The US authorities have launched an investigation into the largest business publications in the country. According to The Wall Street Journal, officials suspected them of, that they passed macroeconomic statistics to some traders before, чем другим.
The investigation concerns, in particular, Bloomberg agencies, Thomson Reuters, Dow Jones и News Corp — they are all official providers of economic information from the government. However, no charges have been brought against them yet.
In any case, we are not talking about some kind of long delay in macroeconomic information., which comes from the government. According to the WSJ, the business media could delay the distribution of data by a split second. Nevertheless, in the context of the rapid development of high-frequency and algorithmic trading, even such a period of time could give some traders an advantage over others, officials think.
WSJ, citing anonymous sources, writes, that the SEC and the FBI will check the flow of information to the business media from all ministries and departments, which are relevant to economic statistics. In particular, Verification of the publication of data from the Federal Reserve will be carried out, ministries of energy, Agriculture, finance and other.
US officials regularly report on a variety of macroeconomic data — for example, The Department of Energy publishes materials every Wednesday on the country's fuel reserves. Usually, this data strongly influences market sentiment.
Remarkably, that the investigation was reported by The Wall Street Journal — newspaper, which is part of the Dow Jones publishing house.
