The TACO Trade

Reading the Tape Before the News

Lately, the market has so preoccupied me that candles form even in my dreams.

When I can’t sleep, I (mentally) say to myself, “In…out…in…out…in…out…” as I breathe. Sometimes while I do that, I visualize things that I won’t get into here, because I’m a smooth operator.

(We’re talking about the stock market, people!)

I pop out of bed off and on throughout the night — in…out…in…out…of bed — and if it’s after 1 a.m. my time, I look in on thinkorswim (TOS), the trading platform that I use.

How’s the market doing? Did Trump post something on Trump Social that’s moving the markets against me today? For his friends, today? For his kids today? (I guarantee you the kids come after the transactional friends.)

And Then It Happened, Again

And then it happened, again. The market was quiet. I was working several swing trades on theses I had carefully researched. And then…

An account trading under the username "Magamyman" made more than $553,000 placing bets on the prediction market site Polymarket about Iran and its Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, just before an Israeli strike killed him on Saturday.

— Bobby Allyn, Prediction market trader ‘Magamyman’ made $553,000 on death of Iran’s supreme leader (March 1, 2026)

Whoever Bobby was reporting about, he was “allyn” on that bet. A cool half-a-million profit. Apparently trying to catch up with Jesse Livermore’s friend “Bet-a-Million”.

Of course, a million then, a million now, a million here, a million there…regardless, I’d love to have that million.

Wouldn’t you?

But you don’t know “the Donald.”

The Grifter-in-Chief, a.k.a., TACO

The Orange Wonder, the Grifter-in-Chief, or, depending on your astuteness, simply TACO, stuck to his pattern.

Patterns, of course, are the specialty of readers of the tape.

“War” was declared on Iran. Bombs rained — and reigned — from all quarters. The United States bombed Iran. Israel bombed Iran. And Lebanon. Iran retaliated by bombing Israel and numerous of its neighbors.

Nobody knows to what end. Other than maybe the end of world peace and prosperity.

Because then the Strait of Hormuz — not to be confused with Straight Up Hummus — became the completely unexpected, totally out-of-the-blue-as-far-as-the-United-States-was-concerned center of attention.

Gas prices soared. Fertilizer prices began to stink as much as the fertilizer once did. Stock markets tanked. Around the world.

Not gonna lie. I was working several swing trades that were supposed to last days. Now I’m worried they’re going to last months. If not years.

It’s hard to tell, because TACO has figured out his words manipulate the market. His tweets twist tickets on the exchange.

But this time, things were different.

Oh, not the miscalculations. Let’s face it: TACO’s miscalculations are no miracle or mystery. “Demented Dickwad Donald” — my preferred way to think of this potentially syphilis-addled brain — is somehow great at the Art of the Steal, but has never actually seen success at the Art of the Deal.

His two great skills — three if you count grift and theft as separate skills — are “self-promotion”, “grift”, and “theft”.

That’s it. That’s all you get. And a lot of times, it’s not even that: it’s luck. He says something stupid and before the spit blows back in his face, his even stupider followers actually buy into it.

That, however, does not stop him from “TACO-ing” out.

TACO, of course, refers to the idea that “Trump Always Chickens Out.” He can’t help it. And, under the circumstances, I don’t totally blame him. I mean, come on: you shit on the world, thinking nothing happens except the pressure in your lower abdomen is relieved. Then you realize that someone saw you shit on the world.

And, of course, the world went to shit.

And they’re all blaming you for having shit on the world.

Back pedal! Back pedal! Back pedal!

So, now, Trump, as Always, Chickens Out.

Hegseth Takes the Bus to Work

And so, after starting an Illegal Iran War (henceforth, IIW), and realizing as any sane person does that it is not going well for the world, the news today reports that Trump channeled Flip Wilson and said, “A staffer made me do it.”

That “staffer” — soon to be little more than a Carry My Water Boy for Trump — is none other than Pete Hegseth.

The detail that makes this so adorably Trump is the physical scene. Trump said it with Hegseth sitting right next to him. In Memphis. At a crime task force roundtable. Hegseth stayed quiet. That’s the tape right there. It’s not in the words, but the silence.

And there’s a beautiful contradiction buried in the reporting: Trump had previously said after last year’s joint US-Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities that they were “totally obliterated.” Hell, the pronouncement remains to this day on the White House website.

So the nuclear justification he’s now pinning on Hegseth — “you can’t let them have a nuclear weapon” — contradicts his own prior claim that the nuclear threat was already eliminated.

But it was Hegseth’s idea. And nobody — not even Hegseth — apparently thought things could go sideways.

But…hmm…Trump was warned internally that Iran could launch retaliatory attacks on neighboring Gulf states. Trump ignored the warnings. Then when Iran did exactly that, Trump told reporters: “Nobody was even thinking about it.”

The tape doesn’t lie. The reader just has to know where to look.

Hegseth about to give his next briefing from under the bus.

— Jon Favreau, Twitter X post (March 23, 2026)

Trump Lies; The Tape Doesn’t

So here I’ve been. Sitting in Fresno. Trying to trade in a Trump Market. It’s worse than a bear market. Because for reasons that boggle my mind, there are still a helluva lot of people who actually believe the words that come out of Trump’s mouth.

When Trump first said that he was negotiating with Iran. I literally said to myself, “No, he’s not.” And what happened next?

Stocks started moving up. But I’d already read the tape. Stocks had been heading down steadily for days on worries about the war, the Strait, the Oil, and the long-term impacts all this would have on the economy.

Trump lies. The tape doesn’t.

So for yet another day, I sat pat while stocks started going up. I didn’t even try a scalp trade.

And, sure enough, within minutes, the rally — which never got yuuuuugly big to start with — was over.

Fake news.

But it was all there for anyone who knows how to read the tape. Not just the market tape. Definitely not just the words Trump speaks. I waited for the true print.

Because as someone once said, “history doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” Trump often repeats himself, seldom rhymes, but always lies.

So Why the War?

As I’ve read the Trump tape, I’ve often wondered who holds the real tapes. You know, the ones likely filmed on Epstein’s island.

The Illegal Iran War was, after all, unnecessary. Whether he was telling the truth or not, Trump had previously claimed (as I noted above) that he had totally obliterated Iran’s nuclear program. In addition, even regarding the latest round of tensions between Trump and Iran — note that I did not say “the United States and Iran” because this one is really all Trump — Iran and the U.S. supposedly had negotiated the beginnings of a peace agreement.

“A peace deal is within our reach … if we just allow diplomacy the space it needs to get there,” Al Busaidi said in an interview with CBS News in Washington, DC, after Oman brokered the third round of indirect talks between the US and Iran in Geneva on Thursday.

— Al Jazeera Staff and AFP, Peace ‘within reach’ as Iran agrees no nuclear material stockpile: Oman FM (February 28, 2026)

But peace was not what Trump wanted. Peace would not be the proper distraction. It would be the opposite. Trump needed to Wag the Dog.

For those who never heard of this, it’s an old movie that is strikingly apropos right now.

The President of the United States is caught making advances on an underage girl inside the Oval Office less than two weeks before the election. Conrad Brean, a top spin doctor, is brought in by presidential aide Winifred Ames to take the public's attention away from the scandal. He decides to construct a fictional war in Albania, hoping that the media will concentrate on this instead. Brean contacts Hollywood producer Stanley Motss to create the war, complete with a theme song and fake film footage of a fleeing orphan to arouse sympathy. The hoax is initially successful, with the president quickly gaining ground in the polls.

— Wikipedia, Wag the Dog (last visited Mar. 24, 2026).

But this wasn’t the only thing Trump needed to distract us from. He had other issues that were starting to tank his poll numbers.

I would say “first and foremost” there’s the whole problem of ICE and how poorly that has been handled and received across the United States. Masked men assaulting, kidnapping, and killing immigrants and United States citizens alike. For some reason only Trump’s core supporters liked that. But not even all of them are happy about how ICE operates.

But the reason I said, “I would say” is that I think Trump’s core “issue” — to the extent Trump ever really cared about any issue — was the economy. He promised to fix the problem with the cost of gas, the cost of eggs, and instead the cost of everything was already going up — despite what people kept saying gas was not coming down; at best, it was holding — before the Illegal Iran War.

MAGA is feeling the pinch.

More than one-third of President Donald Trump’s own voters believe the cost of living in the U.S. is the worst they’ve ever seen, according to a new poll. And more than half say that the president bears at least some of the blame.

— Brendan Rascius, MAGA feels the pinch: Over a third of Trump voters say they’re facing the worst cost of living crisis yet (December 5, 2025)

And now, the ultimate irony: the war that Trump hoped would distract us from these issues has actually made (most of) them worse.

Because, you see? This wasn’t a fake Albanian war. This is a real Illegal Iran War. And Iran is a bit of a honey badger.

And as everyone knows, honey badger don’t give a f___. When the United States and Israel launched missiles on Iran, Iran fired back. Not just at Israel. Not just at American bases in the Middle East. Iran started shooting at its neighbors, gas and oil assets, and essentially closed off the Strait of Hormuz.

It remains to be seen how this will end. No one knows because no one ever knew. Apparently, so far as anyone can tell, the only plan was to distract. That plan has blown up in everyone’s faces. And the war has worsened most of what we needed to be distracted from.

But perhaps I can interest you in some TACO and a movie?