Mitchell Mcdonough

[Peter Girnus 🦅 @gothburz]

I have three monitors on my desk. The left one shows the order book. The middle one shows Truth Social. The right one shows the investigation queue.

On April 21st, the left screen moved first.

I am a Senior Surveillance Analyst at a commodities exchange. I have held this position for nineteen years. My job is to monitor trading activity for suspicious patterns and generate compliance reports. I am employee of the quarter. I have a mug.

At 19:54 GMT on April 21st, someone placed 4,260 sell orders on Brent crude futures. They did this during post-settlement. The window after the market closes when daily volume is typically in the dozens. Sometimes single digits. Sometimes I watch the screen and nothing happens for forty minutes and I think about whether my daughter is happy.

On April 21st, someone placed $430 million in directional bets in 120 seconds during that window. One hundred and twenty seconds. I timed it on my watch because the system clock rounds to the nearest minute and I have found, in nineteen years, that precision matters to no one but me.

At 20:10 GMT, the President posted on Truth Social that he was extending the Iran ceasefire.

Brent dropped from $100.91 to $96.83.

I flagged the trade. I flag a lot of trades. I want to tell you what happens to my flags.

My flags go into a system called TRACE. Trade Review and Compliance Evaluation. I did not name it. The system generates a report. The report goes to a committee. The committee has a name I am not allowed to share but I can tell you it meets quarterly and the conference room has a credenza with bottled water that is sparkling because someone once put still water in the room and a managing director sent an email about it that was longer than most of my surveillance reports.

The committee reviews my flags. The committee has reviewed all of my flags. Here is the complete record of actions taken on my flags in 2026:

Reviewed.

That's it. "Reviewed" is a status. In compliance, a status is the absence of an action that has been given a name so it looks like one.

Let me show you my flags.

March 9th. Someone bet millions on oil falling at 18:29 GMT. Forty-seven minutes later, a CBS reporter posted that the President said the Iran war was "very complete, pretty much." Oil dropped 25%. Forty-seven minutes. I flagged it.

March 23rd. Someone sold 5,100 lots of Brent and WTI crude futures between 10:49 and 10:50 GMT. Fourteen minutes later, the President posted on Truth Social about a "COMPLETE AND TOTAL RESOLUTION" to hostilities. Oil dropped 11%. Over 13,000 contracts traded in sixty seconds after the post. Fourteen minutes. I flagged it.

April 7th. Someone established a $950 million short position in oil futures at 19:45 GMT. Three hours later, the President declared a two-week ceasefire. Nine hundred and fifty million dollars. I flagged it.

April 17th. Someone placed $760 million in bearish bets twenty minutes before Iran's foreign minister confirmed the Strait of Hormuz would reopen. Seven hundred and sixty million. I flagged it.

April 21st. The $430 million. Fifteen minutes. I flagged it.

That is $2.1 billion in directional oil bets in April alone. Every one of them landed on the correct side of a presidential announcement. Every one of them was placed in a window so narrow you could measure it in bathroom breaks. I flagged every single one.

The CFTC chair told a Congressional committee that his organization has "zero tolerance" for fraud and insider trading. I wrote that quote on a Post-it note and stuck it to my right monitor. The one that shows the investigation queue. The investigation queue has not moved since March.

Zero tolerance. Zero staff. Zero budget. Zero prosecutions under the STOCK Act since it was signed in 2012.

Fourteen years. The law has existed for fourteen years and has been enforced zero times. In compliance, we call that a compliance rate of one hundred percent. No cases filed means no cases lost. You cannot fail an audit you never conduct. We call that excellence.

Last month the White House sent an internal email to staff. I was not on the distribution list but I have read reporting on it and I need you to sit with what I am about to say. The email instructed White House staff not to use insider information to place bets on prediction markets.

The White House had to send a memo telling its own employees not to insider-trade.

I want you to read that sentence again. Not because the instruction was unclear. Because the instruction was necessary. Because someone in the building looked at the same pattern I have been flagging for months on my three monitors and decided the appropriate response was an email.

The President's son sits on the advisory board of Kalshi. He is an investor in Polymarket. Both are prediction markets. Both saw accounts created days before U.S. military action.

One account. I cannot stop thinking about this account. It was called "Burdensome-Mix." It was created in December. On January 2nd, it placed $32,500 on Venezuela's president being removed from power. On January 3rd, Maduro was seized by U.S. special forces. Burdensome-Mix collected $436,000. Then it changed its username. Then it disappeared.

One account is a coincidence. But there were six.

Six accounts were created on Polymarket in February. All bet on U.S. strikes on Iran by the 28th. When the President confirmed the strikes, the six accounts collected $1.2 million between them. Five of the six never placed another bet. The sixth went on to correctly predict the ceasefire date and made another $163,000.

My surveillance system logged all of this. My system logs everything. My system does not have opinions and neither do I. I generate reports. The reports go to committees. The committees meet quarterly. Between meetings, the windows get shorter and the bets get larger.

March 9th: 47 minutes. March 23rd: 14 minutes. April 17th: 20 minutes. April 21st: 15 minutes.

The window is compressing. In March, you had time to make coffee between the trade and the announcement. By April, you had time to send a text. By summer, at this rate, the trade and the announcement will be the same event.

The spokesman said any implication that administration officials are engaged in insider trading is "baseless and irresponsible reporting."

Then the White House sent the email again.

I have been in compliance for nineteen years. I have seen insider trading run out of strip mall offices by men who could not spell "derivative." I have seen pump-and-dump schemes coordinated over WhatsApp by people who used their real names. I have seen a man try to manipulate soybean futures from a Panera Bread.

I have never seen $2.1 billion in perfectly timed trades across five presidential announcements in a single month go uninvestigated.

But I have also never seen a compliance system work this beautifully. Every trade flagged. Every report filed. Every committee briefed. Every quarterly meeting attended. Bottled water: sparkling. Minutes: distributed.

Zero prosecutions.

As long as the flags go up and the cases don't, my performance review says I am meeting expectations.

I am meeting expectations. The system is meeting expectations. The $2.1 billion is meeting expectations. The fourteen-year-old law with zero prosecutions is meeting expectations.

The left screen moves. The middle screen moves. The right screen stays perfectly, immaculately still.

In my field, we call this price discovery.

[TraderJonesy @TraderJonesy]

The taco boys
The moon boys
The herd
Retail

All in for a rude awakening.

We are coming up to test the 20 Week MA. A rejection here is likely.

Over the last 9 years with my monthly signal line being bearish, never have we claimed the 20 Week MA until the bear thesis was over and the bull run was back on.

In 2018 during the decline, we came up tested it, got rejection from it.

In 2020 during the decline we just kept going.

In 2022 during the decline we came up for two weeks of about 8% after having a 10% decline and then rejected another 10%. Just like we are getting now. We had almost a 10% decline, moved up two weeks of about 8% and now likely will see the rejection at the 20 week MA. An exact replica of what we saw in 2022.

In 2025 during the decline we just kept going.

But in no case with my weekly and monthly signal line being bearish have we claimed the 20 week MA until the bear thesis was over.

That is why I added full size intended into my May puts for $SPY, $QQQ, $NVDA, and $GOOG.

This day and this week will shape the rest of your year.

I thought about going lights out. Instead I’m going to scream it as loud as I can so you all hear me clearly later on and remember the moment. 🤘

This is not about the war. This is about institutional positioning.. and right now we are seeing big money and institutions rotate out of tech. We are seeing bearish accumulation.. the war could end tomorrow and we will still see declines because of bearish accumulation from institutions.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER!

— TJ

#SP500 #SPY #QQQ #TSLA #PLTR #NVDA #AAPL #Bitcoin #Crypto #stockmarket

[Bob Loukas 🗽 @BobLoukas]

Stocks confirm the new Daily Cycle, pushed out by about a week.
Looking for a Left Translated cycle to form in a couple of weeks.

[Carolyn Boroden @QueenOfFibs]

Nice bounce off timing and the cluster....but we have to watch the resistance on the way up for a possible failure...if we start clearing the resistance instead....then we will consider that the timing might be giving us a more important low instead. Take it from one decision to the next!!

[Carolyn Boroden @QueenOfFibs]

$SPX that is what the timing looked like.

[Carolyn Boroden @QueenOfFibs]

This is potential support in ES futures. So far it's holding but I always tell myy traders to wait for their triggers...even if it's only a day trade!!! I also have timing for a low in these next few days.....

[David Settle, CMT @davidsettle]

These are all the times $SPX has dipped below the 200-day SMA in the past 20 years (with how far it dropped below and how long it stayed below). I put an asterisk by the CORRECTIONS and 2 asterisks by the one BEAR MARKET - every other time is just a PULLBACK. Can you see the differences? What do you think we have currently based on the current numbers?

2026: -4.16% -- 8 days
*2025: -13.5% -- 44 days
10/2023: -2.85% -- 8 out of 9 days
3/2023: -1.97% -- 7 out of 10 days
*2022: -17.04% -- 224 out of 251 days
*2020: -26.49% -- 87 out of 89 days
*Q4 2018: -14.76% -- 117 out of 123 days
*2015-16: -10.21% -- 111 out of 140 days
10/2014: -2.29% -- 7 days
11/2012: -1.95% -- 7 days
*2011: -14.18% -- 99 out of 106 days
*2010: -8.24% -- 66 out of 79 days
**2007-08: -39.53% -- 382 out of 392 days
8/2007: -3.03% -- 11 out of 26 days
2006: -2.88% -- 29 out of 58 days

[The Wolf Of All Streets @scottmelker]

These economic wounds are completely self-inflicted.

Trump spent months pushing for Fed rate cuts… then started a war that delivered oil shocks and fresh inflation instead.

[Cheds Trading @BigCheds]

$BTC still holding daily higher low

Inside bar w/doji

[Republicans against Trump @RpsAgainstTrump]

No Kings protesters in West Palm Beach, Florida🇺🇸🇺🇸

[Headquarters @HQNewsNow]

No Kings protesters in Buffalo, New York

[The Lincoln Project @ProjectLincoln]

Trump is everything our Founding Fathers objected to. He doesn’t belong here #NoKings

[Bob Loukas 🗽 @BobLoukas]

In a bull market, extreme oversold is opportunity.
In a bear market, it’s business as usual.

[John Arnold @johnarnold]

I think I finally solved the stock market.

[Cheds Trading @BigCheds]

$BTC note follow through from that right shoulder invalidation on 4H

[The Wolf Of All Streets @scottmelker]

I am an eternal optimist, and am actually starting to really be bothered by my own skepticism and cynicism about the world.

I don't see how you can be a free thinking human being and look around at our systems and think, "yeah, I totally support this."

[Cheds Trading @BigCheds]

$HOOD Robinhood now throwback to early 2025 highs

[Benjamin Cowen @benjamincowen]

On average, around now is when #Bitcoin continues its decline in midterm years.

[The Wolf Of All Streets @scottmelker]

The TSA meltdown is the Democrats fault!

The TSA meltdown is the Republicans fault!

No.

The TSA meltdown is the GOVERNMENT'S fault.

Their job, the one we pay and elect them for, is to keep the government running efficiently and serve the citizens.

Hold them ALL accountable.