"I was blown away by the success of our first AI-assisted scientific review pilot,’ the FDA’s commissioner said."
Also: "The 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded in part for the development of artificial intelligence tools that have significantly advanced our understanding of protein structures, with profound implications for drug discovery"Nobel Prize for Chemistry: Artificial intelligence garners more recognition
So not just doctors in clinical practice, but researchers (and those setting policy) will become increasing obsolete as well.
BREAKING: The US is cutting tariffs on Chinese goods from 145% to 30% for 90 days and China is cutting tariffs on US goods from 125% to 10% for 90 days.
Nasdaq futures are now up +3.5% on the day.
I guess this is positive for risk assets and a major U-turn by the current US administration without Trump's direct involvement in the Geneva negotiation.
However, Bond yields refuse to drop. They’re still higher than before liberation day.
Stocks and risk assets love all of the noise, but bond traders are still unconvinced.
This is a case of calmer heads prevailing, thank God. Let's hope those same people will keep the orange man away from the levers of the US economy in the future.
President Trump on Thursday said he told Apple CEO Tim Cook that he doesn’t want tech giant building its products in India.
“I had a little problem with Tim Cook yesterday,” Trump said. “I don’t want you building in India.”
Apple has been ramping up production in India with the aim of making around 25% of global iPhones in the country in the next few years as it looks to reduce reliance on China.
Donald Trump speaks alongside Apple CEO Tim Cook (L) during the first meeting of the American Workforce Policy Advisory Board in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, DC, March 6, 2019.
Saul Loeb | AFP | Getty Images
U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday said he told Apple CEO Tim Cook that he doesn’t want the tech giant to build its products in India, taking shots at the company’s moves to diversify production away from China and urging him to pivot Stateside.
“I had a little problem with Tim Cook yesterday,” Trump said. “I said to him, ‘my friend, I treated you very good. You’re coming here with $500 billion, but now I hear you’re building all over India.’ I don’t want you building in India.”
Trump was referencing Apple’s commitment of a $500 billion investment in the U.S. which was announced in February.
Apple has been ramping up production in India with the aim of making around 25% of global iPhones in the country in the next few years, as it looks to reduce reliance on China, where around 90% of its flagship smartphone is currently assembled.
“I said to Tim, I said, ‘Tim look, we treated you really good, we put up with all the plants that you build in China for years, now you got build us. We’re not interested in you building in India, India can take care of themselves ... we want you to build here’,” Trump said.
The U.S. president added that Apple is going to be “upping” its production in the United States, without disclosing further details.
CNBC has reached out to Apple.
Trump made the comments about the U.S. tech giant while discussing Washington’s broader trade relations with India.
Trump said India is “one of the highest tariff nations in the world,” adding the country has offered a deal to the U.S. where “they are willing to literally charge us no tariff.”
Under the White House’s trade protectionist policies revealed in April, Trump has imposed a so-called “reciprocal tariff” of 26% on Indian goods, which has been temporarily lowered until July.
Trump may want Apple to build iPhones in the US, and I think that would be wonderful. However, I have heard multiple news reports saying that if your $800 iPhone were built in the US, the price would have to be $3,500 or more. That would not be so wonderful.
Talking about a desire and making it a reality are two different things. I don't think Trump could force Apple to make their products in the US, but if he somehow did, their market would dry up. The same applies to Google's Pixel phones, Dell Computers, and other US companies that have products built in China. This would hand the entire electronics market to Samsung and other foreign companies that would only face a 10% tariff.
It's not going to happen. I restate my opinion that there will never be a factory built in the US because of Trump's tariffs.
Chawasri
This week I pulled the trigger on all my option side bets. Following the macro madness of the last weeks just took too much energy. I was well ahead until the rally started. Gave a lot of it back and noticed that I was wrong (for now) regarding the bearishness. The market sentiment and positioning was just way too one-sided, so every tiny bit of positive news flow fueled the rally and I gave back 2/3 of my option gains since Januar due to puts. I still think there will be some bearish fallout later in the year unless there is a FULL rewind of tariff policy but trading that thesis is just on my too hard pile. Mad respect for everyone on here which can follow through on macro trading in this regime.
Currently taking a step back and recalibrating. My P123 systems are 100% long ran through all of it the whole time and purring like a kitty, effortlessly. That's what I will focus on.
After progress with the U.K. and China, President Trump said the U.S. will stop negotiating individual trade deals and will soon notify countries of new tariffs for doing business in the U.S.
EDIT : This new video clip (11 mins) just came in 4pm ET
Nicolle Wallace on Trump's new tariff threats: 'There are no deals'
Apparently, US economic policy depends on which side of the bed the Fuhrer wakes up on. It's a hell of a way to run a country. Businesses cannot plan, and the future is highly uncertain when you have a man with such an extremely capricious nature at the helm.
Combine that with Trump's pathological insecurity and surrounding himself with people who will shower him with over-the-top daily compliments and never challenge his worst ideas. You have the ingredients for an uncertain future.
Anyone who can successfully navigate the markets in the coming years in the face of this toxic, exogenous uncertainty and make a steady profit deserves accolades.
These spontaneous on-again/off-again executive announcements move markets, displacing trillions of dollars at a time and overpowering the best systematic investment systems. We've got a real challenge ahead of us, gentlemen...
It's a move that could send ripples through global markets, and complicate President Donald Trump's attempts to cut taxes.
Summary
Moody's U.S. credit rating now at 'Aa1'
Agency's outlook on the country 'stable'
Moody's cites rising debt and interest costs
May 16 (Reuters) - Moody's downgraded the U.S. sovereign credit rating on Friday due to concerns about the nation's growing, $36 trillion debt pile, in a move that could complicate President Donald Trump's efforts to cut taxes and send ripples through global markets.
Moody's first gave the United States its pristine "Aaa" rating in 1919 and is the last of the three major credit agencies to downgrade it.
Friday's cut by one notch to "Aa1" follows a change in 2023 in the agency's outlook on the sovereign due to wider fiscal deficits and higher interest payments.
"Successive US administrations and Congress have failed to agree on measures to reverse the trend of large annual fiscal deficits and growing interest costs," Moody's said on Friday, as it changed its outlook on the U.S. to "stable" from "negative."
The announcement drew criticism from people close to Trump.
Stephen Moore, former senior economic advisor to Trump and an economist at Heritage Foundation, called the move "outrageous". "If a US backed government bond isn't triple A-asset then what is?" he told Reuters.
White House communications director Steven Cheung reacted to the downgrade via a social media post, singling out Moody's economist, Mark Zandi, for criticism. He called Zandi a political opponent of Trump.
Zandi declined to comment. Zandi is the chief economist at Moody's Analytics, which is a separate entity from the credit ratings agency Moody's.
Since his return to the White House on January 20, Trump has said he would balance the budget while his Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, has repeatedly said the current administration aims to lower U.S. government funding costs.
But the administration's attempts to raise revenue and cut spending have so far failed to persuade investors.
Trump's attempts to cut spending through Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency have fallen far short of its initial goals. And attempts to raise revenue through tariffs have sparked concerns about a trade war and global slowdown, roiling markets.
The downgrade, which came after market close, sent yields on Treasury bonds higher, and analysts said it could give investors a pause when markets re-open for regular trading on Monday.
"It basically adds to the evidence that the United States has too much debt," said Darrell Duffie, a Stanford finance professor who was formerly on Moody's board. "Congress is just going to have to discipline itself, either get more revenues or spend less."
A line chart titled "US 10-year Treasury yield" that tracks the metric over time.
FOCUS ON DEFICITS
Trump is pushing lawmakers in the Republican-controlled Congress to pass a bill extending the 2017 tax cuts that were his signature first-term legislative achievement, a move that nonpartisan analysts say will add trillions to the federal government's debt.
The downgrade came as the tax bill failed to clear a key procedural hurdle on Friday, as hardline Republicans demanding deeper spending cuts blocked the measure in a rare political setback for the Republican president in Congress.
Moody's said the fiscal proposals under considerations were unlikely to lead to a sustained, multi-year reduction in deficits, and it estimated the federal debt burden would rise to about 134% of GDP by 2035, compared with 98% in 2024.
"Moody's downgrade of the United States' credit rating should be a wake-up call to Trump and Congressional Republicans to end their reckless pursuit of their deficit-busting tax giveaway," Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement on Friday. "Sadly, I am not holding my breath."
The cut follows a downgrade by rival Fitch, which in August 2023 also cut the U.S. sovereign rating by one notch, citing expected fiscal deterioration and repeated down-to-the-wire debt ceiling negotiations that threaten the government's ability to pay its bills.
Fitch was the second major rating agency to strip the United States of its top triple-A rating, after Standard & Poor's did so after the 2011 debt ceiling crisis.
"They have got to come up with a credible budget agreement that puts the deficit on a downward trajectory," said Brian Bethune, an economics professor at Boston College, referring to Republican lawmakers.
MARKET FRAGILITY
Investors use credit ratings to assess the risk profile of companies and governments when they raise financing in debt capital markets. Generally, the lower a borrower's rating, the higher its financing costs.
"The downgrade of the US credit rating by Moody's is a continuation of a long trend of fiscal irresponsibility that will eventually lead to higher borrowing costs for the public and private sector in the United States," said Spencer Hakimian, chief executive at Tolou Capital Management, a hedge fund.
Long-dated Treasury yields - which rise when bond prices decline - could go higher on the back of the downgrade, said Hakimian, barring news on the economic front that could increase safe-haven demand for Treasuries.
The downgrade follows heightened uncertainty in U.S. financial markets as Trump's decision to impose tariffs on key trade partners has over the past few weeks sparked investor fears of higher price pressures and a sharp economic slowdown.
"This news comes at a time when the markets are very vulnerable and so we are likely to see a reaction," said Jay Hatfield, CEO at Infrastructure Capital Advisors.
Reporting by Pushkala Aripaka in Bengaluru and Davide Barbuscia in New York; Additional reporting by Paritosh Bansal, Costas Pitas, Nupur Anand, Ross Kerber and Pete Schroeder; Editing by Shilpi Majumdar, Arun Koyyur, Megan Davies and Sandra Maler
The way Donald Trump sees it, he’s the greatest businessman to campaign for the White House.
“I’m the most successful person ever to run,” he told an Iowa reporter in 2015. “I have a Gucci store that’s worth more than Romney.”
That might have been an exaggeration, but this isn’t: A decade later, no modern American president has positioned his family to make so much money while in the White House. Already, since the early days of his reelection campaign, he’s more than doubled his net worth to about $5.4 billion.
In that time, the Trump name has powered more than $10 billion of real estate projects, a multibillion-dollar valuation for his money-losing social-media company, more than $500 million in sales from just one of his crypto ventures and millions of dollars more from stakes in companies that offer financial services, guns and drone parts. Family members have also scored an array of corporate positions — at least seven new roles as an adviser or executive for his oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., alone.
Compared with the tumult of the presidency, the empire’s approach is consistent and clear: Sell the family name. In any other era, this scale of presidential moneymaking would threaten to be the story of the year, but political uproar has hogged most of the attention.
In his first months in power, Trump put tariffs on and took some off, blamed Ukraine for Russia’s attacks, sent immigrants to a foreign prison and teased a third term that the Constitution doesn’t allow. And as he’s hacked away at the government’s workforce and budget, he’s shrunk the agencies and offices that oversee his public company, crypto projects and even conflicts of interest.
Trump has loosened constraints on overseas dealmaking that were put in place in his last administration. (He also let Elon Musk, the billionaire leading an effort to slash government spending, police his own conflicts). This week, he’s scheduled to dine with his new memecoin’s top holders.
What makes this era even more remarkable is how close Trump came to ruin. His first term ended with a riot at the Capitol, later followed by a $454 million civil fraud judgment and his conviction for falsifying business records. Trump has appealed both.
Now, his assets are in a trust overseen by his oldest son. And despite talk of a recession, the clan stands to get richer than ever.
“President Trump has been the most transparent president in history in all respects, including when it comes to his finances,” said a White House spokesperson. “President Trump handed over his multibillion-dollar empire in order to serve our country, and he has sacrificed greatly. President Trump has disclosed his financial holdings through his annual financial disclosure report and he will continue to do so.”
Trump Jr. said he shouldn’t be expected to change his career on account of his dad’s power.
“I’m a private citizen who has been a businessman and serial investor my entire adult life,” he said in a statement. “It’s ridiculous to expect me to stop doing what I’ve always done to provide for my five children just because my dad was elected president.”
These are the corporate connections, crypto projects and licensing deals — all of them since the 2024 campaign began — that the Trumps are using to climb higher than ever.
This term is different than the president’s first, when his plan to address conflicts of interest hinged on putting his assets in a trust overseen by his two oldest sons and agreeing not to pursue any new foreign deals. This time, what’s off limits are new deals with other governments. That leaves the door open for other opportunities. These real estate developments often involve licensing the Trump name for glitzy hotels and residences, including in the three Middle Eastern countries the president visited this month. Two projects link the Trump Organization to government arms of Oman and Qatar.
Trump International Oman
Link Copied
TRUMP CONNECTIONS
Trump Organization
PARTNERS
Dar Global and Omran Group
Project value
$500 million
Launched
June 2024
Muscat, Oman The Trump Organization is already profiting from a deal linked to the government of Oman. The development, which includes a hotel, golf course and residences, puts the president’s family into a business partnership with a US ally. Trump International Oman calls itself “the ultimate power move” built “for those who invest to win.” The project, developed by Dar Global, the international arm of Saudi real estate giant Dar Al Arkan, in partnership with Oman’s state-owned tourism group, advertises “hands-off investment expertly managed by Trump while you generate income passively,” along with a lifetime residency visa for investors. Trump Jr. and Eric Trump were seen smiling at a launch event in June, where the “power move” slogan was displayed in big letters. In the meantime, Oman has been playing a central role in high-stakes nuclear negotiations with Iran.
Trump Tower Jeddah
TRUMP CONNECTIONS
Trump Organization
PARTNERS
Dar Global
Project value
$533 million
Announced
July 2024
Jeddah, Saudi Arabia When the head of Dar Global introduced the “massive” and “super premium” Trump Tower Jeddah to a crowd of dignitaries in December, he said that the brands of Saudi Arabia and Trump represent opulence and resilience. Both are happily transactional: The tower, to be completed in 2029, advertises Saudi residency to anyone who spends about $1 million. Eric Trump was one of the first to rise with applause for the 47-floor seafront development.
Trump Riyadh
TRUMP CONNECTIONS
Trump Organization
PARTNERS
Dar Global
Project value
About $530 million
Announced
December 2024
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia When the Trumps and Dar Global announced a pair of projects in the Saudi capital weeks after the election, they offered few details and many adjectives: iconic, tremendous, prestigious, unparalleled. It’s also another business deal in a country strategically important to the US government. Indeed, hours after his inauguration, Trump told reporters he’d be happy to visit Saudi Arabia if it bought “another $450 billion or $500 billion” of US products. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who was once a pariah in the wake of the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, has since promised even more investment.
Dubai, United Arab Emirates On the same July day that Trump accepted the Republican party’s presidential nomination, his company announced a Trump Tower in Dubai that would “establish new standards in luxury.” An early version of its website said that investors who put down 2 million dirhams (about $545,000) can get access to a “10-year Golden Visa.” It didn’t offer specifics.
Trump International Golf Club & Villas at Simaisma
TRUMP CONNECTIONS
Trump Organization
PARTNERS
Dar Global
Project cost
About $3 billion
Announced
April 2025
Simaisma, Qatar Before Trump’s second term, he said his family company wouldn’t do new deals with foreign governments. Within months, a project unveiled in gas-rich Qatar seemed to test the boundaries of that pledge. Qatari Diar Real Estate Investment, established by the country’s sovereign wealth fund, said it’s teaming up with Dar Global to develop a Trump-branded golf club and villas inside a new tourism development that’s set to be bigger than Walt Disney Co.’s Magic Kingdom. In his first term, Trump said Qatar had a history of funding terrorism. In May, it offered him a luxury jet to serve as Air Force One.
Trump in India
TRUMP CONNECTIONS
Trump Organization
PARTNERS
Tribeca Developers
Estimated sales value
$1.75 billion
Announced
After the 2024 election
Bengaluru, Gurugram, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Noida, Pune Trump-branded projects are proliferating anew in India. In Pune, already home to a pair of residential Trump Towers, the family announced two new towers with offices called Trump World Center this March. In Gurugram, southwest of Delhi, where another Trump-branded project has long been underway, the Trumps announced the 51-story Trump Residences in April. And in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Noida and Mumbai, a city that already has a Trump Tower, more developments are in the works. On most of those projects the family is working with India’s Tribeca Developers, whose founder, Kalpesh Mehta, met Trump Jr. through a mutual contact at Wharton, according to a local report.
Trump in Vietnam
TRUMP CONNECTIONS
Trump Organization
PARTNERS
Kinh Bac City and IDG Capital Vietnam
Project investment
$1.5 billion
Signed
September 2024
Hung Yen, Vietnam Before his father’s second term began, Eric Trump said that anyone looking to curry favor with the president through the Trump Organization would be “coming to the wrong guy.” The Communist Party of Vietnam may see it differently. While Trump was campaigning, the company announced a deal to build a $1.5 billion complex of hotels, golf courses and luxury homes in the northern province of Hung Yen. A post on the province’s website said that the Trump Organization’s work will help with “enhancing Vietnam’s image in the international arena and in relations with the US government.” In September, one high-ranking official stopped by to watch a signing ceremony for the deal, and Trump himself attended a meeting between his son Eric and Dang Thanh Tam, chairman of project developer Kinh Bac City. In March, Vietnam’s prime minister hosted Trump partner Charles Boyd-Bowman, the head of investment firm IDG Capital Vietnam, who said that authorities were helping speed up progress, according to the article on the government website. The Trumps are considering a new tower in the country, too, according to reports from the region.
Sazan Island, Albania Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and former top adviser, has turned to endeavors outside the White House. He wants to make a $1.4 billion Aman-branded luxury resort out of an old military base on a rocky island of decaying buildings and bunkers off the Albanian coast. A committee chaired by Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama gave preliminary approval for Kushner’s development on Sazan Island in the lead-up to Trump’s inauguration. Critics have argued that Albanian environmental law might have been changed to accommodate the plan for cliffside villas. Most of the money Kushner has raised for his fund comes from Gulf states and investors, including Saudi and Qatari funds. He has said his firm “preemptively tried to avoid any conflicts, so we don’t have to raise capital for the next four years.”
Trump Belgrade
TRUMP CONNECTIONS
Jared Kushner and Trump Organization
PARTNERS
Mohamed Alabbar
Project value
$500 million
Branded
After the 2024 election
Belgrade, Serbia On the site of the former Yugoslav defense ministry, which was bombed by NATO in 1999, Kushner wants to build a 175-room luxury hotel and 1,500 apartments. He decided to brand it Trump after his father-in-law’s reelection. “I thought the tower would make a tremendous Trump Tower,” he said. Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said he “died laughing” when he read that he was thought to be using the project to influence Trump, according to the New York Times. Soon after, thousands of protesters gathered to commemorate the bombing’s victims and oppose the project. Kushner and Emirati billionaire Mohamed Alabbar plan to start sales this year. In May, Serbian authorities said they detained a former state official for allegedly forging paperwork to smooth the project’s path. Vucic said “there was no kind of forgery” and there’s been no snag.
Trump National Doral
TRUMP CONNECTIONS
Trump Organization
Project cost
$3 billion
Approved
January 2025
Doral, Florida The Florida club, with its four golf courses and more than 600 guest rooms, was one of Trump’s biggest cash cows before the pandemic hit it hard. In the weeks before his inauguration, he got two pieces of good news. First, Saudi-backed LIV Golf scheduled a tournament for April, following others from past years. Days later, the city council approved the Trump family’s plans to build 20-story condo towers on the property, likely boosting its value. At least one important stakeholder came around on the proposal: Doral’s Republican mayor had been a holdout before Trump praised her at a campaign event and made changes to the project that she called attempts to be “good neighbors.” Trump also endorsed a new city councilwoman who said that didn’t affect her vote.
Mar-a-Lago
TRUMP CONNECTIONS
Trump Organization
Membership fee hike
$300,000
Date
October 2024
Palm Beach, Florida Other buildings may be more important to his career or his empire, but nothing symbolizes Trump in his entirety more than his gilded Florida club. It’s where billionaires flock to pay homage to the president on his own turf and home to the classified-marked documents that sparked a federal case that was later dismissed. Trump had a deputy point out to reporters last year that the cost of a club membership was going up that October to $1 million from $700,000. To hear former chief strategist Steve Bannon tell it, Mar-a-Lago could even explain how Trump sees the country itself: “It’s prime real estate. And you’re going to have to pay a premium to get access to it.”
Only four years ago, Trump called Bitcoin a scam. Now he’s a crypto booster who’s advertising an array of digital offerings with his name on them, and crypto executives and companies who donated millions to his White House return are hoping to shape policy. Trump’s inauguration weekend featured a black-tie crypto ball, he convened cabinet members and “high-IQ people” for a first-of-its-kind crypto summit at the White House, he set up a national stockpile of Bitcoin and he anointed a “crypto czar.” At the same time, the price of virtual currencies impacts the Trump fortune. He has his own memecoin, he promotes a crypto platform co-founded by one of his most senior envoys, and his social media company has announced plans to sell crypto-based investments. These are the Trump family businesses poised to profit as he turns America into “the crypto capital of the planet.”
World Liberty Financial
TRUMP CONNECTIONS
Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and Barron Trump
PARTNERS
Steve Witkoff, Zach Witkoff and Alex Witkoff
Sales
$550 million
Project announced
September 2024
Delaware The token promoted by Trump and all three of his sons went on sale just weeks before the 2024 election, often to offshore buyers. After the vote, crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun plowed $75 million into World Liberty Financial while fighting a civil fraud suit from US regulators, which he has said lacks merit. Now that case is on pause. Diplomatic envoy Steve Witkoff, who has met with global leaders such as Russian President Vladimir Putin, also stands to profit from the project, whose co-founders include his sons Alex and Zach. But it’s the Trump family that gets about 75% of certain net revenue. A company spokesman said it isn’t political, its executives aren’t public officials, there’s no conflict of interest and Witkoff “has been actively divesting his assets.” He called Sun an early supporter and said any suggestion that an association with World Liberty would result in preferential government treatment would be absurd.
Park City, Utah The NFT fad was already fading when Trump began licensing sets that depict him as a buff superhero, a cowboy in the sky, a gold statue and a cyborg. The pitch for Trump Digital Trading Cards came from his friend Bill Zanker, founder of an adult-education company and chain of massage stores, who has said Trump fell in love with crypto’s “young, ambitious, not regulated” crowd. Trump’s embrace helped land him political support from the industry’s billionaires.
$TRUMP and $MELANIA
TRUMP CONNECTIONS
Donald Trump and Melania Trump
Trading fees and other revenue
$350 million
First Sold
January 2025
Delaware Because memecoins tend to have no practical purpose except making money from attention — these volatile and waggish cryptocurrencies essentially lack concrete underlying assets by design — they make sense for a former reality star. Even so, Democratic officials and even crypto veterans have criticized the coins that Trump and his wife unveiled just before the inauguration. His coin had lost most of its peak value by the time he announced, in April, a private dinner for its top holders, many of whom used foreign exchanges in a sign they’re based overseas. Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat, called it “the most brazenly corrupt thing a president has ever done.” (A White House spokesperson has said Trump abides by conflict-of-interest laws.) Previously, regulators had been mulling whether memecoins should be considered securities, which would invite stricter rules. About a month after the $TRUMP and $MELANIA coins debuted, the SEC weighed in: No, memecoins aren’t securities, but rather “akin to collectibles” and policed accordingly.
Metaplanet
TRUMP CONNECTIONS
Eric Trump
Share price
Up more than 17%
Announced
March 2025
Tokyo, Japan In March, Eric Trump joined a new board of advisers at Metaplanet, a Tokyo-based hotelier that turned into a Bitcoin stockpiler after it had to close all but one of its properties. The president’s son, pictured smiling in an orange Metaplanet hat, called his involvement with the company “a great honor.” Its shares rallied more than 17% on the news that day, even after its crypto pivot had made Metaplanet the biggest winner among Japanese stocks. Weeks before the announcement, Trump signed a long-awaited order creating a stockpile of Bitcoin for the government itself.
Miami, Florida The relationships between this Bitcoin miner, the Trump family and a new strategic venture are labyrinthine. After the inauguration, the president’s two oldest sons helped create American Data Centers, working with Dominari, the Trump Tower-headquartered investment bank where the Trump scions had just become advisers. Eric Trump called the new data venture “crucial for the development of AI infrastructure,” even though it hadn’t done much of anything yet. About a month later, the fledgling company reached a deal that gave a majority stake to Bitcoin mining firm Hut 8. The Trump brothers and their partners have a 20% stake in the joint venture, now called American Bitcoin. It plans to go public this year.
Since the evening Trump was reelected, a scrum of companies have added his sons as advisers. Donald Trump Jr. lined up new roles at a small and unprofitable drone-component maker, an online gun retailer and a prediction market that allows customers to bet on a number of questions related to his father (including what countries he will visit). Eric Trump overlaps with his brother in some cases, and sometimes works solo.
1789 Capital
TRUMP CONNECTIONS
Donald Trump Jr.
PARTNERS
Omeed Malik, Rebekah Mercer and Chris Buskirk
Fundraising goal for midyear
$1 billion
Role announced
November 2024
Palm Beach, Florida Less than a week after his father was reelected, Trump Jr. became a partner at 1789 Capital. With co-founders including former Bank of America executive Omeed Malik, Republican mega-donor Rebekah Mercer and investor Chris Buskirk, the firm monetizes the president’s vision for US culture by taking stakes in startups with a MAGA bent. As President Trump seeks to dismantle government and corporate programs promoting equity and inclusion, 1789 is tending to investments such as the Enhanced Games (nicknamed the “steroid Olympics”) and Polymarket, a crypto-based prediction site. “1789 Capital is funding the next era of American prosperity through its core principles of entrepreneurship, innovation and growth,” a spokesperson said. That means taking minority stakes in “best-in-class” private US ventures, sometimes alongside giant US asset managers.
Unusual Machines
TRUMP CONNECTIONS
Donald Trump Jr.
Value of Trump Jr.’s stake
More than $3 million
Trump Jr.’s role announced
November 2024
Orlando, Florida Soon after the election, the maker of drone components announced that Trump Jr. was joining as an adviser. Its stock soared just shy of 250% in the two trading days that followed. He held more than 300,000 shares, according to a filing in November, when they were worth more than $3 million. Stakes including his were registered for potential sale, but as of early May it wasn’t clear whether he’d sold.
West Palm Beach, Florida PSQ, or PublicSquare, runs a marketplace for what it calls anti-woke products, including pro-life diaper brand EveryLife, and features a buy-now, pay-later system for firearms. The company has lost more than $100 million over the past two years, but when Trump Jr. — already an adviser — joined the board in early December shares of the retailer leaped 270%. Last year, the company awarded him more than $3.1 million, and his 1789 partner Malik is a top shareholder, regulatory filings show. Trump Jr. is “an incredible businessman, strategic partner and marketing expert,” who has advised the company since 2022, PublicSquare CEO Michael Seifert said. He added that revenue is up and that President Trump “is operating fairly and impartially.”
Dominari Holdings
TRUMP CONNECTIONS
Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and Ron Lieberman
Total value of Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump’s stake
More than $17 million
Roles announced
February 2025
New York, New York Dominari was a biotech firm that turned into an investment bank with shares that traded below a dollar last year. Headquartered in Trump Tower, it has lost tens of millions of dollars in the past three years. But in February, its shares spiked more than 80% in the hours after it announced that the two older Trump sons were joining the advisory board. (The stock also rose just before the news was publicized). They are both top shareholders, with stakes worth more than $17 million combined, according to an April filing that listed most of their stock for potential sale. No adviser has sold shares and the firm remains committed to “its long-term growth strategy,” a Dominari spokesperson said this month. Trump Organization executive Ron Lieberman was appointed to the board of directors in December.
Trump Media & Technology Group
TRUMP CONNECTIONS
Donald Trump and Donald Trump Jr.
PARTNERS
Value of Donald Trump’s stake
$2.9 billion
Went public
March 2024
Sarasota, Florida Trump’s $2.9 billion stake in his namesake social media startup, which went public while he was campaigning last year, makes up most of his fortune. He might not even make the list of the world’s richest people without Truth Social’s parent company, which trades like a meme stock — shares are up since September even though it reported a net loss of about $401 million last year. After Trump’s inauguration, the company moved into finance with products poised to benefit directly from Trump’s own policies, including “Made in America” funds, in time for his steep tariffs and an embrace of digital assets as he loosens curbs on them. In March, three days after Trump Media announced a partnership with Crypto.com, that Singapore-based firm said the US Securities and Exchange Commission closed an investigation with no enforcement action. Trump, whose stake is in the trust, continues as president to publish on the platform, where posts are called “truths.”
Executive Branch
Methodology
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U.S. President Donald Trump holds up a chart while speaking during a “Make America Wealthy Again” trade announcement on April 2, 2025 in Washington, DC.
A federal court ruled Wednesday that President Donald Trump exceeded his authority with his reciprocal tariffs, dealing a major blow to the president’s economic plan that has roiled markets.
Trump is all but certain to appeal, but the ruling by the U.S. Court of International Trade brings the plan that sparked a .
The judges wrote that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, a 1977 law which Trump invoked to justify the tariffs, does not actually give the president the power to issue the sweeping duties initiated last month.
“The Worldwide and Retaliatory Tariff Orders exceed any authority granted to the President by IEEPA to regulate importation by means of tariffs. The Trafficking Tariffs fail because they do not deal with the threats set forth in those orders,” the judges wrote.
The suit was brought on behalf of five U.S. businesses that rely on imports to some extent. The judges said that Trump’s tariff orders were “unlawful as to all,” not just those plaintiffs’ companies, so there would be “no question here of narrowly tailored relief.”
The judges ordered the challenged tariffs to be “vacated and their operation permanently enjoined.”
Lawyers for the White House could appeal the matter, but the case and decision put President Donald Trump’s economic agenda under pressure.
This is breaking news. Please refresh for updates.
It's true, but it didn't require genius. I identified that the tariffs were illegal because Congress has the legal responsibility to legislate US revenues (taxes) and government spending, not the President, as determined by the Constitution. Tariffs are sales taxes.
The reason for this stipulation is apparent: a reckless, authoritarian executive might enact inappropriate and punitive tariffs on personal foes (such as China and Apple) in a highly capricious manner. That's what happened, and it has been ruled unlawful.
Let's hope this is the beginning of the end of the tariff nonsense of 2025. It will likely go to the Supremes. In the meantime, this is a significant win for American consumers, businesses, and Investors.
According to CNBC latest update, Trump administration swiftly appealed the ruling Wednesday and likely sets up a bitter legal battle that could wind up at the Supreme Court.
Also, I think that the existing tariff negotations with the European Union and China will likely put on hold for now as Trump appeals.
Our initial hopes for economic sanity seem now to have been misplaced. From the Wall Street Journal Sunday:
"President Trump’s top economic advisers stressed on Sunday that they would not be deterred by a recent court decision that declared many of the administration’s tariffs to be illegal, as they pointed out a variety of additional authorities that the White House could invoke as it looks to pressure China and others into negotiations.
"They also signaled that Mr. Trump had no plans to extend an original 90-day pause on some of his steepest tariff rates, raising the odds that those duties — the mere announcement of which had roiled markets — could take effect as planned in July."
The US Constitution establishes that the Executive branch is the enforcer of the Judicial branch's rulings, and there is clearly no intention of doing that. The founders didn't anticipate that there would come a time when the checks and balances written into the Constitution would be truly feckless.
China said that US President Donald Trump's accusations that Beijing had violated the consensus reached in Geneva trade talks were ‘groundless,’ and promised to take forceful measures to safeguard its interests.
I don't think China will re-enage in any new negotiations before the Supreme Court decision.
It is also doubtful that there will be any countries willing to sign trade deals in the next 30 days before the end of the 90 days pause (the deal with UK was not a formally signed legal document) understanding that the whole process maybe deemed illegal by the Supreme Court later on.
I remember Doney's post and just want to follow up on it with the following two articles from Bloomberg about retail trading in options.
As most ppl here already know, like all derivatives instruments, trading options like futures is a zero sum game and using it to hedge the portfolio as Yuval suggests is one thing. The odds of trading equity/index options on a naked basis are against retail and favor the market makers (who played around with small difference in implied volatility in the pricing) and institutional players including large hedge funds which are usually on the other side of the trade.
Pls check out the articles below if you have time.
Regards
James
At 10 AM, Stock Options Soar as Retail Traders Unleash New Bots
When people talk about algorithmic traders, it evokes images of rooms full of math PhDs creating complex models that place huge trades in milliseconds after economic or earnings data is released. But now, it’s retail traders who are turning in droves to automated trading, building the kind of programs in their basements more associated with Wall Street banks than the Reddit thread r/wallstreetbets.
Using these systems, though, has a downside: they can result in predictable, herd-like behavior, with data from Cboe Global Markets showing trades clustered at certain times of day. There’s a risk that more sophisticated market participants could exploit the predictability of small-volume traders at specific moments when retail demand for options spikes.
Speaking at the Options Industry Conference in Florida earlier this month, Henry Schwartz, vice president of market intelligence at Cboe Global Markets, showed a slide that surprised many of the traders, analysts and exchange executives in attendance.
On the slide was a chart showing how many zero-day-to-expiry options — the uber short-term contracts that have grown to more than half of the overall volume in the S&P 500 Index on some days — were traded every minute of the regular trading session so far in 2025. It showed that retail volume spikes at exactly 10 a.m. New York time, with smaller spikes at 10:15, 10:30 and 11 a.m., and a larger spike at 2 p.m.
S&P 500 Options Volume per Minute in 2025Source: Bloomberg
Schwartz attributed the spikes in volume to systematic trading strategies by retail investors all programmed to run at the same moment. “Customers turn these systems on to sell condors and manage them and they pick their time intervals, and they tend to pick round minutes,” he said, referring to one of the more popular retail options strategies.
The pattern has been showing up in S&P 500 intraday data for at least a year, Schwartz confirmed in a follow-up interview with Bloomberg. The pattern was no longer visible when trades smaller than 10 lots were excluded, indicating that the trend is driven by the smallest participants in the market.
Kevin Darby, vice president of execution technologies at CQG, which builds algorithmic systems for investors, said it’s normal for market makers to change quotes based on patterns in order flow.
“If you’re going to make a bet, you have to think about what it would be like to be the bookie,” he said. “And so, in this particular scenario, if I’m the bookie, and I know that the 12:30 orders are about to come in, I’m going to move my odds a little bit.”
To be sure, the competition in a liquid contract like the S&P 500 may limit how much the influx of retail orders could shift the market.
Schwartz linked the tendency of retail trades to cluster at certain moments in the day to an “explosion” of software providers offering to help customers automate options trading strategies.
These software providers connect to retail brokers via Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), which allow different types of computer programs to communicate and share data. Brokers like Interactive Brokers Group, Inc., WeBull Corp. and Tradier Inc. all allow clients to plug in custom built trading software.
Traders can buy such tools off the shelf or build their own, sometimes by delegating the code writing process to artificial intelligence.
“In the last year we’ve had more requests from retail customers to build to our APIs than I’ve seen in the last 10 years combined,” Tony Zhang, chief strategist of options software and training provider OptionsPlay, said in a separate panel discussion at the conference.
While the clustering of trades raises the question of whether larger professional firms have noticed this and are lining up to pick off the retail crowd, advisors to the smaller traders defend the practice.
Options Volumes Soar
Volumes have exploded since 2020, driven by a boom in retail trading
Source: Options Clearing Corp.
The popularity of particular times may be linked to common settings on backtesting tools, which allow a trader to run a scenario and see how much they could win or lose, based on historical data. Option Research & Technology Services and Options Omega are among the providers of such backtesting services.
Options Omega was co-founded by three retail traders based in Knoxville, Tennessee, who originally built backtesting tools for themselves before realizing there was broader demand for the product.
Troy McNeil, one of the firm’s founders, argues that the phenomenon of spikes in retail S&P 500 options volume at certain times of day is driven as much by small traders taking opposite positions. “I don’t know that everybody does Iron Condors at 10 a.m.,” he said. “People are doing a lot of different things — they’re selling, and they’re buying.”
Some strategies deployed by retail, such as automated covered call selling, are more akin to the kind of yield harvesting efforts associated with structured products, sophisticated financial instruments created by banks and sold to wealthy investors.
“They’re kind of in-housing their own structured product,” says Amy Wu Silverman, head of derivatives strategy at RBC Capital Markets. “Instead of buying the cookie, I’m going to buy the flour and the chocolate chips and then make the dough.”
Still, seeing the trading patterns illustrated so starkly was eye-opening to some in attendance at the conference. Matthew Amberson, founder of ORATS, said he was surprised that flows from retail bots were so visible in the S&P 500 market.
“It was shocking to see how many of those bots were in the market at the same time,” said Amberson. A group of traders all instructing bots to do the same thing at the same time is a “silly way” to trade, he told Bloomberg.
Options Trading Is Rigged Against Average Investors
Payment for order flow allows brokerages and big traders to team up against the little guy.
December 7, 2023 at 8:00 PM GMT+8
Would you gamble your life savings on a few hands of blackjack? Probably not. But as a former manager of options trading, I’ve seen amateur investors — encouraged by posts on Reddit and X of massive, easy overnight wins, and offers of “zero-commission” trading online — lose much of their net worth on risky bets.
What bothers me most is that some big trading firms are actually paying brokerages to take the other side of these trades, knowing they have better information than the small investors and so will profit big. These payments are known as “payment for order flow.”
In 2022, large trading firms including Citadel and Susquehanna paid a total of $2.9 billion to brokerages such as TD Ameritrade Corp. and Robinhood Markets Inc. to trade against their customers’ orders, according to SEC data compiled by Alphacution Research Conservatory. In short, they are paying for the privilege of taking advantage of the unsophisticated investor.
This is akin to a few Vegas casinos paying travel agents to send them droves of unsophisticated players. The travel agent, like a brokerage, is paid by volume, and so wants to promote as much betting as possible. Other casinos, like the trading firms that don’t pay for retail orders, would have reduced access to these profitable inexperienced players.
Trading by retail investors has recently reached as high as 60% of the total market volume in options, according to new research by Svetlana Bryzgalova, Anna Pavlova and Taisiya Sikorskaya of the London Business School, with dollar volumes increasing by more than 10 times in the last decade. (The firms I worked for did not pay brokerages for orders, but benefited from increased volumes in retail trading.)
And the surge is only accelerating. Last May, exchanges started listing options that expire on each day of the week rather than three days, and they have exploded in popularity. With the potential of making 50 or even 100 times your investment in a day, they are the cheapest and fastest way to potentially win big, the biggest dopamine hit available for sale on the exchange. According to research at the University of Münster, 75% of retail’s S&P 500 option trades today are of this variety.
For seven years I ran options strategies at large trading firms, so I understand that options trading can make you rich, fast. But even though many players claim a winning strategy, the vast majority lose money. I quickly learned that the small bettors tend to choose the worst investments. And the house always makes money.
Buying an option provides you the opportunity, but not the obligation, to buy or sell a stock at a certain price. Let’s say a stock is trading at $100, and you think the price will go up. You might pay $5 for the right to buy the stock for $110 at any point in the next six months. If the stock doesn’t reach $110, the option expires, and you lose $5. If the stock goes to $150, you make $45 on only a $5 initial investment.
If our model said an option was worth a dollar, we’d buy when the price hit 99 cents or sell for $1.01, collecting the invisible theoretical penny difference. We repeated this process with thousands of different options, every time a customer wanted to trade. Those small amounts added up to big ones.
Roughly a dozen other trading firms used similar strategies, competing to offer the best price to the customer. Collectively, we made up the house. This can be highly lucrative: In my last three years running the desk, we didn’t have a single losing month. Several other firms post equally impressive results each year.
The most important rule of market making: Not all customers are the same. Sometimes, shrewd hedge funds had better information than us and also had enough money behind them to move the market in their favor. Trading against them would be a losing proposition, so we avoided these orders.
On the other hand, customers trading small sizes consistently lost money. They had no informational advantage, and their orders could never move the market against us. Taking the other side of these trades was highly profitable.
Supporters argue that platforms like Robinhood allow everyday people access to profitable strategies. However, research at MIT indicates that retail traders lack enough private information to win. And according to London Business School research, buying $100 of the popular “zero days to expiration” options would cost up to $6 to $12 just to enter the position. Little surprise then that retail traders gave up an estimated $6.5 billion in trading cost between November 2019 and June 2021, even though most paid no direct commission to their brokerage.
What can be done to protect them? First, regulators should prohibit payment for order flow, creating a level playing field where all trading firms can compete by offering the best price.
Regulators should also continue to penalize dubious advertising practices that platforms have used to attract uninformed options customers. In 2021, the financial regulatory body FINRA fined Robinhood a record $70 million for “systemic supervisory failures,” accusing the company of allowing users to make riskier trades than they were qualified for. Robinhood continues to present the riskiest options — the ones that expire almost immediately — to the user first in the options trading menu, without any mention of their dangers.
