Trump tips off a strong jobs report, the market front-runs it
You know who loses out in leaks? Retail traders.
Now in this case, you can argue that everyone got to see Trump's tweet at the same time and it's fair. Fine. But the problem here is that the executive gets to see the numbers first and it undermines confidence in the data.
There are varying policies globally about who gets to see economic data. The UK is also particularly bad with more than 100 people getting the data ahead of time. An investigation from the WSJ showed that sterling was consistently moving in the direction of the surprise before the data was released.
In Sweden, meanwhile, no one gets to see the data ahead of time.
For me, there is no real need for top leaders and advisers to see economic data ahead of time. Not at the cost of market integrity. There is too much temptation and the possibility of someone trading on the data is far too high.
Anyway, this is the landscape for now, tread at your peril.
