In the minutes before U.S. President Donald Trump's social media post on Wednesday pausing tariffs sent the U.S. stock market rallying, some unidentified options traders placed bets worth millions of dollars that the market would rebound, data shows.
The well-timed bets likely paid off handsomely. Now, some Democratic lawmakers are calling for investigations into whether Trump's policy reversal led to any market manipulation or insider trading.
Betting on short-term market swings is common and the trades in question could easily have been placed without any prior knowledge of the coming news as traders speculate on a market bounce or hedge against one every day.
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