A former White House aide named Perez had advance copies of Trump speeches and used them to trade futures contracts. The CFTC fined him $172,000. He had the actual text of what the President would say before anyone else on Earth and still only made enough to get caught and fined.
Think about that. He knew the exact words coming out of the mouth of the most market-moving president in modern history. He had the cheat codes. He had the answer key. He was playing poker with a mirror behind you.
And his winning trade was so small the government noticed it and took it all back plus extra.
This is like robbing a bank and leaving with a sandwich. This is like hacking the lottery and buying a single ticket. The man had insider information so inside it was still being typed on White House stationery and he traded it like a community college freshman who just watched his first YouTube video about candlestick patterns.
The CFTC said he traded contracts for personal benefit. Personal benefit. They made it sound like he bought himself a jet ski. He probably bought a used Camry.
Every retail trader losing money on zero-day options right now is reading this story and thinking they could have done better. And they are right. You could have done better. A golden retriever with a Robinhood account could have done better.
Perez had the nuclear codes for market volatility and fumbled them so hard the regulators wrote a press release about it. He will now be remembered forever as the guy who had tomorrow's newspaper and still bet on the wrong horse.
Photo by Gabriel Tovar on Unsplash
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