The news about import duties on gold and silver going up to 15% came late last night. The interesting thing: neither open interest, prices, nor volume in Gold and Silver showed any unusual moves in the hours leading up to the announcement.

If this had happened in the United States, I’m fairly sure some of the people close to the decision-making process would have found a way to trade it, either through regulated futures markets, other derivative contracts, or prediction markets like Polymarket and Kalshi.

We’ve seen versions of this with crude. And during the Iran conflict, too, there were all these reports and allegations about people around the government trading through futures, contracts, and prediction markets before or around important announcements.

It’s kind of insane how casually people in power seem to monetize privileged information. At some point, this stops looking like “market participation” and starts looking like blatant insider trading with better branding.

Just another reason why Indian markets, despite all their flaws, are far more tightly controlled in these grey zones than many Western markets.