A Vanity Fair report raised questions about whether people behind the trades had inside information about what Trump might say or do.
In a letter to Attorney General Bill Barr, the FBI chief and the Securities and Exchange Commission, 14 senators expressed concern about reports of “suspicious trading” by an individual or group that amounted to payoffs in some cases topping US$1 billion per trade – just ahead of Trump remarks or action by his administration.
The lawmakers include Ron Wyden, top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, and 2020 presidential hopeful Amy Klobuchar. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange, which monitors S&P futures contract trading, dismissed the story as “patently false.”