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Martha Stewart served prison time for a conviction on insider trading.

There is a cadre of Trump Insiders who are privy to Mr. Trump’s rants which roil the financial markets, some of whom are getting rich off of their advance information of what he will say or do.

Donald Trump’s frequently irrational, generally unpredictable — and often arbitrary and capricious — tweets, pronouncements and actions have proven to significantly move financial markets, often creating a whipsaw effect.

Today – May 31, 2018 – Mr. Trump allowed tariffs to be enacted on steel and aluminum imports from Canada, Mexico and the E.U. on the grounds that such materials are being imported into the United States “in such quantities and under such circumstances as to threaten to impair the national security of the United States.”

There is no credible evidence that steel and/or aluminum imported into the U.S. from Canada, Mexico and/or the E.U. pose any threat to the national security of the U.S.  In fact, there is no credible evidence that such imports pose any threat to the U.S. domestic economy.

Meanwhile, Mr. Trump’s action today to impose tariffs on imports from our closest allies was apparently not expected in the financial markets, leading to a 1% drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

We now have several data points relating to financial market response to irrational actions by President Trump which clearly represent huge arbitrage opportunities for Trump insiders.

The ‘out-of-right-field’ announcement in early March 2018 by Mr. Trump that the U.S. would impose tariffs on steel and aluminum imports precipitated an almost immediate 500 point drop in the DJI.

It’s bad enough that Trump’s actions pose a tremendous risk to the entire U.S. society and our economy.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) needs to reign in this illegal behavior by Mr. Trump, and to charge those insiders who are illegally profiting in the financial markets from advance knowledge of what sort of disruptive, arbitrary and capricious pronouncements President Trump will make in the near term.