00:00It says 59% of traders happened within one trading day of a major market event.
00:05Can you walk us through what that means?
00:07Yeah, we looked at all of the trades, excluding obviously weekends, and we looked at when they took place.
00:12And some of the biggest and biggest dates were inflation days in January and in February.
00:18We looked at the day before, the day of the inflation report, and the day after.
00:22Now, this does not mean that the president had any inside information.
00:25It could have corresponded with some automatic trades.
00:28But that is interesting, and it shows that the president or his team pay a lot of attention to what's
00:34going on in the macro world and the macroeconomic data.
00:37When you did this analysis, what stands out to you the most?
00:39Is it the quantity of trades that took place here?
00:42Is it what the president traded or what his account traded?
00:46What's most interesting to you as somebody who's kind of digging through all of this?
00:49Yeah, it's interesting that the trades are very chaotic, which means that it's probably a compilation of several accounts, several
00:56investment accounts, not just one.
00:57Because I'll give you an example.
00:58You saw the same stocks being bought and being sold on the very same day.
01:03The same day.
01:03Sometimes multiple times a day.
01:05Oh, interesting.
01:05Which probably means that there were different entities taking care of the trades, executing the trades.
01:10And what it also means is it's probably a combination of a human making the trade and an automated trade,
01:17which leads us to believe that we just don't know if these entities talk to each other or if it's
01:24just some kind of compilation of different trades in the markets.
01:28So this story lit up like wildfire, especially over the Twitterverse, the Xverse, whatever we call it now.
01:34It was picked up a lot, I think just because some of those numbers are so huge.
01:37And we had one of your colleagues on last week when this first broke, and she was saying there was
01:41a lot of things they still didn't know, including some of the stuff you're talking about.
01:45So how did you find that out?
01:46Was it that more information was released or you've had more time to go through it?
01:48We had more time to go through the data and analyze the data, but we had a lot of information,
01:53but not enough to make any conclusions.
01:55For example, the dollar range of the trades would go from $100,000 to $250,000.
02:01So we could talk about no trades, you know, just a couple of hundreds of stocks, or we can talk
02:05about dozens of hundreds of stock trades.
02:08So we don't really just know that.
02:09What we do know is a lot of the trades, 2,000 of the 3,700 trades happened in March.
02:16And we know that that's when the war in Iran started.
02:19So some of the trades in March were done by human beings.
02:23We can see in the contours.
02:25We don't know that for sure, but we see the contours of that trade.
02:29You know, we see discretionary positions.
02:31We see, you know, some of the actions in the market.
02:33And we just looked at what was bought and what was sold and how the market performed on those days.
02:39So the trades in March had some contours of an actual human being doing that.
02:44Other than that, we don't really know.
02:46So some of those trades are tax harvest losses, you know, when, you know, your portfolio underperforms and you just
02:53sell the stocks to pay fewer taxes.
02:54But some of that is just, you know, some automatic trades that just happen for no reason.
03:00I want to get into this because you and your colleagues have such visibility into sort of how high net
03:04worth individuals approach their investments.
03:06These are not problems I have.
03:08And this is a unique high net worth individual.
03:11But as you talk about the fact that there was clearly some, not clearly, but likely some human involvement here,
03:16some algorithmic involvement.
03:18You mentioned the tax harvesting efforts that were put in place.
03:20Well, how normal is that when you look at somebody who has these kinds of means?
03:24Is this an anomalous way of approaching one's portfolio or is this the way that a lot of wealthy people
03:29would think about handling their investments?
03:30This is an enormous way of approaching portfolio for someone like President Donald Trump, arguably the person who is so
03:36wildly followed on social media, who talks about the stock market all the time.
03:40So we know for sure that a lot of people are going to be laser focused on these trades, laser
03:46focused on analyzing the portfolios.
03:48But the dozens of experts we talked to said it's very hard to make a conclusion that these trades are
03:53profitable.
03:54In fact, there are some signs that show that these trades were not profitable.
03:58Of course, it's impossible to just connect the dots for so many trades at the same time.
04:03But, yeah, that's just quite a dilemma for sure.
04:06That's so interesting.
04:07We talked about that last week, especially if you're talking about it seems like one hand doesn't know what the
04:10other hand is doing and they're doing trades that are canceling each other out.
04:13And just folks we talked to said the sheer volume is a little bit chasing your tail and doesn't really
04:18show a strategy.
04:21What would be your recommendation looking at these numbers?
04:23Like calm down, pick back a horse that you believe in.
04:28Too much trading.
04:29Too much trading.
04:29Yeah, too much trading.
04:30I wouldn't advise anyone.
04:32I'm not in a position to make an investment advice.
04:34Dispensing advice, right.
04:35Yes, don't look at the trades and just follow the trades blindly just because of, you know, some of the
04:40trades were chaotic because there were several entities executing the trade.
04:43But also on the grand scheme of things, this is the biggest filing we have ever seen from a sitting
04:49U.S. president.
04:50So it's just really important and really interesting, frankly, just to analyze that and see what potential strategies were implemented,
04:58how the trades were executed.
05:00You know, I'm sure that's going to be an evolving story and evolving conversation.
05:03You know, you mentioned looking at this in complement with the way that other presidents have approached their investments.
05:07I'm curious, as you and your colleagues looked at President Trump's disclosure from the first quarter as compared to quarters
05:13before that, maybe during his first term, how much has his or his team's approach changed just himself?
05:19I mean, it seems like this is anomalous in the context of his trades overall.
05:22Yeah.
05:22I mean, we never saw a filing that was this big.
05:25And he's not, you know, just under any obligation to be this specific in the filing.
05:29So that was really interesting.
05:31And can you explain what the threshold is for what you have to file and what the disclosure is?
05:34Yeah.
05:35So, you know, every significant trades you have to disclose, but you don't have to disclose the profit or loss.
05:41You don't have to disclose the sheer volume of trades.
05:44You can give us a ballpark of the dollar value of the trades.
05:48So that's what was given.
05:49For example, you know, the ballpark would be $100,000 to $250,000.
05:54So go figure.
05:55Was it, you know, somewhere in between?
05:57Was it on the lower end?
05:58Was it on the higher end?
05:59We just do not know.
06:01Yes.
06:01But, you know, some of the trades, there were 3,700.
06:04Some of them were municipal debt obligations.
06:07Some of them were corporate debt.
06:09So it was mostly about the stock market, but not just about the stock market.
06:13A basic question here.
06:15Did it work?
06:16Is this working for President Trump?
06:18So when you look at all of this in aggregate, the volume of trades that you're talking about,
06:20the efforts to buy and sell, sometimes multiple times in a day, is he beating benchmarks?
06:26Is this paying off for the president?
06:27Do we have any indication of that based on this financial disclosure?
06:29We have no indication.
06:29There is no way of knowing that.
06:31That's no fun.
06:32All right.
06:32Yes.
06:33I know there is a lot of talk about that in the media.
06:35There is a lot of talk about that on Twitter.
06:38But we just don't know if he profited from the trade.
06:40And some of the contours of some of those trades show that he didn't.
06:45You talk about the timing of this and how it was timed to some of the inflation announcements.
06:49Are there any other trades timed to any other events like the invasion of the war in Iran
06:53or what happened in Venezuela?
06:54Do you see any other timelines lining up with historical events or policy making?
06:57Maybe even meetings with executives.
06:59Exactly.
06:59Policy out of the White House.
07:01Yeah.
07:01It was interesting that he made a trade of Apple about a week before he talked to Tim Cook.
07:08Not talked.
07:08Rather, he praised CEO of Apple, Tim Cook, publicly.
07:12So, again, we don't know how the trade turned out.
07:15We don't know when it was bought and when it was sold.
07:18All we see is just that that happened.
07:20And then we cannot just make any definitive conclusions off of that.
07:24But just one point is a big part of those trades happened in March, happened at the beginning
07:30of March when there was a lot of volatility around the price of crude oil, around the
07:35stock market, around the SIBO-VIX index.
07:38So that actually tells us that his advisors, whoever executed the trades, are paying a lot
07:43of attention to the markets.
07:44We have about a minute left.
07:46I wonder if you could kind of synthesize the blowback that this disclosure is getting.
07:49So we've heard from the likes of Senator Elizabeth Warren, other lawmakers saying, look, we long
07:55for a quainter time when presidents had their assets in a blind trust and really didn't touch
07:58them and didn't trade in stocks.
08:00How much of a groundswell is there kind of against the president looking at the trading
08:03strategy that we see here?
08:04Yeah, we talked to a lot of strategists in the stock market who analyze high portfolios
08:10of high net worth individuals, who analyze tax law strategies.
08:13And what they tell us is, you know, that's a standard procedure for a lot of big funds.
08:18It's not, you know, as usually as big as the current one.
08:21But what is interesting is, you know, it remains to be seen if the president is going to continue
08:27disclosing his filings at this amount.
08:28Because if that happens to be the case, then we're going to see the quarter by quarter comparison,
08:34you know, 3,700 announcements in the first quarter, followed by the second quarter, followed
08:39by the third quarter.
08:39And then we can talk about making some definitive conclusions.
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