retaliates and continue business as usual?

It’s not like manufacturing can start in 3 months. So there wouldn’t be any option but to import at higher prices.

Türkiye is what comes to my mind: high inflation and lowering rates to fight inflation, triggering higher inflation.

They still have a strong legacy to rely upon, and most importantly a strong military so it may be a slow process. Don’t quote me to your bookmaker if you’re trusting this feeling to make bets with your money.

I heard a comment on CNN. Sums it all well

It’s been a desire of Trump since 1980s when he was private citizen. The whole White House and US administration is trying very hard to make Tariffs a viable policy.

Prices would go up for US consumers, Trump would parade that he made the bad foreigners pay to do business with the US of A, as they deserve, rates would have to go down - another win for Trump. More specifically though, and with less smoke and mirrors, and on pain of sounding like a commie, he wants to lower taxes for the benefit of the rich, that’s all. Of course with this mongoloid setup only the rich will benefit but hey, he was born with a silver, no, golden spoon…you know where this goes!

Re the CNN comment, yes, he’s had these idiotic ideas like that foreigners are exploiting the US for decades, I think the point you made was noted much earlier in this thread too.

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Rates are now more likely to stay higher for longer, hence why teh USD apreciated a bit. The tariffs will cause significant inflation → Fed won’t ease

Hm, JPow might not, but the next one who’ll for sure be a yesman will.

Response from Jane street

I think Switzerland did and does. 800% on agricultural products without adding the subsidies seems pretty exploiting to me. Now the whole country has to suffer for our cows. But OK, at least the cows are beautiful here…

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Wait, but the “horny cow” initiative failed, so, in practice they are not as beautiful as in your picture…

Does she wear protection or artificial horns?

Let’s see whose letters get posted today. The posts on Truth Social should start to come in any moment now…

Thank you for your attention to this matter!

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