Trump’s February 2026 directive to declassify government UAP records triggered immediate market movement on timing bets, as traders weighed his public pledge for “maximum transparency” against the bureaucratic scale of reviewing decades of files. The Pentagon’s first rolling release on May 8 delivered hundreds of previously unseen photos, videos, and reports spanning Apollo missions to recent pilot sightings, instantly satisfying the “new files” threshold for many markets while confirming additional tranches every few weeks. Cultural momentum around alien disclosure—fueled by years of congressional hearings, viral Pentagon footage, and blockbuster streaming docs—has kept public interest elevated, yet the absence of any smoking-gun evidence has tempered expectations of dramatic late-year drops. Traders now eye the next scheduled batch and any surprise Truth Social announcements as the clearest near-term catalysts that could shift resolution odds.