So on 9 April 2025, US financial markets had an explosive day. The SPY jumped more than 7%, the Nasdaq took off, and a handful of very specific options saw their value multiplied by 20. To understand the problem, we need to go back through the timeline.

🕘 The first signal: 9:37am

At 9:37am New York time, Donald Trump posted a terse (or not) message on Truth Social:

THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT

A familiar tone, very Trumpian. But this time it would trigger far more than political buzz: it preceded a wave of coordinated buying on the most speculative options on the SPY¹ and the QQQ², the flagship ETFs of the US market.

Between 9:57am and 10:00am ET³, so 20 minutes after Trump’s post, the first massive orders landed on SPY 509C options⁴, expiring that same day.

• Volume: 30,483 contracts.
• Initial premium: ~$1.85.

An hour later, they were worth $25: 13.5x the initial stake at a given moment, with intraminute swings of up to 15x.

Same story a little later for other options:

• SPY 504C: 46,198 contracts opened between 12:55pm and 1:05pm ET
• QQQ 460C: 17,664 contracts, with record volume at 1:10pm
• SPY 600C: an impressive 65,226 contracts, or $37M in premium traded... for a $600 strike

What do they have in common? All were opened just before 1:18pm, when Trump posted a new announcement, an official one this time (published on Truth Social around 1:18-1:20pm according to the observed timestamps): a 90-day pause on tariffs. Markets exploded. So did the options.

Data published by UnusualWhales

⏱️ Too precise to be honest

The charts confirm it: the positions were opened only minutes before the announcement, with near-surgical precision. No abnormal volume was detected in the previous days. Open interest rising or falling depending on the strike shows these positions were fresh, concentrated and targeted.

Let’s look at the returns:

• SPY 504C: 8x in less than an hour
• QQQ 460C: 4x to 5x
• SPY 600C: 2x, despite an extremely distant strike. Some observers see it as a possible camouflage technique, others as a speculative hedge. Either way, the timing remains troubling.

🧾 The Senate steps in

The next day, members of the US Senate sent an official letter to the Office of Government Ethics and the White House. The aim: to establish whether the President or those around him deliberately tipped off third parties about the tariff announcement before it was made public, allowing massive insider trading gains.

The problem is systemic: the announcements were made under the IEEPA (International Emergency Economic Powers Act), an emergency mechanism that lets the president act unilaterally, with no ex ante oversight. In other words, nobody can check or block the information before it goes public.