SPY, QQQ Call Volumes Spiked Minutes Before Tariff Pause Announcement: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Demands Disclosure From Congress Members

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) has called for a disclosure by Congress members after observing that the Nasdaq call volume spiked minutes before President Donald Trump‘s announcement on a tariff pause.

What Happened: Trump announced a pause in the tariffs in a Truth Social post around 1:18 p.m. ET on Wednesday.

However, the data shared by Spencer Hakimian, the founder of Tolou Capital Management and Unusual Whales, a popular social media commentator and online suite for data feeds and tools on options flows, showed that call volumes for various contracts started spiking around 1:00 p.m. ET.

AOC, in an X post, said that “Any member of Congress who purchased stocks in the last 48 hours should probably disclose that now.”

While the disclosure deadline is May 15, AOC added that “We're about to learn a few things. It's time to ban insider trading in Congress.”

Any member of Congress who purchased stocks in the last 48 hours should probably disclose that now.

I've been hearing some interesting chatter on the floor.

Disclosure deadline is May 15th. We're about to learn a few things.

It's time to ban insider trading in Congress. https://t.co/YBKMGbraAu

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) April 10, 2025

On the other hand, Unusual Whales highlighted that SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust SPY 509 calls expiring on Wednesday, April 9, surged 2100% in one hour.

Meanwhile, Invesco QQQ Trust, Series 1 QQQ 406 calls expiring on April 17, also surged. “Insane, someone knew,” said Unusual Whales in its X post.

Alright, I think people knew of the tariff pause and traded it beforehand.

You can see before Trump posted "buy" on Truth Social, traders opened $QQQ $TQQQ and $SPY calls

RIGHT BEFORE THE NEWS, someone opened $SPY 509 calls, expiring TODAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Those calls are… pic.twitter.com/8hG2i5Oijt

— unusual_whales (@unusual_whales) April 9, 2025

See Also: Ford, GM To Witness ‘Higher Demand’ As American Carmakers Set To ‘Reap The Fruit Of Protectionism,’ Says Expert: Here’s A List Of Potential Gainers And Losers From Trump Tariffs

Why It Matters: Days before the pause, U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) on Tuesday, April 8, disclosed the purchase of several stocks that faced steep drawdowns last week. This included tech giants Apple Inc. AAPL and Amazon.com Inc. AMZN.

The purchases were made on April 3 and April 4, according to the Benzinga Government Trades tracker, and all trades reported in the filing have a reported value ranging from $1,000 to $15,000.

Berkshire Hathaway Inc. BRK, Caterpillar Inc. CAT, Dell Technologies Inc. DELL, and FedEx Corp. FDX are some of the other 17 total stocks she purchased.

Price Action: SPY rose by 10.50% on Wednesday, whereas QQQ advanced 12.00%.

Nasdaq 100 rose to exit the bear territory and was down 13.85% from its previous record of 22,222.61 points. The S&P 500 was still in the correction zone, down 11.23% from its last high of 6,147.43 points. Whereas Dow Jones was 9.91% lower than its 52-week high of 45,073.63 points.

On Thursday, the futures of Dow were down by 0.22%, and the futures of S&P 500 and the Nasdaq 100 index were 0.56% and 1.03% lower, respectively.

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