A week after publishing Crazy Rich Insider Traders, Neil sat down with Arthur to talk the piece through in more depth — from the $580 million minute in March, to the structural advantage AI agents now hold over short-term traders, to what all of this means for the rule-of-law premium that has anchored U.S. asset prices for half a century.
A few moments worth pulling out
The $580 million minute. In March 2026, roughly $580 million in oil futures changed hands in a single minute — about fifteen minutes before a presidential post on Iran. S&P 500 futures saw a simultaneous $2 billion surge. The trades are knowable: the SEC and CFTC see who’s on the other side of every futures contract. And yet, as Neil notes in the conversation, no one has been outed, and the SEC official who would have led the investigation resigned. “It’s blatant.”
You’re playing chess against a grandmaster. AI agents now gather information, distill it, size their bet, and execute — all faster than any human can. Neil’s word for short-term speculation against that infrastructure is “lunacy.” The point isn’t that markets are unwinnable. It’s that the long-horizon, fundamentals-first approach we’ve always favored is now structurally insulated from the speed game in a way it wasn’t a few years ago.
The Pelosi exemption. Members of Congress are effectively exempt from the insider-trading rules the rest of us live under. Their only obligation is to disclose stock trades within forty-five days. The penalty for late disclosure is roughly $1,000. There is now an ETF strategy on Autopilot that simply tracks Nancy Pelosi’s trades — it holds approximately $500 million in assets.
Why this matters, beyond any one trade. The closing argument Arthur drew from Neil is the part we think is most underpriced in the headlines: the American multiple — the premium global investors have been willing to pay for U.S. assets for half a century — is built on trust in the rules. Trust takes years to earn and seconds to lose. The slow erosion of that trust is the part of this story that will show up, eventually, in prices.
Related reading
- Crazy Rich Insider Traders — the original article
- Recent investment letters and articles
If anything in the conversation prompts a question, our team is genuinely available to talk it through. Get in touch.
About the Author
Neil Rose, CFA, is the founder and CEO of Regency Capital Management.
