Something unusual played out in the markets on Monday morning. According to a report from The Financial Times, traders placed oil bets worth around $580 million just 15 minutes before Donald Trump posted about “productive conversations” with Iran, a post that soon sent oil prices dramatically lower and pushed stocks higher.
The timing of the trade and the instant market reaction it caused have certainly raised eyebrows across the globe. Meanwhile, the White House has pushed back strongly against any suggestions of wrongdoing, saying the administration is focused only on doing what’s best for the American people. It also made it clear that it does not allow anyone to profit from insider information, calling such claims baseless and without evidence.
$580 Million oil bets placed minutes before Trump’s Iran post
At around 7:04 am, Trump posted on Truth Social saying the US and Iran had held “very good and productive” talks in recent days. He also said he had told the Pentagon to delay planned strikes on Iran’s energy infrastructure by five days.
According to FT, between 6:49 am and 6:50 am in New York, about 6,200 contracts of Brent crude and West Texas Intermediate (WTI) were traded, all within a single minute. The total value of these trades was estimated at $580 million. Trading activity also picked up suddenly at that same moment. Volumes jumped, and even futures linked to the S&P 500 started rising shortly after.
Trump’s post had an immediate impact. Oil prices fell instantly as investors started believing the conflict could ease. At the same time, stock markets reacted in the opposite way, with S&P 500 futures and European shares moving higher as fears of a long war began to fade.
However, the market swing didn’t last long. Later in the day, Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s parliament speaker, said there had been no talks at all. In a post on X, he called the reports “fake news,” saying they were meant to influence financial and oil markets and help the US and Israel “escape the quagmire” they are in. After his statement, markets shifted again, stocks pulled back, and oil prices moved up slightly.
White House Responds
Spokesperson Kush Desai said, “The only focus of President Trump and Trump administration officials is doing what’s best for the American people.”
He added, “The White House does not tolerate any administration official illegally profiteering off of insider knowledge, and any implication that officials are engaged in such activity without evidence is baseless and irresponsible reporting.”
Who made these trades?
Right now, it is not clear whether these trades were made by one group or several different traders. But the timing has already raised several eyebrows. “It’s hard to prove causality… but you have to wonder who would have been relatively aggressive at selling futures at that point, 15 minutes before Trump’s post,” a market strategist at a US brokerage firm told FT.
According to some hedge funds, this is not the first time they have seen large trades happen shortly before major announcements. One trader told FT, energy experts had noticed several unusually timed big trades in recent months. Another investor said this pattern has been frustrating. “My gut from watching markets for the last 25 years is this is really abnormal,” he said. “It’s Monday morning, there’s no important data today… Somebody just got a lot richer,” one investor told FT.