On May 16, news sources reported that Republicans planned to eliminate subsidies for nuclear power, leading a number of pundits to complain that Republicans were destroying nuclear power in the US (e.g. this otherwise good Noahpinion post).

The stock market told a very different story. I will illustrate with the stock prices of the two companies that seem most focused on building new nuclear power plants.

NuScale (NYSE:SMR) was up more than 52% between April 30 and May 22.

It was up a further 19.6% on May 23 in reaction to an executive order that is aimed at speeding up approvals of nuclear plants.

Oklo (NYSE:OKLO) was up more than 67% between April 30 and May 22. It was up a further 23% on May 23.

Both stocks were up slightly on May 16 and the subsequent trading day, indicating little interest in the news about subsidies.

The market seems to be pretty clear: the benefit of reducing regulations is so much larger than the benefit from subsidies that the subsidies are hard to distinguish from a rounding error.

It’s also fairly likely that some of the market rise up through May 22 was influenced by the executive order that was published on May 23. In other words, it seems pretty likely that somebody profited from advance knowledge of the executive order. I’m pretty sure that’s covered by the SEC’s rules as illegal insider trading.

I can’t prove insider trading here. It’s possible that there was public information that contributed to the pre May 23 rise. The NYT reported relevant rumors on May 9, but both that article and the stock market reaction to it suggest that the administration didn’t decide until sometime later on what kind of executive order to make.

I don’t care enough about insider trading to be too outraged about this particular example of likely corruption. But I’m a bit sad that the most corrupt administration in US history manages to look better than its critics on nuclear issues.

Note: I own stock in NuScale, and some uranium processing companies.