Walter Einenkel wrote an excellent DIARY yesterday talking about the possible stock shenanigans involving Trump’s sudden “bashing” of the Boeing Corporation over the cost of the new Air Force One after the Boeing CEO came out in an editorial and called on Trump to moderate his rhetoric on trade with China. Walter started me thinking. He should be ashamed of himself, everyone here knows how dangerous a “thinking” Murfster35 is! *Full Disclosure* What follows is pure speculation, and total conjecture on my part, but knowing who and what Trump is, it makes perfect sense.
Walter quite correctly zeroed in on the financial aspect of the Trump Twitter tantrum. He noted that at the open Boeing stock was trading at $152 and change. After Trump’s broadside the stock dropped to $149 a share, about a $3 difference. Fortunately, it came back up by the end of the day. So, other than Trump getting his petty revenge, what was the point? But why did it suddenly come back up again?
There are two possible points, both of which could easily be in the control of either Trump or his children. The first is selling short. For those unfamiliar with it, the simple basics are that if you have a broker, you “borrow” shares from your broker and sell them, with the belief that the stock is going to go down. It costs you nothing, you pocket the cash. If in fact the stock goes down, as in the case of Boeing today, at the stocks low point you buy the stock back, return it to your broker, and keep the profit. If it goes up, you jump out of a high window. Let’s just say that Trump, his children, his company or some close “friends” of his “borrowed” 100,000 shares of Boeing stock from their broker today and sold it. Then, right on schedule, when Trump pitched his fit and the stock took a 1.5% drop, they buy the now depressed stock back and return it to their broker, pocketing a tidy little $300,000 profit for a couple of hours of work. Nice job if you can get it, huh?
The other scenario is more straightforward, but also quite possibly illegal. Some company or other pisses Trump off for whatever reason. Via back channels the word goes out to trusted family members and “friends” to watch stock in the XYZ Corporation for a possible fire sale. Trump then does his typical hatchet job on the company via Twitter or a phone in rant, and the stock takes a nose dive. Vultures swoop in to snarf up the undervalued stock. The next day, Trump changes his mind, Tweets that it was all just a mistake, and the stock goes back up again. The vultures sell and once again make a tidy profit. The possible catch is that if the FBI or SEC can prove that the traders had inside knowledge about the trials the stock was going to have, that’s illegal. They could be forced to cough up their profits, pay fines, and perhaps even go to Federal prison. The big question is how hard the FBI or SEC would pursue investigations against relatives, friends or business associates of the sitting President of The United States of America. Especially if the investigation seems to indicate that the original “insider” information came from the Trump White House.
Now, I’ll be the first to admit that the above proposed scenarios are both jaded and cynical. However, from everything we’ve seen of Trump so far, from his massaging of bankruptcy laws to his stiffing of contractors, from his Trump U scam to his refusal to release his tax returns, does anyone here really doubt his ability to pursue this particular little sideline? To obtain petty revenge against those who dare to defy him, and at the same time enrich his family, his associates, and maybe even his company and himself? Take the poll and let me know what you think.
Thanks as always for reading, you are ALL the wind beneath my wings!