Bloomberg (gated) shone a light onto a USD7.5mn option trade profit.

In brief:

  • As part of the US debt ceiling deal, one concession that made it into the bill was the approval of the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a pet project of West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin that had been stuck in Congress.The project (in a nutshell) got approval as part of the debt limit agreement that passed Congress last week.

The reports says:

  • there was no public reason to believe that the pipeline was in the deal at all, which makes the actions of one mystery trader somewhat suspicious, according to a Bloomberg analysis of trading data
  • From the looks of it, the bet earned the trader $7.5 million as of last Friday

While Bloomberg is gated there is an ungated piece here for more.

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Insider trading is the suspicion.

insider trading