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The Morning Risk Report: CFTC to Take On Predictions Market Insider Trading
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By David Smagalla | Dow Jones Risk Journal
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Good morning. Risk Journal’s Richard Vanderford reports from the New York University School of Law, where a top Commodity Futures Trading Commission official said his agency will crack down on insider trading in prediction markets. (free link)
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Agency’s power: The CFTC has longstanding authority to police insider trading based on stolen information, said David Miller, the agency’s enforcement director.
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Will pursue cases: “Insider trading in the prediction markets, where there is misappropriated information, is precisely the kind of serious violation that we are going after vigorously,” Miller said in a speech Tuesday evening. “We will aggressively detect, investigate, and where appropriate, prosecute insider trading in the prediction markets.”
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DOJ a possibility: Miller said the CFTC will suggest the U.S. Justice Department consider criminal charges against some wrongdoers if appropriate.
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What practices are in question? Prediction market platforms such as Kalshi and Polymarket allow users to effectively wager through what are called event contracts on a range of events in politics, culture, sports and other domains. Users can bet, for example, on the outcome of a game or whether a government might fall.
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Concerns over use of classified information: The popular apps have been dogged by recent controversy over potential insiders profiting on large bets, such as one made before the U.S. incursion into Venezuela. Israel in February arrested several people, including army reservists, for using classified information to place bets.
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Content from our sponsor: Deloitte
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When AI Becomes the Buyer: How Agentic Commerce is Reshaping Retail
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Retail leaders are rethinking operations as AI agents play a bigger role in product search, discovery, and decision-making. Read More
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The consequences of the tariff changes will vary widely depending on the product. PHOTO: AFP/Getty
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Trump expected to overhaul steel, aluminum tariffs.
The Trump administration is preparing to reshape its steel and aluminum tariff regime, altering duties on finished products to help simplify compliance. The net effect of the changes could effectively raise costs for many imports.
The details: Under an expected presidential proclamation, which could be issued as soon as this week, finished products made with imported steel and aluminum would be tariffed at 25%, according to people with knowledge of the plans. The 25% tariff would apply to the entire value of a finished product—known derivative products—containing steel and aluminum, the people said. That would replace the current 50% duty, which only applies to the value of steel or aluminum used in a product.
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Texas businessman pleads guilty to Pemex bribery conspiracy.
A Texas businessman pleaded guilty to conspiring to bribe an official at Mexico’s state oil company Petróleos Mexicanos, Risk Journal reports. (free link)
In a sealed plea entered Wednesday, Alfonso Wilson admitted to conspiring with others to bribe an official with Pemex’s oil-and-gas exploration subsidiary in an attempt to get a $540 million equipment supply contract. Federal prosecutors charged Wilson on March 16, alleging he earned over $400,000 in commissions for his work on the contract for the unnamed, Texas-based equipment supplier.
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The European Union is to ease its landmark carbon-pricing program as the bloc’s leaders look to soften the impact of the war in the Middle East on Europe’s beleaguered industrial sector.
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The regulatory risk surrounding social media came into sharp focus after Meta Platforms lost in two closely watched trials last week. While the results in California and New Mexico still must survive appeal, they give other plaintiffs a roadmap for beating social media in court.
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The U.S. has formally removed Belaruskali, one of the world’s largest potash producers, and the Belarusian Potash Company from its sanctions blacklist, reports Risk Journal, completing terms of a deal with President Alexander Lukashenko in which Belarus released 250 political prisoners.
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The U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control issued a sanctions advisory Tuesday warning financial institutions and other businesses about potential sham transactions by sanctioned individuals seeking to conceal property holdings.
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The Trump administration removed three Russian-flagged cargo vessels from its sanctions blacklist on Tuesday, continuing a pattern of quiet adjustments to Russia sanctions that has widened a rift between Washington and its European allies.
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A registered investment advisory firm that specializes in attempting to copy the trading activities of influential investors has agreed to pay $500,000 to settle allegations that its advertising on social media was misleading.
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Img caption/IMG CREDIT HERE
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Trump tries to sell Americans on sar in Iran.
President Trump sought to reassure skeptical Americans that the war in Iran is in the national interest, arguing that the operation was necessary to decimate a regime threatening the U.S. and insisting that economic pain would be short-lived.
In a 20-minute address from the White House, his most direct sales pitch to the nation since the war began a month ago, Trump said the U.S. had succeeded on the battlefield and declared that U.S. military objectives would be completed “very shortly.”
Trump said he still aims for a diplomatic agreement to end the war. But in the meantime, he vowed to hit Iran “extremely hard” in the coming weeks and pummel the country “back to the Stone Ages, where they belong.”
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The U.S. economy made it through Covid inflation and tariffs without rolling over. Can it survive the shock of surging oil prices?
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A vendetta between the billionaire founders of Two Sigma Investments flared up last month, prompting a new leadership battle at their $70 billion hedge-fund firm.
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Rwanda has found a David versus Goliath way to push back against newly imposed U.S. financial sanctions: The East African country is threatening to stop protecting an Exxon Mobil natural-gas project from Islamist insurgents just as soaring energy prices top President Trump’s list of concerns.
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Anthropic is racing to contain the fallout after accidentally exposing the underlying instructions it uses to direct Claude Code, the popular artificial-intelligence agent app that has won the company an edge with developers and businesses.
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When he took Nike’s helm 18 months ago, Chief Executive Elliott Hill said it would take time to rehab the iconic sneaker maker. Now he is warning of another setback in one of its most critical markets.
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Hasbro is investigating a cyberattack that prompted the toy maker to take certain operations offline, the company said Wednesday in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
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95%
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Percentage drop in traffic through the Strait of Hormuz since the start of the Iran conflict, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence. That has prevented around 15 million barrels of oil a day—three times Russia’s daily exports—from entering the global market.
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President Trump’s bid to redefine American citizenship may still be a legal long shot. But on Wednesday, the Supreme Court seemed to go out of its way to signal to the public—and perhaps to a combative president—that it isn’t dismissing his position out of hand.
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Elon Musk’s SpaceX is one step closer to staging what could be the largest initial public offering of all time.
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President Trump on Wednesday endorsed a two-part plan to quickly fund most of the Department of Homeland Security and then use a special procedure to pay for immigration enforcement with only GOP votes, stepping in to resolve a standoff between Republican congressional leaders.
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The Kremlin has struggled for years to curb internet freedoms and curtail the reach of Western tech platforms that have amassed huge user bases inside Russia. A new Russian super-app is now making that goal possible.
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Stephen Nesbitt is private credit’s chief evangelist. His investors and the industry are having a crisis of faith.
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