The Price of Admission

The Price of Admission

“Senior members of the executive branch — who have access to privileged information — shouldn’t be using it to get rich.”

So said Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) in 2023. It’s right there in our voluminous archives: He drew up a bill that would have banned senior executive branch officials from owning or trading individual stocks.

At the time The Wall Street Journal had uncovered all manner of conflict of interest throughout the executive branch — including 2,600 officials who owned shares of companies overseen by their agencies.

But that was during Bidentime. Near as we can tell, Hawley has lost interest in the cause now that a Republican is back in the White House.

Shortly before the Independence Day holiday, the White House disclosed Donald Trump’s stock-trading activity during calendar year 2025.

All told there were more than 21,000 transactions in his accounts — many of them held in a trust run by Donald Jr. 

Perhaps the most eyebrow-raising trades occurred on April 8 — 327 buys totaling $3.6 million, and no sells.

The next day was when the president walked back a huge swath of his “Liberation Day” tariffs. The S&P 500 leaped 9.5% higher, the biggest one-day percentage gain since 2008. The Nasdaq soared 12.2%, the biggest one-day percentage gain since 2001.

Wild coincidence? “Neither the president nor his family has ever engaged—or will ever engage—in conflicts of interest,” said White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly.

Given all of the suspicious trading activity this year surrounding the Iran war and the various “peace is at hand” articles from Axios reporter Barak Ravid… next year’s disclosures ought to be a gas.

Last week brought news that the administration is willing to share the wealth, as it were.

From the Reuters newswire…

Trump Media & Technology Group has unveiled a paid-for, licensed data feed that will give banks and trading firms “the fastest” access ‌to posts from influential Truth Social accounts, such as President Donald Trump's, whose posts often move global markets.

The product, called "Truth API," will deliver posts from the 10 most influential accounts to customers at a significantly faster pace than a regular push notification on the Truth Social platform, a spokesperson said.

The feed is designed for organizations "most impacted by the cost of a delay in information," such as algorithmic trading firms, the company said in a statement. "Until now... firms that prioritize tracking influential Truth posts have relied on manual monitoring. Truth API closes the gap."

The Financial Times advanced the story with the revelation that potential clients would be charged as much as $100,000 a month — although clients who committed to a three-year plan would get a discounted rate of $60,000.

On CNN, anchor Dana Bash was beside herself. “It appears to be yet another example of the Trump family profiting off of his presidency.” 

She then debriefed reporter Dave Goldman, who addressed the most obvious question…

Yeah, it’s legal. And this isn’t the only company that’s doing this. X, owned by Elon Musk, and Meta, others either offer for free or sell high-speed access to the data that’s available on their platforms. But here’s the key. President Trump owns the platform that he’s making news on. And so by selling access to it, he is thereby making money. 

Remember, he owns 41% of the parent company, Trump Media, which owns Truth Social. And the company could use some money, Dana, because it only made $3 million in ad revenue last year. It lost, get this, $711 million in operating losses. This is not a profitable company, and they’re looking for ways to make some money.

Does Goldman not understand the distinction between Trump Media and X, Meta, etc?

Let me spell it out for him: Unlike X and Meta, the product for sale here is advance notice of proclamations about public policy being implemented with taxpayer dollars.

Really, don’t you deserve a cut of the $100,000 per month that banks and hedge funds will be paying for this valuable information? Or better yet, a cut of the profits they make from their advance knowledge?

But good luck suing for redress, even if there’s a relevant statute currently on the books.

You could bring millions of your fellow taxpayers together to file a class action, but the courts would surely find some dodge to deny you “standing.” That is, you didn’t suffer direct harm from this arrangement because no one took money from your bank account or your paycheck.

Absent any relief from the courts, your only recourse is the proverbial strongly worded letter.

That, and the fact that several Paradigm trading services such as Altucher’s True Alpha and Rickards’ Insider Intel leverage publicly available information to unearth legal insider activity before market-moving news breaks. 

As we said at the time of Hawley’s bill in 2023, “Get mad or get rich.”

“Planning for a Wider War”

Another Monday, another claim from Washington that “Iran wants to make a deal” — and another dip in the oil price.

U.S. oil futures popped last night to nearly $85 amid the escalation in the Iran war. Citing a Trump administration official, The New York Times said F-16s and F-35s currently based in Europe were being dispatched to the Middle East, as well as additional refueling aircraft.

“The U.S. is planning for a wider war,” another U.S. official told The Washington Post — although this individual added the caveat that air defenses and other munitions have been badly depleted already. “We do not have enough to safely sustain operations, and I don’t think the White House is aware of that.”

But then Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Tehran is looking to cut a deal — and all of Sunday’s price pop vaporized. At last check, U.S. oil futures are back to $82.23 — slightly lower than they were at the end of last week.

That’s even though the war is potentially heating up on its western front — with the Iran-aligned Houthi faction of Yemen declaring a maritime embargo against Saudi Arabia. 

If the Houthis are serious about enforcing this declaration, that effectively cuts off any route for Saudi Arabian oil exports. While the Strait of Hormuz has been shut down, Saudi Arabia has still been able to move some of its oil through a pipeline to its western coast on the Red Sea. From there, it transits the slender Bab al-Mandab waterway to reach Asian customers.

But if access to the Bab is shut down? Then that oil has to go through the Suez Canal and all the way around Africa. 

The meme-o-sphere is having great fun with all of this…

… but the powers that be continue to keep a lid on oil futures for the moment.

As for stocks, the major U.S. indexes are a mixed bag.

The S&P 500 is up 0.4% to 7,487 while the Nasdaq is up more than three-quarters of a percent to 25,724. The Dow is slightly in the red, but still over 52,000. Congratulations to Rickards’ Insider Intel readers who booked 50% gains at the end of last week playing call options on ConocoPhillips.

Crypto is regaining some of its recent mojo — Bitcoin well over $65,000 and Ethereum a hair away from $1,900.

Gold: The View From Boca

Gold continues to hold the line on $4,000 as “the larger monetary story remains intact for the yellow metal,” says Paradigm mining-and-energy authority Byron King.

“Central banks continue to diversify reserves. Investors still want an asset that is no one else’s liability. And the dollar, for all its current strength and historic staying power, is no longer the unquestioned storehouse of global trust.”

Byron delivered a keynote earlier this month at the Rule investment symposium in Boca Raton, Florida — hosted by the renowned mining financier Rick Rule. What’s more, Byron had the chance to speak one-on-one with some of the industry’s sharpest minds.

“I spoke with Andy Schectman of Miles Franklin, a gold and silver dealer who dwells close to the beating heart of physical metal markets. His point was simple: The world is still buying gold, and much of that buying is strategic, not speculative.

“China, for example, has used the recent slump to buy gold ‘off the books,’ so to speak. This means Chinese buyers are accumulating metal outside reportable state-level channels. According to Andy, you just have to know where to look — and yes, airplanes are flying beaucoup gold to Chinese ports of entry.

“Brien Lundin, who runs the annual New Orleans Investment Conference, made a similar point from the Florida stage. Monetary debasement has not gone away; it has merely been upstaged by louder headlines: Hollywood celebrities, World Cup soccer and Washington soap-opera politics.

“Meanwhile, about 40% of the annual U.S. budget is outright deficit, and the national debt continues its space-shuttle trajectory upward. Can or will the U.S. ever pay down its approximately $40 trillion of debt — and that’s just the on-the-books debt? No way.”

The dollar price of gold might be down from its January peak, but the Midas metal still “protects against monetary disorder.”

Russia’s Dash for Cash

"Having cash on hand gives you some sense of control and security," a woman in Moscow tells the BBC. "If there's an emergency in the city, I know I'll still be able to buy basic necessities, even if the mobile network goes down."

As you might be aware, Ukraine is stepping up its drone attacks deep inside Russian territory — including the capital. Because drones rely on wireless phone networks to reach their targets, Russian authorities are increasingly resorting to mobile internet shutdowns.

That has the effect of shutting down credit card payments and every other kind of electronic transaction.

Hence, the dash for cash. After reviewing figures from the Russian central bank, the BBC concludes that the nation has added 1.56 trillion rubles into circulation during the first six months of the year — an amount equal to $20 billion. That’s the highest figure on record except for the COVID year of 2020.

Cash isn’t just a necessity for transactions: It’s also a way to avoid the Russian taxman.

In January the Kremlin boosted Russia’s value-added tax from 20% to 22% — and it lowered the threshold at which smaller businesses have to start paying it.

“With margins squeezed by higher taxes and a slowing economy,” says the BBC, “pharmacies, restaurants, beauty salons and corner shops are increasingly steering customers toward cash to keep more income off the books.”

"This is a very worrying moment,” says Taras Skvortsov, CFO at Russia’s biggest lender Sberbank. “We are not seeing cash return to the banking system through cash collection, ATMs or self-service terminals," he tells the Interfax news agency. "It is staying in people's hands".

A survey by a trade group representing small and medium-sized businesses finds 6% of respondents saying they’re turning to “gray schemes” to skirt the tax burden. 

And those were the ones willing to fess up — the real number is likely higher.

Mailbag: Generational Conflict, Continued

“Hi Dave — just wanted to reply to a reader who claimed that dads working white-collar jobs outside the home led to the ’60s protests and hippies. 

“Firstly, most white-collar jobs were already outside the home prior to the ’50s. The only difference in the ’50s as far as I can tell is there was a better relationship between labor and business and hours were more formalized.

“So it seems unlikely that dads outside the home led to the hippies seeing as it was already the standard going back to the Industrial Revolution.

“But what did change was moms starting to work in the ’70s partly due to the stagflation at the time, and it increasingly became more common due to stagnant wages and a decline in manufacturing, which as you correctly mentioned were due to end of the gold standard and financialization. There’s no signs this can or will be reversed anytime soon.

“Anyway, the main point is that the ’60s and ’70s upheavals seemed to have partly led to the decline in the nuclear family rather than the other way around.

“And to address the tweet about rich parents not having to see their kids struggle, they’re not very good parents if that’s the case. That’s all from me for now.”

Dave responds: Thanks for the input. I think we’re going to shut down this thread as of today. It started with an ambiguous tweet and went off on several unexpected tangents!